Pachi's Anime Review - Valvrave the Liberator

It is the 71st year of the True Era calender. 70% of all human beings have set out for the stars. The remaining inhabitants of Earth are comprised of the superpowers Dorssia and the Atlantic Ring United States, as well as the neutral nation of JIOR. Haruto Tokishima lives in Module 77 of JIOR's orbiting Dyson sphere. One day, the Dorssian military attacks Module 77 without warning, seeking a giant humanoid robot called the "Valvrave" hidden beneath Sakimori High School. Haruto creates a pact with the robot and soon finds himself and all his classmates heading up a revolution that will shake the foundations of history.

I've made a point on several occasions to moonlight my anime roots in shounen. This, however, does not extend to mecha, a genre which I enjoy for its aesthetic eye candy but tend to tune out of due to their frequently retread storylines; deep government entrenchment, diplomacy, espionage, colonization, etc. When you have giant robots, space travel has very likely been established, and story tellers in anime tend to dramatize space one way: war amidst neo-politics. That kind of story really isn't my speed. My favorite Gundam series is the black sheep of the franchise, G Gundam, which contained its political power struggles in a flamboyant and somewhat insane giant robot martial arts tournament. Mobile Suit Gundam and Gundam Wing are the classic entries I can watch and enjoy as well-crafted high points for the franchise. But beyond that, I can't get into them at all, and if you're not a fan of the standard Gundam formula, mecha is going to be a hard genre for you to like in this era. In the 70s and 80s there were TONS of different mecha shows to choose from, but these days Sunrise has pretty much assimilated its competitors into the giant black hole that is the Gundam Universe. The recent Gundam Build Fighters, a children's tournament style cross between Gundam, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Digimon Tamers, gives me hope for the future as it abandons the serious space wars in lieu of fun, over-the-top Gunpla (Gundam model) fights in glorified "what if" scenarios. Apparently the way for Gundam to win my heart is to organize it around an unorthodox tournament setting.

             

But I'm getting way way off topic before I've even begun. Today we're discussing Valvrave the Liberator, an original mecha series by, surprise, Sunrise! As I said above, the primary method to get me into mecha is to either deviate from the neo-political norms or just be completely balls to the walls entertaining. So here we have Valvrave the Liberator, a mecha series that does not deviate from the neo-political norms and is completely balls to the walls mad. Well then.

Valvrave is a sticky series to talk about, all in part because of its writer, Ichiro Okouchi. You may know him as the guy who wrote Code Geass. And Guilty Crown (as an assistant screenwriter). Already you should be able to tell, without watching it, what kind of tone Valvrave sets. The best way to describe Okouchi is to say he is a writer in the same way Tetsuro Araki is a director. Araki directs situations in an over-the-top manner, and Okouchi writes over-the-top scenes. But see, any disturbing or questionable content in Death Note or Attack on Titan you can't blame on Araki; he doesn't write it. With Okouchi, you can TOTALLY blame him for the same. Here's the disconnect between them: Araki makes straightforward situations bombastic and theatrical; Okouchi writes scenes that are, intrinsically, bombastic and theatrical, there's nothing 'straightforward' about them. He also has a habit of dramatizing characters through not so attractive scenarios, particularly women. He's reeeeeeeally not kind to women in his series. Any woman associated with the main character is typically culminated in a plot point he (always he) must settle at the woman's expense. Guilty Crown is perhaps the worst perpetrator of this, as it writes in the main character using a woman for his own purposes as a synopsis point.

But how does Valvrave the Liberator fare? Its closest companion would be Code Geass, as it shares similar flaws and strengths. Now I actually like Code Geass, as a guilty pleasure. It's dramatically retarded from head-to-toe, but it's......charming? Take any geo-political third world vs first world nation power struggle series and supercharge it with uncomfortable levels of dramatic camp and you've got Code Geass in a nutshell. I'd describe it as the perfect guilty pleasure series, because I know virtually no-one who likes it un-ironically - it's unanimously classified as "stupid, stupid poorly written fun". And I'd like to say Valvrave is exactly the same thing. Almost.

