Valvrave the Liberator

Sunrise

Directed by Kou Matsuo (Yozakura Quartet, Natsuyuki Rendezvous, Rozen Maiden)

Written by Ichiro Okouchi (Azumanga Daioh, Code Geass, Wolf’s Rain, RahXephon)

Music by Akira Senju (Mobile Suit Victory Gundam, Dead Girls, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood)

SUMMARY

Valvrave the Liberator is a science fiction mech series produced by Sunrise studios. It follows Haruto, a high school student on a terraformed space station that is part of the neutral JIOR society. Although JIOR is a pacifist state, it must deal with two powerful military states, Dorssia and ARUS. When Dorssian forces invade JIOR to procure a secret weapon, our hero Haruto stumbles upon it first. What he finds is a giant red robot known as Valvrave. After watching his love interest supposedly meet a terrible fate during the invasion, he climbs into the cockpit with all his adolescent rage and powers the machine up. The computer greets him with a question, “Will you give up being a human?” Of course he says yes, and off he goes. The Dorssian military doesn’t stand a chance agains the agile war machine, and they quickly retreat, but this means war.

Fortunately for Haruto, his crush — the daughter of JIOR’s president — didn’t actually bite the big one. Not so lucky for him, though, the whole giving-up-being-human thing turned him into a sort of vampire with the occasional insatiable lust for biting people and body swapping with them. Soon the student body of Haruto’s high school decides to declare independence from ARUS, their sworn protectors, and establish their own military state within JIOR using the Valvrave as its sole show of military force. Naturally, other equally brightly-colored robots enter the fold, and new pilots are recruited to man them.

REVIEW

The most refreshing thing about this series is how it doesn’t take itself seriously in the slightest. As a sci-fi military epic about big ass robots, you get the requisite expository technobabble, but it never comes close to drowning in its own mythology before throwing an action scene at you. The show even has a song-and-dance number early in the series, so it’s clearly not gunning for any hoity-toity accolades.

This anime really knows how to prioritize its animation budget. While character designs and animations aren’t terribly attractive, the amazingly fluid action sequences more than make up for it. The whole show has a really excellent sense of color, and every frame explodes with over-saturated hues.

The music is great and overdramatic, utilizing full orchestrated pieces with a choir for the most over-the-top moments of action and melodrama. The opening and ending themes are energetic and rhythm-heavy, falling in line with mech shows of the past.

The show isn’t very thematically heavy, but the it seems to have something to say about the innate caste system of high school in how easily a student body can transform into a functioning society complete with governmental bureaucracy and political corruption. The story is slight and only serves as a backdrop for the great action beats. The characters are expectedly cookie-cutter, and the fan service is at a minimum, save for all of the robotic money shots. The situational humor can be quite funny at times, too. The show manages to land several jokes and make me laugh — a feat that very few anime have achieved.

Haruto’s vampirism affords the story some interesting if predictable opportunities to crank up the tension, but the details of the plot point don’t entirely make sense. The main character’s random and violent transformation is exclusive to Haruto and doesn’t seem to affect the other Valvrave pilots for reasons that are never explained. While under the influence of the curse, the desire to bite his victims — and subsequently swap bodies with them — seems to be his only motivation. That is until he rapes another character in the tenth episode.

The character who gets raped is called Saki, a pop idol who goes to high school with Haruto. She was at the center of the aforementioned song-and-dance earlier in the season. The rape scene comes totally out of left field but becomes even worse when the rape victim seems to stop struggling and accept her aggressor’s advances because, quote, “he is cursed.” Her character attempts to justify her victimization even further in the final episode when she tells Haruto that she is a pop idol and has been part of the dirty, adult world for awhile and is used to such things. So, whether or not she is being honest with Haruto, her character attempts to right the wrong of her sexual assault by comparing it to what the audience can assume is consensual sex she has been participating in her so-called dirty, adult world.

I don’t care who wrote this into the series our how naive Saki is supposed to be as a character, I cannot abide such irresponsible writing. This is not to say that rape has no place in any narrative. It is a terrible, powerful thing can conjure equally potent emotions in the audience, but mishandling such a thing can cause the audience to turn on your story. That’s exactly what Valvrave the Liberator did for me. Before that moment in the story, the one adjective I would’ve used to describe the series would’ve been “fun.” To be as succinct with my point as possible, rape isn’t fun. It doesn’t belong in this story. Shame on you, Sunrise.

Aside from such a huge misstep, Valvrave manages to entertain throughout and establish sufficient anticipation for its second season coming this October. Here’s hoping they leave the rape out of it next time.

3.5 pissed off Krams out of 5.

 [starrater]