Impression:

I am really unsure about this series. Let’s start things off by talking about the writing. I really don’t like how they set up most of the situations and some of the lines are just awful. Things have gotten way too intense for ARUS and they plan on ditching the rescue mission in order to escape with the Valvrave. That sucks because you can’t let the Dorssians have the colony. They are basically Hitler’s Germany. I don’t just say that because they have German names. They also call themselves the Third Reich. This entire episode was basically meant to push Haruto into a corner because L-elf wants to use him for that revolution thing. I am now going to go over the stupid things that lead up to something that may or may not be awesome. Shouko overhears the whole desertion thing, but the student council won’t listen to her. Apparently, the only way to prove that you are not a liar is to start stripping because that shows true honesty. Luckily, they stop her and a mission is started in order to find proof of the escape. Time for stupid thing number two. A bunch of the student distract the soldiers by singing their school anthem. Not only did that suck to listen to, but no one in their right mind would think that singing an anthem is how high schoolers would show their thanks. While this is going on the third, although minor, stupid thing occurs. The secret entrance is an air duct that one of the guys used to spy on beauty pageant contestants as they changed for the competition. That isn’t really stupid writing, but it pissed me off at the time. The end up finding a tied up Haruto and Shouko cares more about the fact that he didn’t hang up on her than the whole conquest thing that is going on. All of this leads to something that I am still on the fence about. Every JIOR colony has been occupied by Dorssia besides the school place.This is when things got interesting. The students flipped out because their parents could be held as hostages and L-elf thinks that it is checkmate. However, Shouko comes up with an idea. Hold the Valvrave hostage. ARUS wants to use it as the means to win the war because the arms race is very important, but Dorssia could win the war with much ease if they had the new weapon. So, the students threaten to hand over the mech to Dorssia if ARUS refuses to work with them. Conversely, if Dorssia tries to use the parents as hostages, then they threaten to give the mech to ARUS. With this much power, the students decide to become an independent nation and hold negotiations with both sides. I don’t know where all of this came from.

This felt oddly American to me.

Current Opinion of the Show:

Let me go over something that I said in the last impression really quickly. Of course it feels odd to have all of these things taken from shows that I have watched and thrown into this one because I have indeed watched the previous works of Sunrise. However, that may be a little bit biased. Bryan pointed out to me while I was describing this series to him that I should try to look at this series as a separate entity. When I do that, the concepts aren’t bad and they are actually pretty interesting. In fact, the concepts and animation would make this a great series if it wasn’t for the fact that I hate the main character and a good portion of the writing. I don’t know if I will be able to take Haruto seriously as a warrior and that sucks because his mech is fucking sweet. It pulled out some crazy gun that has some axe action going on. The dude used to take out countless enemy units and remove the school colony from the rest of the JIOR structure. On that note, I still don’t know how to feel about the whole independence thing. How will they structure their government? Is their unit have the capability to be self-sufficient long enough to handle the negotiations? Will the Valvrave be a strong enough card to keep these kids in the game? I think my desire for these questions to be answered means that the concept is good enough. Once again, it is execution that will make or break this series, but I do not have the highest of hopes in that regard. Also, does anyone else see this series making some crazy partner swaps like in Gundam Seed? I may or may not be predicting L-elf having a very odd relationship with Shouko and Haruto ending up with the very aggressive Saki. Just something that has piqued my interest. I am really looking forward to seeing how everything gets handled because the kids really only have Haruto, the mech, and L-elf to rely on. Let’s face it, L-elf is on their side now.