Valvrave the Liberator 02 — Anime of the Year

This’ll be the final series I blog this season. The reason is mainly because it’s been getting a lot of flack from other bloggers despite the fact that it is basically the greatest thing ever (ok I am exaggerating slightly, AKB0048 is the anime of the year, but you get my point). I’m not going to attempt to convince anyone that this show is good, because if you can’t recognize that vampire mecha pilots are a work of genius you’re already hopeless. The purpose of this series of posts will be to bask together in mutual joy in the glorious light of this animated masterpiece.

Let me just get one complaint out of the way first. Sure, some parts of Valvrave don’t make the most sense. Who gives a crap? This isn’t a science textbook, this is an anime about a vampire piloting a mecha.

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In my opinion the parts where they drop all pretense at logic are the best parts. My favorite scene in this episode is when the girl is being held hostage, the guy’s got a gun pointed at his face, and he’s hiding behind an asteroid waiting to either get vaporized or overheat. Then his phone rings, he pulls it out of his pocket and answers like nothing’s wrong. Genius!

Let me just go through a few other examples of the logic of Valvrave:

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All the scientists studying the cool new robot want to know is how it changed colors.

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Then ANIME JUSTICE falls from the sky and kills them all. Brilliant!

Then we get conversations like this:

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AHAHAHA people complaining about “bad dialogue”, this shit is genius.

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Of course Shoko calls him like nothing happened while he’s in the middle of the battle. I told you guys, if there ain’t a corpse she ain’t dead. And sometimes (like last week) even if there is a corpse they ain’t dead. That’s just the way it is.

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Again people will probably complain about the “bad dialog” and lack of logic. But come on guys, this is the most “anime” scene I have ever seen in my life. You didn’t seriously think they would hook up after one episode did you?! That’s impossible!

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The best part is the reason they cook up though. “Monsters don’t have feelings,” says the guy calling himself a monster whilst drowning in his own tears over his… feelings. Again this is like every anime ever but done in a way that you can’t help but start rolling on the floor laughing.

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Also this girl (whoever the hell she is) has the best pickup line. Hopefully she, Shoko, L-Elf and our hero will form a bisexual SM love quadrangle.

Reading back over this post, I get the feeling that some people may get the impression that I don’t like Valvrave. But this would be wildly incorrect. I think it’s great. This has got to be the show I’ve enjoyed watching the most this season. And no, before you ask, I don’t enjoy it in the way I enjoyed Guilty Crown and Sword Art Online. I find Valvrave legitimately good. I’m not laughing at it, I’m laughing at Valvrave with itself. It’s different. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I’m laughing at myself with Valvrave. I love it.

29 thoughts on “Valvrave the Liberator 02 — Anime of the Year

  1. You basically summed up why Valvrave is probably the most enjoyable show of the season for me – I can’t say it’s another [K] or Guilty Crown because I only enjoyed those shows to an extent, and then criticized, but I honestly, 100% with sincerity, love Valvrave.

    I guess if that makes me a bad anime fan, SO BE IT? (Also, that 666 comment is perhaps the highlight of the episode, I had to pause to make sure I was reading it properly)

      1. For me, there’s no doubt that this anime is bad, but bad in a good way. Bad in the way in which the show drops, no, throws the ball down the terrible hole to watch it hit the bottom so hard that it bounces back up to be pretty decent. To enjoy valrave you need the proper mindset. These are:

        1) not caring about the characters – they’re not that interesting anyways.

        2) not caring about logic – just enjoy it for the entertainment, just like the die hard movies, and 90’s action flicks in general.

        3) enjoy the dialogue as bad lines delivered by card board cut-out characters as something to point at and laugh.

        4) enjoy the pretty colours and explosions, they’re pretty, and someone had to take the time to animate them.

        1. Totally agree with two, three and four, not entirely sure yet about one. I kind of like the characters at the moment, although I do accept the fact that they’re ridiculous.

  2. Sometimes stupid anime are perfect in every conceivable way, despite being stupid – besides, in the case of Valvrave, its a science fiction series with a mecha riding vampire, so all common sense is immediately thrown out of the window and forgotten about.

  3. Nice post. .

    By the way, apparently Haruto didn’t say that he had no feelings as a monster, but that as a monster has no right to convey his feelings to her. Slightly different, but I believe the official subs will have something closer to that than gg’s version.

    1. Ahhh that would make much more sense. Still I like gg’s version better since it’s way funnier that way.

  4. When the first episodes came up, there was a view that Majestic Prince would be the Mecha parody of the trio, Valverave would be the most traditionally mecha show, and Urobutcher writing mecha anime would be the grimdark Mecha of the year.

    I think our expectations are going to be subverted. Valverave is the real Mecha parody, disguised under purportedly serious overtones. Majestic Prince would be the serious mecha war-story show, hidden under a mostly goofy Main cast. And I am not sure whether Gargantia would be another Bokurano/Evangeline, or something unique altogether and will not end as darkly as previous Urobutcher works. (Although, IMO, Psycho Pass’s ending is Urobutcher’s lightest ending so far, and that’s saying something.)

    1. Yeah, I can’t really see Majestic Prince as a parody. More like a serious attempt that’s just so awful with such terrible animation it becomes mildly amusing. Not very amusing though.

      Valvrave’s the parody, but I think that so far Gargantia looks to be something unique. At the moment it seems more along the lines of Last Exile: Fam than Evangelion.

  5. Thank you based draggle-kun!

    Valvrave is a lot of fun and yeah this series will get a lot of hate because of the choices in story and use of “science” but I am so used to the gundam formula that I don’t even care of Shoko lived, Haruto has vampire-ghost-powers to jump from body to body, and monsters don’t have feelings! That just makes it even more fun and I plan on blogging this series as well πŸ˜€

    ALL HAIL VALVRAVE!

  6. Lol, I think we both just blogged about the same response for this episode, Draggle.

    Love the moments you pointed out though. The bit with the scientists wondering how the mecha could change colors also made me laugh (a very small, passing moment, but the anime team still thought to stick that in there just for the lolz apparently).

    The bit with Haruto being held at gunpoint was pretty interesting to me. The way Haruto completely did not seem to care about L-Elf’s threats surprised me, but in hindsight could mean a number of things. For one, Haruto already got shot twice that day and turned out all right, but it also shows just how his mind was in an entirely different place at the time. Plus it seems he recognized L-Elf still needed information from Haruto. It was actually a bit clever, while still being rather silly. The whole episode was just entertaining IMO.

    1. The only reasonable response to this episode is to realize how awesome it was. Congratulations on not having terrible taste! πŸ˜›

      The whole thing was hilarious. I loved how L-Elf was pointing a gun in Haruto’s face and in his friend’s face and how he just didn’t give a shit. This show is great.

  7. My favorite part was when the guy Shoko was stuck with was like “I started the car! :D” like that was going to solve the problem of being stuck under debris and they wouldn’t die from inhaling fumes. The casual cell phone conversation was pretty awesome too.

    Basically, this show is stupid fun and I love it for that.

    1. Haha yes! Starting the car is not going to help much when you’re buried underground.

      Stupid fun is the best fun.

  8. So, you like this show for the same reason you liked Symphogear? πŸ˜›

    But yeah, it is quite entertaining. I loved the cellphone bit as well as the “Possibilities” part. How on Earth does he have reception in that massive mecha somewhere in space?

    1. A similar reason, yep! πŸ™‚ This one’s even more awesome than Symphogear though. Blue is pretty sweet but I have to support Shoko.

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