[Anime Review] Valvrave The Liberator

"Call me Moses. I'm gonna split this sea of students before your very eyes."

- Senator Figaro

I guess it's hard to distinguish between what's "good stupid" and "bad stupid". I don't think there's a formula(though that quote up there helps) I can pin down that explains why I find anime like Guilty Crown enduring in their blatant mindlessness, and why I find the subject of today's review: Valvrave the Liberator, just sort of stupid, boring and not worth watching. So let's use this opportunity to set up a test case shall we? Let's compare and contrast and hopefully at the end of it all, I can give a solid thesis on why this show is crap, but also why there's other anime much like it that you all need to watch right now. Somewhere along the way, we'll find the problem, so let's get started.

     Hello people of "The Wired", my name is Quan, and I'm back from my rather long hiatus to bring you a new anime review. Today it's Valvrave the Liberator, a recent entry in the mecha genre that looks to ride on the coat-tails of the genre's bombastic youth, but ends being a large firework show that neither had a point or a payoff. Let's begin then.

Talking technical for a minute, I first need to mention that this is a review of exclusively the first season of Valvrave and I have neither the seen or plan to in the near future the franchise-concluding second season. As I said in my Railgun review, first seasons or spin-offs must stand on their own, and thus I can judge them as such. This first season aired in the year of 2013 and was 12 episodes long. Valvrave was brought to us by the lads over at Sunrise, mecha-nerds in their own right who have given us anime like Code Geass and many entries in the Gundam franchise. The director was Kou Matsuo, who hasn't done a lot, but directed Natsuyuki Rendezvous and did some work on Rozen Maiden. The script was handled in majority by Ichiro Okouchi, which is weird seeing that he's written some pretty good stuff: namely Code Geass. Hell, they even have structurally similar premises; many factions fighting for world control using giant robots, seen through the eyes of a protagonist that has been recently infected by a power that can give him the ability to turn the tides of war but he doesn't really understand and slowly eats away at his humanity. The major difference of course though between Code Geass and Valvrave is that one is crap and one is not. Guess which one is which.

 It is the year 71 of the "True Calender". As it typically is in mecha shows, since humanity took to living in space since the development of a technology known as "Dyson Spheres"(basically floating climate bubbles in space), the world has been divided into two warring superpowers: The Dorssia Military Pact Federation and ARUS. In between these two factions is the Switzerland of this world: JIOR, a tiny neutral nation that favors neither side of the conflict. Our main character is a young man named Haruto, a typical member of a high-school in JIOR, who lives out his daily life in peace, in between hanging out with his friends and trying to muster the courage to ask his long-time crush Shoko how he feels. One day, when he takes Shoko out to a local shrine to finally confess his feeling towards her, and, in what is quite possibly the worst timing imaginable, Dorssia attacks JIOR out of the blue, with the intent of conjuring the tiny nation. In the chaos, Haruto discovers the Valvrave: a mysteriously powerful humanoid mecha that for some reason, the widely regarded peaceful government of JIOR was developing. After accepting the Valvrave's very ominous request to "forfeit his humanity" to be able to pilot it, Haruto uses the strangely powerful mecha to save his high-school. To escape the now conquered nation of JIOR, the students detach their Dyson Sphere from the burning nation of JIOR and float out into space, declaring themselves a new country... which I'm sure is the best possible idea that they could have come up with. This, for the most part, is where the plot begins, as now Haruto must use the Valvrave to defend the nation of high-school students against the repeated attacks of Dorssia, and attempt to retain his humanity as the effects of piloting the Valvrave are felt, namely slowly turning him into a freakin' vampire, acquired with the abilities to regenerate his wounds and take control of other people's bodies by biting them on the neck. Yeah, it doesn't really make any sense. And so, from there, stuff happens, more pilots for the other Valvraves are found, and you're left with a cliffhanger ending that raises more questions without answering any of your previous ones.

Haruto's Valvrave. 

Okay, so maybe I've been unfair. I'm not saying that this is at all a bad premise, while it isn't exactly anything revolutionary with the basic mecha cliches all there on the checklist, you can still make a good show out of this. I already mentioned how the premise of Code Geass is basically cut from the same cloth as Valvrave, but what Code Geass has that Valvrave doesn't is interesting politics between factions, complex characters and clever tactics. "So," you might ask, "what then, does Valvrave have to offer?" Well that's part of the problem.

