I’m sure some people will hate this but I thought it was a great start. It kind of reminds me of Code Geass. It has a big cast of characters in school, who spend most of their time goofing off. It’s bright and cheerful and happy and goofy. Then at the same time there’s a war going on with all these ridiculous twists being pulled off one after another. Unfortunately in this show no one is actually planning the twists so it isn’t quite as exciting.
But it also reminds me a lot of Guilty Crown in terms of ridiculousness. Furthermore, the main character has already become the school’s hero, let’s hope he doesn’t get too full of himself like Ouma Shuu. Plus at the beginning they mentioned the Third Space Reich. We’ll see how this turns out.
But so far I think the characters are great— I loved the main couple’s relationship and what they did with it. I’m also quite curious about what exactly happened to the main character when he decided to no longer be human.
One other thing I’m concerned about was the online chat room element of the show. I hope this doesn’t become like Durarara where we spend half the time reading internet chat logs.
I enjoy the quality of the animation for this show, but some parts really annoyed me in this episode. When Haruto enters the robot, he just tries to push random buttons like he knows what he is doing, yet the only visible screen has a clear question to START VALVRAVE, but it takes him forever to respond to it. I can take the first spurt as panick/rage, but the latter ones just plain annoyed me.
Also, in the post-credit scene, what happened to all the ‘viewers’ witnessing the stabbing? The first time he left the cockpit, it showed many students looking outside the school building like he was in front of them, while later ones are looking at the phones instead. There didn’t seem to be a hologram/projector outside the school then…
I am also getting a strong Gundam SEED Destiny vibe, since the main saw someone he cared about (potential lover vs. sister) get blown up in front of him, and distorts his purpose in life to destroy those responsible for her death.
Ok yeah not answering the question on the screen was pretty dumb. And the fact that everyone suddenly disappeared made no sense. But whatever! HE TURNED INTO A VAMPIRE MECHA PILOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BEST SHOW EVER!
Those purplish lights also reminded me a bit of Trans Am… I don’t mind revenge stories though, revenge is great.
Seriously though, he should have noticed that question on the screen alot sooner. I mean its right in front of his face.
Yeah that was just sad.
Agreed with everyone else. He must be terribly near sighted. LOL.
Hopefully his senses have improved now that he became a vampire.
Yeah…it’s a lot more Gundam SEED than Code Geass. The opening song’s even by the same artist…
Yeah except the characters aren’t complete turds and about ten episodes of content happened in the first episode. (I will admit I fast forwarded through the opening song.)
That would have been more entertaining than watching this. By god this episode annoyed me. It was fan-pandering the entire way through and not a single element was geared towards me. Blegh!
That’s because it was fan-pandering towards me and I like everything that you hate.
ahahahah yes
Whoops! It helps to fill in the right info before posting lmao!
I think the episode wanted to make it clear that piloting the mecha wasn’t something that the boy could just do on his own–he couldn’t figure out the controls at all, you may recall. It was the injection that turned him into a mecha pilot vampire that allowed him to do anything. The impact of this would have been lost if he just sat on the chair, immediately pressed the correct button, and proceeded to save the day in five seconds flat.
More practically though, it was a wall of text on the screen! Nobody wants to read the terms of use agreement! XD
@TSoul – I’m guessing there was a camera on the school grounds that allowed the cell phone users to see the mecha battle and whatnot. And I’m not sure how far from the school the protagonist is when he landed, so it might take a minute or two for people to run over following L-Elf’s knifing and shooting.
Can’t edit comments so bonus reply:
I guess the terms of use came after he pressed yes (lol), but a screen that has “Do you resign as a human being?” being the largest and central text doesn’t exactly sound like the start button for a mecha, hence why he would look elsewhere on the control panels.
Wait, didn’t they air in the opposite order though? I thought the crowd found him first, and then only after the ED did he turn into a vampire. I might be getting it mixed up though.
It’s true that that doesn’t seem like the most obvious button to turn things on. It did fill up the entire screen though so you’d think he would try to press it… Either way it seems like a small detail to me though.
I’m not quite sure what you mean. L-Elf shows up after Haruto lands. The crowd is inside the school at this time–everyone had run for cover when the robots attacked.
L-Elf perhaps came out from the same spot the mecha did, explaining how he was the first to arrive at the scene.
Ok, I checked it out again and figured out why I was confused. When he gets out of the cockpit the crowd in the school is all excited about discovering who he is. But I guess they were just watching a video stream. I wonder if they saw him rise from the dead in the video stream…
I liked this episode quite a bit to.
Yeah, I don’t really understand why he didn’t just push the button, but I’d like to imagine that he saw the message but was too hesitant to give up his humanity.
I am sad his love didn’t work out though. Just when you thought you’d get a nice sweet romance, some bad guys come and kill the girl. That’s great…just great.
The idea of a VAMPIRE MECHA PILOT is super cool though. 😀
(And yes, as other folk have suggested, I did get Gundam Seed vibes, but I get them from Majestic Prince as well, so…)
I’d like to imagine he was too hesitant to give up his humanity too, but I’m not sure he even read the message…
Also we haven’t seen the girl’s corpse so I bet she’s either not dead or she’ll come back as some sort of undead thing like him. It’s one of the rules of anime: no body, they ain’t dead.