Valvrave exists as a frivolous complement to your standard Gundam series. In Gundam Age, for example, you have average and balanced kid Flit Asuno living in space with his average and balanced family and average and balanced classmates. In Valvrave, "average and balanced" is unacceptable. Haruto Tokishima is a wimp with his head in the clouds - he refuses to take action for himself because he is convinced there is always a non-confrontational solution to any problem in which both sides are equally compensated. In other words, he's an idiot. But he's not alone, his classmates are also idiots. See, in this scene they're having a hot dog eating contest - they're WACKY idiots! In Gundam Age, a sudden attack by enemy forces spells tragedy and loss. In Valvrave, a sudden attack by enemy forces, leaving the students of Sakimori High isolated from their previous benefactor nation of JIOR, spells a student body vote to make our own independent nation! Wh-wha? Is this an episode of The Simpsons? Yes, apparently following the Dorssian attack of Module 77, the populous is so stratified that ONLY the students of Sakimori are capable of representing their broken colony (backed up by their possession of the Valvrave, the only element capable of combating the Dorssian Army, but seriously?). They celebrate their pipedream independence by posting about it on Space Twitter, drawing graffiti in the streets, and sleeping with body pillows. I wish any one of those items were a fabrication, but the students pretty much take to their predicament like they're living in a primetime sitcom. There's an episode where the students, seeking to instill hope in the helpless citizens of the Module, orchestrate an uplifting J-pop music video and stream it live. It's kind of the most unbelievable thing ever.

These crazy students must be a memorable cast of characters, eh? Well, no. The one and ONLY memorable character isn't even a student of Sakimori - L-Elf. Beyond having possibly the most hilarious name (albeit a codename) in an anime ever, he is a brilliant ex-Dorssian special forces strategist who can theorize planned action with pinpoint accuracy hours in advance, which is really quite funny as he's perhaps the only intelligent character in the series. He's the character you see in all the memes, all the images, all the fanart - everyone loves L-Elf. Why? Because his stratagem smarts are so unrealistically precise, even for anime, it's endlessly amusing to see him at work.  L-Elf is the smartest creation in this show, because he is competent without being unbeatable, critically affable, and yet intentionally funny by how ridiculously competent he is. He is an expertly written character who takes life so seriously it is impossible for the audience to take him seriously, in a fun way. Unfortunately, that caliber of writing does not extend to the rest of the cast. The team of Valvrave pilots are the Kamitsuki, those touched by god, life-sucking space vampires - you'd expect them to be pretty memorable people. They're really not. You've got Haruto, the leader and wimp. Saki Rukino, the school idol. Raizo "Thunder" Yamada, a bone-headed, theatrical loudmouth. Kyuma Inuzuka, a......guy. And Akira Renboukouji, a NEET. They're just......people, with little interesting to them outside of a first glance. One of Okouchi's strengths seen frequently in Code Geass is to make a character interesting and memorable through their actions, not by their personality. You don't remember them because of what kind of person they are, but because of that one outrageous thing they did in Episode Whatever. But in Valvrave he gives the majority of the cast nothing to do that isn't a ham-fisted extension of their barely archetypal personalities. I'm still not convinced Kyuma even HAS a personality.

This approach isn't completely unwarranted - Valvrave is based off a bunch of normal, everyday high school students suddenly caught up in an interplanetary war. As such it is a show reliant entirely on present timeline exposition - pretty much none of the main characters have a dark past to divulge plot through. The writers seemed to realize this vacancy and filled in the gaps with occasional flash-forwards to a future colony where those remaining of Module 77 have started a new society after the war. Valvrave the Liberator is the origin story for this future world we see but learn little about, but honestly? It seems more interesting. The more I think about it, the more I realize that what we witness is the exact same story we hear when an old man solemnly begins, "Long ago, your ancestors..." And I can assure you, that old man will make the tale of Module 77 sound infinitely more monumental. Because that's what a retelling of a real event does - it dramatizes. If you look at Valvrave purely at a point by point basis, it sounds like an epic story. But we're witnessing that story firsthand, and the truth is not so glamorous. "Your ancestors" were idiots, goofed around, and made a lot of mistakes, is how that old man's story should continue based on what I watched. 

This is Valvrave's greatest error - its framing device. Once you've revealed that what I'm watching is the back-story for ANOTHER generation of idiots I'll never get to see, you've altered my expectations. It's a real bullshit cocktease device to use in popular entertainment - present a story but then show off that this story was just the precursor for ANOTHER story, then never show that other story. I want to see this future colony where Module 77 has grown hopefully wiser and evolved beyond the necessity of Valvraves; but then, what's Valvrave the Liberator without Valvraves? And there you go, the only draw this origin story has that warrants its existence - the Valvraves.