     You could say entertainment, and I wouldn't stop you. Valvrave definitely has lots of actions sequences, bright lights and high-school shenanigans in spades, but the problem it fails to give anything else to really offer. The characters aren't particularly likable, and hell, even though Valvrave would pride itself on being crazy unpredictable fun, the pace of the show kind of becomes stale once you realize the same thing starts happening over and over again throughout episodes: Dorssians attack the country, Haruto defends them with help from the various characters, maybe a new-color-of-the-rainbow Valvrave is introduced, and then we get to do the same thing next episode. Without clever character moments or even good comedy in between these action sequences, it just becomes sort of boring. I'm pretty sure the anime itself realized it, and to compensate, it throws in ridiculous plot-twists nearly every episode in an effort to keep you entertained, no matter how juvenile or stupid these twists actually are. But this doesn't even work, probably because the show has no sense of narrative integrity, or in layman's terms, these twists wind down to little more than trolls so that the you will watch the next episode, and then the anime will jumps backwards, hands held up, and shout "Nope, just joking!" and then revert everything back to the status quot. I remember this particular occasion when a heavy weight was dropped directly before start of the final episode, and suddenly I was a little excited; my mind was racing about how this could change the dynamics between characters and further their development. But when I turned on the final episode this morning, I found that the first five minutes of it would be dedicated to complete undoing what had just occurred. And then it's just not brought up again for the entire episode, apparently forgotten by every single character involved. Like seriously, what the hell? And when something significant actually does happen, say a character dies, there's little reason to care, because when Valvrave isn't throwing giant robots fighting one another at you, or some ludicrous twist, it's just sort of... nothing. No development, or interesting character relations, just filler with stupid characters. Valvrave hasn't had an original thought in its life, nothing will intrigue you, nothing will make you think about to any length after the fact. I guess it could be entertaining at the best of times, but I stress at the best of times. You could do worse I suppose if you wanted to turn your brain off and watch some stupid, random anime on a Sunday afternoon, but hell, I got a list of shows right here that fill that prerequisite better. Okay, let me take a breath and... Gurren Lagann, Kill la Kill, Nisekoi, Guilty Crown, Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2199, Black Lagoon, Jormungand, even Sword Art Online did this "dumb fun" thing better than Valvrave. And you have no idea how much it burns my tongue to give Sword Art Online a compliment. 

     The closest the anime comes to anything interesting is brought up when the genesis of the Valvraves are hinted at. I'm pretty sure this will be more closely explored in the second season, especially after all the bait the ending of this season left. Possibly the secrets that are unraveling about the Valvrave and the entire nature of the JIOR high-school can add some much needed spice to this universe, and if they turn out to be dramatic or clever or interesting, that might possibly make this season a little better in my eyes, at least for setting the groundwork. That, of course, it a lot of assumption. There is a lot of unanswered questions, and I wish I could trust season 2 to fill me in, but considering the show we're talking about.... I'm not even sure if I have enough emotional investment in these characters to care.

There's also this quite bizarre side story that takes place in the distant future, involving what I presume are a mother and child in a post-Dorssia/ARUS-war world, and it raises some interesting implications for what could take place in the future of the anime, but assuming it actually is what I suspect it is, it does little more than just unnecessarily spoil huge parts of the story, and by extension, the second season. There are only about two of these segments in the entire show, so unless it somehow brilliantly ties into events in the second season, I fail to see the point of them.

Characters listed from left to right. Back Row: Rukino, A-Drei, Cain.
Front Row: Shoko, Haruto, L-Elf.

The characters don't exactly redeem anything either. Haruto, A.K.A our main character is as boring as they come. He is another one of those "insert-main-protagonists", by which I mean he has absolutely no defining features whatever. The anime wants you to get all involved with his struggle to retain humanity as he turns into a vampire-thing-whatever, but that struggle is highlighted so rarely that I don't even know if it's worthy of mention. It doesn't exactly come up in the terms of the plot, in fact, I think the biggest factor his transformation played in the role of the story was so he could have an excuse not to tell Shoko he liked her. And I think that's literally it. I can't bring myself to hate Haruto I suppose, but he's another one of those characters you could literally replace with any run-of-the-mill protagonist who was a "nice guy" and I'm relatively sure nothing would have changed whatsoever. So, I guess I don't really like him much either. 

     Shoko I think, is the one character I like in this entire anime. She's a bubbly piece of inspiration that helped to entertain me with her quirky antics when the show had run out of ideas of what to do in between robot battles, but unlike all the other characters, her quirkiness isn't her one singular trait. She can get serious when the situation calls for it, but still can remain stubbornly positive when things look dire. It's this optimism that lets her get along with everybody, and even form a friendship with Akira, an extremely anti-social hacker that lives in a hovel of cardboard boxes in the corner of the school, which ends up playing a huge part later on in the series, and was one of the only relationships which I felt was built up well. However, Shoko also has her flaws, typically trying to bear pain all by herself without showing it(sort of like Minori from Toradora), which eventually reaches a boiling point at the anime's climax. She's not a great character by any means, but comparing her to the rest of the cast, my positive viewpoint on her stands. 

     I'm surprised I haven't mentioned him yet, but L-Elf is the last main character you need to remember here. A fugitive of the Dorssia military who is forced to cooperate with Haruto after Haruto takes over his body and uses it to escape, L-Elf is forced to change his mission from changing the Dorssia empire from the inside and instead work with the Valvraves. L-Elf is the cold calculating type, he doesn't concern himself with relationships with the other characters or saving their lives, only what is the most efficient method to complete the mission. His reasons for working against Dorssia are kept very secretive, and by secretive I mean we only get one flashback that hints the reason might be rooted in his meeting with the princess of Dorssia when he was a child. I mean, I trust myself to fill in the blanks from there, but I'd still say L-Elf still has the most potential development out of the entire cast, though I can't say it won't be handled in a sloppy and half-asked way. The way he interacts with Haruto, who basically has completely opposite ideals than him could be interesting, but that dynamic wasn't explored in any detail in this season, nor do I really expect it to be explored in the second. So yes, just like the rest of the cast, he's boring in the end. 

