Among the many anime to come out
this year is an anime called Valvrave the Liberator. This review will cover the
first and second season of the show. Oh and this is going to be a lot of
bashing, but i don't want to give the wrong impression. I did like this show,
but it has a lot of flaws.
If there's one thing we know about
Sunrise, it's that they can make a well-crafted plot with plenty of character
development and political intrigue. So here we have Valvrave, It's premise is
like nothing we've seen before. It's not at all a copy of every single Gundam
series ever. Most of all, it has the most unique premise ever. Space Vampires!
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First off, let me just say that I
absolutely hated the first season. It was boring, focused on characters that
acted as if they had the depth of the Mariana trench, while basically being
cardboard cut-out labeled Protagonist A B C and Fanservice D. The first season
tried to take itself waaay to seriously, to the point where it felt like they
were trying to create drama for the sake of making said cardboard cutout
characters seem as deep as they pretend to be. The second season, by comparison
is leagues ahead of its predecessor. I'll explain why later.
Plot--The anime is made by Sunrise,
creators of shows like Gundam, and Gundam, Gundam 2.0, Gundam 3.0 and 00, so
you'd expect there to be an engaging plot with many twists and turns and all
sorts of political intrigue. Well screw that! Slice of life is cool, right? So
instead of having an interesting plot with character development, let's have a
half-assed slice of life with mechs. Wazzat? We have to have politics? Our
demographic aren't just mindless drones? Okay, Okay, give em a re-hash of Gundam,
it's cool. It's not like we don't do that enough. The plot is pretty much paper
thin for the first season and progression is really slow. I mean you might as
well have been watching the primaries while listening to opera, due to the
amount of bullshit being spouted, its dragging length and the fact that it is
as entertaining as watching paint dry. Are there any major sources of
conflicts? Are there any events or ideological differences that shape the
nature of diplomacy between nations? Nope, nope, freaking nope. The politics of
this anime are boring. Don't get me wrong; I love political intrigue, but only
when its done right. Shows like Game of Thrones, Gundam 00, or Code Geass do
this justice. They have nations that are complex and interesting. Oh and there
is more than two freaking nations. You have the Principality of Zeo-- umm
Dorssia which is a dystopian society, and the federa-- ARUS a democratic
one. It's nice that neither side is Jesus outstretching his hand to the
main characters, but it's been done a lot better in some of Sunrise's other
works. In the end the two sides feel like their really just fighting over
territory, and that's it. In the end it feels like I'm watching a couple fifth
graders fight over a toy truck rather than the epic struggle of two kings and
the pawn that challenges both of them.
The
kid with the blue backpack would be Sunrise
Unfortunately most of the plot of
the first season is sorta slice of life and space opera. Which was a ridiculous
choice in the first place, but it gets worse. To give an example that contains
spoilers, not like there's anything to spoil is part way through the first
season. One of the students (because a nation is formed out of highschoolers)
is running for president, and what is her inspiring speech? Is it to tell
everyone that everything will be fine. Is it an epic battle speech beginning
with THIS IS SPARTA, and ending with FOR NARNIA? How about a plan to outline her
responsibilities and qualifications? Nope, instead we're treated to a girl
talking about how she wants to have a cultural festival. Yep, screw you Obama,
Screw everyone who has ever had a degree in politics. Military commanders,
screw em. Tactics, who cares. Resources, plans, solutions to diplomacy,
qualifications, fuck that we're going to have a cultural fair!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
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| No you are not imagining things, yes a robot is committing Harakiri |
While we're on the subject, I've
seen a lot of things happen to highschoolers in an anime. Sometimes they have
become super-powered magical girls, other times zombies, in some cases even
crossdressing zombie magical girls( with superpowers) But this is the first
time I've seen a high-school form their own nation. Hold on, I think I may have
just overloaded my brain trying to make sense of this.
The plot does pick of the pace
drastically upon entering the second season. You might even say it picks up the
pace to fast. I might do a rant on that later I don't know. The second season
is much better paced, and it doesn't make me think that I'm wasting my time.
Furthermore no more slice of life elements! Thank god! For all the trashing
I've done of the plot, it does eventually get pretty good. Around ep 21 or so,
something happens that changes everything. It made me sorta care about
cardboard cut outs in a way I had never done before. Oh and they used a
tactic. Now that's a plot twist. While the reaction to the tactic
was on the opposite side of realism, it was still good, and I could see why it
had to be unrealistic due to time constraints.
Animation-- If there's one thing
that can be said about this anime it's that it's visually stunning. Every
single battle never failed to drop my draw right down to the floor, sometimes
even surpassing that. Wait how is that possible? Every battle was enjoyable, if
a little nonsensical. There were various times throughout the anime that mechs
would have a drastic drop in power for convinance of the plot. For instance
it's established early on that the Valvraves themselves are powerful enough to
act as an entire military force. Yet some enemy mobile suits--er whatever the
hell those things are called, are able to go toe to toe with them. It gets
worse later on in the series. Character designs are good all around the board.