The Valvraves are cool, I like them. They're some of the most ridiculously designed mecha I've ever seen, but I like them. I even own a Valvrave Unit 3 model kit. The CG robot battles are cinematic and fist pumping - they don't stand out from the normal animation thanks to Sunrise's best robot veterans. But let's be real, they're literary devices, nothing more. When a vacant Valvrave is approached by a potential pilot, it literally asks them if they want to give up their humanity. And if they do, they become pseudo-science monsters who can't be killed, can inhabit someone's body by biting them like a vampire, and require nourishment via the building blocks of human memories or "runes". In return, they can now pilot a giant mecha. They're monsters who cast aside their humanity to fight, they live off the sustenance of what they once were, they sell their soul to the devil and instantly become skilled mecha pilots; it's ALL blatantly metaphorical humanity vs beast stuff. Every feature of the Valvraves and effects on their pilots are solely literary devices meant to create drama. Though, in this show, most of the drama comes from inexperienced teenagers making inexperienced mistakes and uninformed decisions; the Valvraves are just the futuristic icing on the cake.

Beyond that, there's no significance to the Valvraves even in the sorting of their pilots. The only pilot/Valvrave combo that makes sense is Akira in Unit 6, as it just happens to be one that can hack into computers (how convenient). There's no significance in Yamada piloting the multiple-armed Unit 3 (other than it being yellow, a la thunder) or Kyuma piloting the giant shield-wielding Unit 5 or Saki piloting the disc-throwing Unit 4. One of the staples of mecha anime is creating a relationship between the pilot and their mecha, and Valvrave just fails at any outing to even attempt this. Like, Saki names her's. Aaaaaaaaand that's about it. Haruto is the only pilot to show true fear and resentment at his loss of humanity so it makes sense that he'd form no relationship with his Unit 1, but the other pilots seriously don't care. And whether it's a bad relationship or a good one, the lack of any kind of emotional connection between the Valvraves and their pilots (other than the literal one) is a shame.

I understand why Valvrave the Liberator was presented this way. It depicts the beginning of an uprising as incited by teenagers. Teenagers are dumb. Teenagers are idiots. They're not going to play this out like the epic heroes in the history books - they're going to be really stupid and make lots of mistakes. This is how it would happen......were a thing like this to ever, um, happen. That's fine. I don't want to watch that if you're not going to make a case that these idiot teenagers ever grow from their mistakes; a milestone Valvrave never allows us to see as little more than a glimpse on the horizon which will never be reached. And another thing - this show just has TOO MANY IDIOTS. You need to balance out the idiocy with some competency or somewhat memorable characters. Module 77's taskforce has like, two adults on board, and one L-Elf. That's one competent person for every 100 idiot teenagers. Compare to something like the original Mobile Suit Gundam. White Base is compromised and must be operated by a whole fleet of inexperienced personnel, but they're reasonably inexperienced; they're not just dumb. And they're not all teenagers like Amuro Ray, who is justifiably standoffish and a brat because of his predicament and upbringing. He grows over time and becomes a legend; he earns his place in history. I really don't buy that anyone will remember Haruto Tokishima, the halfsies wimp who happened to become a space vampire. But Space Twitter will remind us regularly that Haruto saved the day, so, maybe. Just don't mention that he raped one of his classmates. The history books don't need to know about that. Just brush it aside like it never happened - you know, like the show did.

In closing, I liked parts of Valvrave the Liberator. The action scenes are very well crafted, and L-Elf is an exceptional character who suits a silly take on neo-political space war to a T. It's dumb mecha fun when the rest of the cast aren't being massive idiots and the plot isn't doing shockingly mean things to them  for the sake of drama. Which is most of the time. At first, it's all in good fun. "Haha, look at these kids, they're so dumb," kind of fun. By Season 2, they've gotten the awkward phase of building their own nation out of the way, but then a lot of the wacky hyjinks from Season 1 are removed, leaving us instead with boring standard procedure recon missions. So what's better, the frustrating idiocy, or losing it for space war sameness? Who knows. The best way to describe Valvrave is "what if a bunch of lame people became mecha pilots and started their own revolution?" The answer? An infamous rape scene and a mecha series that thrives on boisterous theatrics and drama at the expense of being all-around unappealing. Even for diehard mecha fans, I wouldn't recommend this show unless you just want something loud and flashy playing in the background while you ingest more meaningful material.

You can currently find all subbed episodes of Valvrave the Liberator streaming online courtesy of Crunchyroll. Aniplex of America has licensed the full series; no home release dates have been announced.