This anime actually has a fairly large cast, with various members of the student council and body, the Dorssia and ARUS military, as well as those in between, but it's actually really hard to say anything significant about any one of them. They are all one-dimensional; all the usual stereotypes populate this show, from the obsessive idol, the nerd, the NEET, the girl who dies so we can all feel sorry for her, the bad guys who are bad because they're bad, and all the blandness in between. It's quite remarkable really that such a huge cast can have no real variety or stand-outs, and I ended up not really caring about any of them. They're all just a really unlikable bunch of people, and that's probably one of the key reasons why Valvrave isn't able to stand on the same ground as the shows it's trying to emulate. 

A typical day at the high-school. Never mind the blood. 

Done by Sunrise, the animation quality of Valvrave the Liberator isn't really something I can get all that excited about. There's no lovely backgrounds, or cool aesthetic choices, everything's typical; so the animation is there and does its job. The only thing that's worthy of note is the character designs, which besides from being a little eccentric with hair-styles, sport these very unique eyes of varying shades of blue and green. It's not so much of a problem as just something I noticed. The many, many fight scenes are alright; they are at least somewhat exhilarating, and will keep you entertained while they last. However, and I think this sums up my whole experience with Valvrave's animation, looking back, while I never had a problem with the animation, unlike some other shows with typical animation, there was never one standout moment where I thought "wow", or "they really put a lot of effort into this scene". That's not good, not really.

Same for sound too. The OST for Valvrave was done by Akira Senju, who like the writer, actually does have a couple of decent works under his belt. Most notably, he was responsible for the OST of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which while I haven't seen(and before anybody starts questioning my credibility I did see the original anime), I know for a fact it has some brilliant music, and the same can not be said for Valvrave. There's a couple orchestras and the such in there, and while it sounds okay for battle music, it's nothing you haven't before; and the rest of the OST mostly consists of those typical slice-of-life jingles you've heard in absolutely every other anime ever. But finally, here's something good to talk about. In stark contrast to the lackluster soundtrack, the OP and ED of the anime are actually quite superb. The OP "Preserved Roses" is probably one of better openings of last year, with exciting music(if basic visuals), and the ED "Bokujanai" is quite unique, pairing high paced Japanese rap with a catchy-as-hell chorus, and marries them together wonderfully. 

The OP

The ED

So, I think we can label Valvrave a failure in the end, a failure to provide good characters, memorable scenes, or even to entertain. I asked a question in the beginning of this review, and that was, roughly "why does Valvrave fail at being dumb fun?" and why should you not watch Valvrave as opposed to an anime very much like it, or an anime whose sole purpose is to provide easy brain candy. Well, I think I've got an answer now, after looking at the lack-luster characters, the stupid plot-twists and all that other wonderful bullshit. For all its eccentricities, Valvrave is a show that's missing a lot of soul. When you watch a show that tries to achieve that same feeling that Valvrave attempts, I at least feel, it's a show born because the creators wanted the audience to have a little fun. Valvrave feels like it's engineered for the sole purpose of keeping the audience around long enough so they feel obligated to buy merchandise, and all the craziness that it contains: those stupid plot-twists and ludicrous situations, are born from that. And yes, you could argue that's the purpose of every anime that's ever existed, but still, you're not supposed to be so obvious about it. As I said in the beginning of the review, Valvrave is an empty fireworks show; an hollow mess that's devoid of passion, creativity and soul, that feels like its very blue-prints was built to pander to the biggest demographic possible. So, I guess what I'm trying to say in my very long-winded way, Valvrave is a bad anime. Not self-aware. Not "so-bad-it's-good". Not clever in any way. It's the inevitable result of putting together as many typical tropes of the mecha genre as possible, mashing them together, and hoping that it will be eaten up by the masses. So yes, just... plain... bad. 

Final Verdict: 4/10

P.S: Not that I want her to be dead, but didn't she get hit by a missile? People typically don't survive that. 

Recommended Anime: 

Guilty Crown

The epitome of an anime that is pure dumb fun, and completely embraces the fact. Stop by this anime for incredible music, brilliant animation, and if you turn your brain off at absolutely everything it tries to tell you, some of the most fun you'll have with an anime for a very long time. 

Eureka Seven

More serious than either Valvrave or Guilty Crown, but represents some of the best of the mecha, action, and even romance genre. Only give it a go if you're prepared for 50 episodes though. 

Goodbye for now guys.

Like the review? Click here for an anime review of Kyousougiga. 

Or here for First Impressions of Eureka Seven and Toradora. 

If you want some video-game reviews however, click here for a review of Thomas Was Alone. 

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