Shelf Life

Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid

Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid exists as part of a larger multimedia franchise, accompanied by manga and video games. With all of these different entries united by the concept of attractive girls battling one another in skimpy outfits, it's a safe bet that fanservice is going to be the central draw. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing on its own, considering that other anime titles have used fanservice to a wide variety of effects over the years. Some have been clever and entertaining, while others have been unmitigated disasters. While this series does have a few points working in its favor, it leans toward the latter of those two categories.

Our heroine in this story is Mamori Tokonome, a high school student whose life is turned upside-down when she's diagnosed with the Armed Virus. This mysterious plague causes women to develop destructive powers, so Mamori is promptly shipped off to a quarantine island full of other victims. Mamori's particular abilities classify her as an Exter, which means she can transform into a powerful weapon. The catch is that she needs the help of a partner, known as a Liberator, who can activate Mamori's ability and wield her in weapon form. And since an Exter's powers can only be unlocked by intense sexual arousal, well, I think you can guess where this is going. Together with her Liberator partner Mirei Shikishima, Mamori must survive the violent power struggles on Mermaid Island long enough to find a way home.

So yes, Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid specializes in a very particular blend of superpowered action and sexual encounters. Think of it as Queen's Blade with more schoolgirl outfits and transformation sequences. Everyone's clothing gets ripped up on a regular basis, and every action scene begins with girls kissing and groping one another until they “power up.” I'm going out of my way to write around the obvious here because this show is about as explicit as it can get without becoming straight hentai. It also tends to get leery whenever the main antagonists are involved; not all of this ability-awakening happens through mutual consent. If that's not your cup of tea, then your best bet is to steer clear of this one.

Assuming you make it over that first hurdle, you'll still have to put up with some glaringly stupid plot points. Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid tries to tell a serious story in a fully developed fictional world, and the results aren't great. Character development ranges from mediocre to genuinely lousy, and the narrative stumbles between predictable plot twists and questionable leaps of logic. Even the basic rules for the characters' powers seem to be in a constant state of flux, with exceptions to the basic Exter-Liberator formula popping up whenever those limitations stop being convenient to the plot. Some fanservice shows are able to tell a cohesive and entertaining story amidst all the sex appeal, but this isn't one of them. There's not much here for anyone who isn't watching exclusively to see animated boobs.

The story wanders off into more episodic content in the middle of its twelve-episode run, and it's in this slower section that Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid gets closet to Rental territory. With the main narrative placed on the back burner, the show is able to embrace its own absurdity and poke fun at its ridiculous premise. Mamori and Mirei help out a girl whose Exter power causes her to grow to gigantic proportions, and they also compete against one of the main villains in a beauty contest. These middle episodes are the most palatable of the series, and they make me wonder if Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid might have been better off ditching the serious life-and-death stuff altogether.

The show's technical merits are the closest thing it has to a saving grace; the animation is generally competent, and it jumps up into “labor of love” territory during fanservice shots. The character designs are fine overall, but the school uniform focus does limit the variety of costumes. The soundtrack is also decent, with perfectly listenable opening and closing themes. Funimation's English dub does as much as it can with the clunky storyline and dialogue, and I honestly found it preferable to the original Japanese audio. This release contains a respectable amount of on-disc extras, including a series of short OVA episodes along with the usual episode commentary and clean credit sequences.

If you can put up with its many faults and are looking for a reasonably well-animated fanservice show, then Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid might offer enough to justify a single viewing. Unfortunately, the problems are too numerous and the appeal is too narrow for me to give it anything higher than a Perishable rating for a general audience. There's just nothing about it that merits a recommendation. All the anime boobs in the world can't save a story this weak.
-Paul[TOP]