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If only Valvrave would stop being so conservative and really go for it, it might just get somewhere.
I have to say this for Kakumeiki Valvrave – it’s definitely the best one of whatever the hell it is that I’ve seen in a long time.
Seriously – Sunrise really does have the willingness to go balls-to-the-wall crazy like few studios do. It doesn’t always work for me, but in this case whatever the alchemy they have going is, it’s definitely working. I’m not going to put it past these guys to do anything, because there really does seem to be an active effort to incorporate every plot twist not just from their own mecha shows, but every show – and not just from every mecha show, but every sci-fi show. I knew Valvrave had a chance to really fun in a “so bad it’s good” way, but I’ve been surprised at how capable it is of being just plain good.
I still feel that the rape scene in episode 10 was a mistake, and I’m nowhere near satisfied with the way Valvrave has portrayed the aftermath (especially as concerns Saki). But the last couple of eps really have been stellar action sci-fi – beautifully shot, tightly written, and absolutely overflowing with reckless abandon. We start off with another flash-forward (old hat, Valvrave already did that a few weeks ago). This time around Saki is wearing Cain’s insignia and talking to a kid who looks, I must say, an awful lot like L-Elf. It’s Year 211 of the Third Galactic Empire, and while the only thing these time-jumps spoil conclusively is that Saki lives on, the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that Haruto is dead. It sure sounds that way when Saki talks about him.
Back to the present, Saki quickly spurns Haruto’s proposal and the focus turns to Akira. It feels like it’s been forever since we’ve heard Aoi Yuuki in a meaningful role (at least in the series I watch), and damn, it’s good to have her back. Finally Akira has some meat to chew on, and Aoi doesn’t disappoint – she can do subtle and deep, but few voice actresses can do over-the-top as well as Aoi-san can (which makes her a perfect fit for this show). If you’re going to show Akira as a dysfunctional person, if you’re Valvrave you know you’re really going to pull out all the stops – and this is bullying like we haven’t seen it in ages. I half thought those girls were urinating on her in the toilets at first, the way this series works – but the abuse she took was dramatic enough. And it left her quite the basket case. Her speech about “evolving into a flea” was both classic Aoi and classic Valvrave – manic, crazed, preposterous and entertaining.
It’s been hinted at for a while that Rainbow was going to end up as the next Valvrave pilot, and it sort of makes sense – the cockpit can be another place for her to hide from the world. That the impetus for her to take the plunge should be to save Shouko is a nice turn from the character – she did in fact leave her womb to try and save Shouko from Cain’s poison-gas giga drill breaker (more on that shortly). The subtle-as-a-kick-in-the-nuts irony that Akira said only seconds earlier that she’s rather die than leave her shell and become a non-human aside, I think she’s a very logical candidate to pilot a Valvrave given her personality, and I think she might end up being one of the more interesting ones (Dog and Thunder don’t really do much for me, to be honest). Her first mission is certainly a success – she saves Shouko, and turns the tables – and the drill – on the Dorssians.
As for that drill, we can now add war crimes to the plot threads. WMDs? Yeah, we got those – and in Cain, a world-class A-hole not afraid to use them. He’s also the dude who “taught L-Elf everything he knows” and seems to be the only one capable of surprising him. And his gambit of drilling through Module 77 and releasing poison gas along the way seems to do that, as does his rather clever trick of turning Yama Arashi’s tie-fighters into giant heating elements and “ironing” the Valvraves until they’re too hot to move. Cain definitely has L-Elf’s number, though we still don’t know the full details of just what he is – whatever connection he has to the Valvraves, both it and he have evolved well beyond even Haruto’s connection.
In addition to Rainbow being the mystery pilot, we get another blank filled in for us, and that’s the figure behind the Valvrave OS in the OP. Courtesy a little dongle from Cain’s pocket, we meet Blue – or is it Plue? – the “other” Valvrave OS (Yonaga Tsubasa). Not only does this one talk, but he actually prompts blondie to talk too – she calls him “Onii-san”. That the Valvraves were a living species has been pretty much a foregone conclusion for a while, but details are still sketchy. Cain calls Haruto a “third generation” Valvampire, which I assume makes Cain himself at least a fourth. And he takes immortality to ridiculous extremes, as he displays by laughing derisively (in spirit) at Haruto’s attempt to blast him all the way to Venus before breaking into the cockpit of Valvrave #2 and commandeering it for himself.
As if all that weren’t enough, we can add one more major trope to the pot – an ancient conspiracy. Committee of 300? Illuminati? Freemasons? SEELE? Fight Club? Who knows – but we do know they’re called “Magius” and aren’t afraid to brag about ruling from the shadows. To find out Cain is a member is hardly surprising – but that’s certainly not the case with the President of ARUS. His presence is yet another wild-card to add to the deck as we brace for a second season starting in October. And the preview shots at the end don’t really do much to clarify what to expect. What the hell does “The human experiment was suggested by Tokishima Haruto” mean? You’ll just have to tune in in three months to find out.
I’m not going to go so far as to say I have complete confidence that Kakumeiki Valvrave is going to have a stellar second cour, but this show has continued to surprise me by being more than I expected it to be. With this utterly scattershot approach there’s always the possibility that this thing could go crash and burn in a big way, but so far the series has managed to pull it off (whatever “it” is). It’s a glorious, spectacular train wreck – absurd and completely unrealistic and sometimes downright dumb, but usually damn entertaining. Valvrave is a construction of pieces from all the mecha shows and then some that came before it, but quite unlike any of them – a succession of predictable elements that are collectively unpredictable. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite so… Valvrave. And so far, that’s mostly a good thing.
