Valvrave The Liberator: The Review

courtesy: Wikipedia

If you're not familiar with Gundam franchise you should know that it's a long running anime series about mass-murdering adolescents who piloted giant robots, every installment of Gundam deals with war and their effects to the people involved in them, at least until a failed effort called Gundam Age failed to deliver these things and make the show a joke. There's an HD OVA (mini series) called Gundam Unicorn (out on bi-three-monthly schedule) which still retain the premise. But unfortunately it's not enough, so former Gundam series creator and developers created a new series called Valvrave which embodies all past Gundam's niche.

Valvrave opened with familiar setting, fancy schoolboys and girls hangong out in their school, then war shoved in front of them in form of an invasion, giant robot appears and they have no choice to pilot it or their loved ones die, in this one Tokishima Haruto takes the helm of a suddenly appeared giant robot called Valvrave, unfortunately (formerly) unknown to him that it has dire consequences for him (and become more dire as the series progressed), the situation get more complicated when a genius calculative invader called L-Elf Karlstein suddenly switches side and join his forces. The story revolves around the survival attempt and consequences Haruto and his cohorts did to keep their independence.

There are a lot of going on in Valvrave as it borrows many elements from hit series, the cold and calculative L-elf can be related to Lelouch from another sunrise series: Code Geass or L of Death Note, Haruto is the narrow-minded straight good guy with little development but realistic, Haruto's schoolmates (lots of them) are supportive characters with their own reason to fight and support. There's also elements of mystic/supranatural as a balance of this story . But the one thing about Valvrave is that every elements of this series plays right, there's almost zero anticlimactic feeling after each episode, also there's always something going on with these kids and it's not here by itself or suddenly appeared, but surfaced as a result of their own doing in the past. As the series progressed more Valvrave are discovered and these kids despite knowing the consequences decided to pilot it, the thing is that it keeps the audience guessing who's the next pilot as a part of the series' appeal, and when it finally revealed it's not from a single scene of private episodic heroism but a clever chain of events from past epsiodes which it's plot twist can be shocking and unpredictable up to the borderline of controversy, it's not really subtle but it works.

Love story exist in Valvrave as a support plot, it takes form of impossible ones, nothing from these stories can be considered 'worked out' due to another elements of the plot: Lies/Truth and Indifferences, it can be considered harsh at some points, it's not a main dish of the main plot but it served as a foundation of expanding it. Indifference also plays major part in the global conflict as the little struggle of survival becomes international incident and ignite all out war between nations, and it was executed nicely without have to shove the audience an episode of just a laser battle between Gundams... i mean Valvraves

Element of Strategy plays a pivotal role of Valvrave since it's not only the Valvrave fighting out there, the transition of the naive schoolkids into battle-hardened veterans going on smoothly without making their original personality disappear, L-elf as the mysterious genius plays battle of wits on almost episode not only with the enemy but with his allies, and for each battle more of his personality begins to open up without leaving his original cold calculating self gone.

Valvrave is Gundam, I can give you that but it has it's own story, it's own design, it's own twisted imperfect sense of justice, turmoil is the Valvrave series main engine even when there's episode of peace, there's many plot in this series that has the potential of becoming a sequel even when it has been resolved, it's only a story about several schoolkids which the world altered between rejecting and accepting them, back and forth regarding of a global situation. Valvrave made everything logical, as it's slogan: "The system that unveils the world", exposing the truth can be harsh, sometimes people can't accept it, but acknowledging that people is different than you doesn't mean they held a gunpoint to your head, but when fear of differences has gripped you... you'll see guns everywhere and you'll shoot first.