They also try to insert tactics into the mix. These tactics don't feel as smart
as something like Code Geass or Death note, instead feeling like Deus Ex
Machina predictions. It feels less like the whole mind-game between genius and
more like this:
This video has screamo, not my first choice, but what the hell?
"I has robots"
"I fight your robots, I'm winning for no reason"
"Oh god why?!"
*Evil laugh*
"Alright wait hold on, I can
predict your every move"
"How?"
"Because it's a freaking anime,
gimme a break!"
They have some good tactics,
but they are far and few between. Seriously for the first season the way to
solve the problem at any given time was to boot up another robot. Enemies
killing us? More robot! Enemy's killing that robot now? It just needs more
robot? Trying to solve a complicated diplomatic situation? Bullsh** there's no
such word as complicated in this anime.
Sound-- Voice actors are pretty good
all things considered. I mean I know they're talented. Haruto has the same
voice actor as Staz from Blood lad, and voices Maou from the devil is a part
timer. L-elf has the same voice actor as Staz's brother in Blood Lad, as well
as Akira from Eden of the East. I can say that there are moments where the
voice actors do a fantastic job of portraying emotion, but it's kinda hampered
by the script. The only exception is Q-vier, voiced by the same guy who played
Issei in Highschool DXD and Yokodera in Hentai Prince and Stony Cat. He filled
the role of insane psychopath perfectly. The soundtrack uses the age old trope
of using choir to make everything sound epic. From cats fighting, to above
fifth graders.
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This
is why you don't text while driving, even if you're vehicle is a spider mech
with yo-yo weapons
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Characters---Here we go. Characters.
You know I really wanted to like the characters. They were done by Katsura
Hoshino, who did the D-grayman series, which to this day remains one of my
favorite shonnen manga. The characters there were likeable and fun, in
comparison these might as well have been cardboard cut outs with storyboards
attached to them. The problem is that the cast is too big, and the series too
short for the characters to have any depth. On top of this the characters
pretend to be fully developed characters, when they really just aren't. Haruto
for one is probably one of the most angst ridden characters I've ever seen,
while still managing to capture the personality of a rock perfectly. A
committee of Batman, Spiderman, and Bruce Banner would be telling this guy to
cheer the f*** up! As you might imagine this got bloody annoying.
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Throughout the series they try to
make you sympathize with the characters, and get involved with the plot through
a bunch of different methods. The first and foremost is death. They kill off
characters left and right, for the purposes of making you actually care, and
while for some characters it actually did, most of the time I wouldn't even
noticed. Why is this? Well, most of the time they kill off characters who have
the depth of Kim Kardashian, and less personality than a block of wood. These
characters were there, but they were never important. That is until the end.
When they finally do kill off the more important characters, it does start to
get depressing. I don't want to spoil more, but this anime is a tragedy, no
doubt about it. The other thing that they try to do is this whole thing about
people being monsters. This is, like everything else, taken in the right
direction in the later season, but in the first season is just a reason for
Haruto to invite all his friends to a pity party, complete with pimply teens
screaming about how bad their lives are, with Ano-hana and Grave of the
Fireflies as entertainment. Every time I watched an episode from the first
season it felt as though I was washing with a bar of soap opera. Oh and I hate
soap operas. The final thing to mention is that the characters do actually
get better by the end of the second season. The second season is a lot more
plot driven, and darker than the first season. By the end of the second season,
I really liked L-elf, hated Shoko, still felt lukewarm about Haruto, loved
Yamada, and Inuzuka. Rukino, for the promise that she showed during the first
season, by the second season, was placed so far behind the rest of the
characters she might as well not have been there as well. In the first season
she's mysterious, and interesting, while in the second she's just...there.
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Rape scene--Yes I have to talk about
this, since this is probably the most shocking moment in the damn series. What
rape exists in anime? Yes, apparently it does, as Haruto, the lead rapes
Rukino. No it is not a creepy sort of rape, seeing as Rukino does love Haruto,
but it was intense and it did shock the hell out of me. However this ties in
with what I said above. This is here for the purpose of shocking you into
sympathizing with the characters. So I don't know what to think of this. It's
an obvious ploy, albeit a well done ploy. So I'll just leave it at that.
As much as I bashed the show,
I actually liked it. Despite all its numerous (yes that
needed both italics and bold) flaws I still had fun. In the end that's what
it's all about. Don't come into this anime with the mindset of a Gundam fan.
Come in here expecting to have fun. Whether it's found in the insanely good
looking action or the non-existent logic of the characters, this show is fun.
So get a bunch of friends, have a marathon, or go solo, doesn't matter. I
recommend this anime to you anyway.
As Always, Likes, follows, comments, all that good stuff, is very much appreciated. Late Happy New Year, and I'll siya next time!
As Always, Likes, follows, comments, all that good stuff, is very much appreciated. Late Happy New Year, and I'll siya next time!
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