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Season 2 Preview:
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this_is_not_even_my_final_form
June 28, 2013 at 1:34 pmFavourite show of the season, definitely. Absolutely loved it, everything was perfect.
Well, if I have one gripe I really wanted somebody to kill Q-Vier.
Maybe next season.
passingotaku
June 28, 2013 at 4:03 pmYEAH THAT BRAT
FFFFF
June 28, 2013 at 8:03 pmExcept for…all the stuff that wasn't.
Cybersteel
June 28, 2013 at 1:55 pmNot without losing another arm.
kuromitsu
June 28, 2013 at 2:06 pmThat's not Shouko's dad, it's the president(? leader, anyway) of ARUS.
.Lime
June 28, 2013 at 2:07 pmJust to tell you, the gray-haired fellow at the Magius meeting is the ARUS President, not PM Sashinami.
admin
June 28, 2013 at 2:15 pmHeh, yeah – you're right. Old white dudes look alike (in anime).
Eternia
June 28, 2013 at 2:24 pmAn absolute best trainwreck, huh. Even though you admitted it yourself that Blue and Yellow are throwaway characters who serve no purpose. What are they for? To fill in the quota? Because this is supposed to be a power rangers or something?
Roger
June 28, 2013 at 3:10 pmwell that was truly dumb fun.
kudos to aoi yuuki for giving akira that a really amusing manner of speaking. yep, she might be an interesting character in the next season. and i love her valvrave's whack-a-mole stick that lets her hack those machines. definitely agree that kyuuma and thunder are bland characters (still think that takahi would have been a more interesting pilot for vvv-3).
and now the round of speculations begins. one guess is that that kid in the flash forward is L-elf himself, whether or not he is saki's kid, we don't know.
Kamen Rider Kekkaishi
June 28, 2013 at 3:37 pmOr L-Elf and Haruto's kid
passingotaku
June 28, 2013 at 4:02 pmHah, I find it impossible to believe that L-elf would have a kid! Not our elitist perfect guy!
admin
June 29, 2013 at 12:30 amCoffee and sugar…
sonicsenryaku
June 28, 2013 at 3:14 pmAs disappointed as i was about the horribly handled rape fiasco (there are other ways to treat a delicate situation as serious as that without angst), I gotta say valvare is transitioning nicely into its second cour. And about Aoi Yuuki; I never got why people were so crazy about her but after this ep, i can clearly see that she truly does have acting talent much above your average voice actor or actress.
Hafify
June 28, 2013 at 3:55 pmWhen season 2 will out?
admin
June 29, 2013 at 12:30 amFall season.
Kairi
June 28, 2013 at 4:56 pmSometimes I hate being a girl. It makes it a hell of a lot more difficult to let the elephant in the room go, and it's constantly stressed me out dealing with Saki since last week.
Robert Januth
June 28, 2013 at 5:34 pmIt's not necessarily the mark of Cain
It's the mark of vampires
This is from the first episode
http://imgur.com/kPTngGE
FFFFF
June 28, 2013 at 8:04 pmSo the space nazis are actually controlled by the illuminati in order to create vampires to pilot giant robots?
I think the creators might be high.
Scratch that, I know they are.
Sauce
June 28, 2013 at 9:41 pm"Cain calls Haruto a "third generation" Valvampire, which I assume makes Cain himself at least a fourth."
I figured Cain is probably already a Valvampire of some sort making him an earlier generation than Haruto, or maybe something else entirely because at least to our knowledge it didn't ask him to throw away his humanity and he did have the Valvrave mark earlier on. On the other hand, "Blue" did call him a human so I'm not really sure what to think of Cain at this point. Looking forward to season 2 though.
Sauce
July 1, 2013 at 7:41 amNow I'm intrigued as to what happened here…>_>
unequivocalhorizon
July 2, 2013 at 1:29 pmI think Enzo thought it was a spoiler. It wasn't, but it WAS a comparison to general Vampire stereotypes, particularly in game media like White Wolf's World of Darkness. The older a generation is, a whole lot powerful it is, and that seems to be the case in Valvrave too.
MgMaster
June 29, 2013 at 10:35 amWell,after what he pulled off this episode I think you should think of him as a Super Sayan – the just as planned type.
frubam
June 30, 2013 at 6:06 amThat whole Cain being invincible fiasco reminded me of Xenogears, when Grahf seemingly owns everyone in their 1st gen Gears w/o even using his Gear. Like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIz6m0tOq0M
Well, player won that fight, but like Haruto/L-elf, your like "oh he's not piloting anything, this'll be easy", then you're like "wtf!?" after he's not finished in a single blow.
Zero
August 11, 2013 at 1:15 amI think that, in a very odd way, the aftermath of the rape is intended to underline the fact that Haruto is still very much a child. He was unaware of what "he" did, but wants to apologize and "set it right" in the only way that occurs to him – through a marriage proposal. Saki shows her maturity by not allowing him to apologize and refusing his proposal. She knows he wasn't the one that raped her (even if it was his body that committed the act) and that he wouldn't be in the relationship any more than he was when he raped her. It would have been more interesting if he were angry and confronted her about why she stopped him several previous times when he lost control but didn't stop him this time. It would have at least called out the incongruity of the story.
I believe it is also very telling that people have talked about the rape scene to no end, but have little to no issue with the wholesale manslaughter Haruto commits. Acting in a moment of blind vengeance Haruto agreed to surrender his humanity – shouldn't we expect inhuman actions from him? It may be that the scene was intended to underscore the viewers' incongruous reactions as anything else.
Does anyone else feel like this show borrows a LOT from Devil Survivor 2? Nicaea and the VVV system, the avatars, surrendering their humanity to attain a power, etc., etc. I can't be the only one that sees the similarities.