Valvrave the Liberator : Episode 1

Current Episode Score: 6

Time for a mecha anime from Sunrise, always a good combination normally. As for the first episode of Valvrave, I’m not so sure. This felt incredibly rushed and poorly paced for a first episode. You get about 15 minutes of peace and character building, and than everything falls apart soon after. Suddenly after that point some country we don’t know anything about invades a peaceful neutral country to attempt to gain control of from super weapon. Than we have some mech fights after Haruto swears revenge after seeing his love interest die. Ending things off with Haruto being shot and killed, but standing up again and biting the enemy solider guy.

It is just a ton of content in a very short period of time, and I barely understand what is going on. Why did we not spend 2 episodes with this group actually getting to know them and get a better understanding of this world. And it isn’t like this is a sequel or adaption, nobody knows anything going into this episode.

The transformation of Haruto after he jumps in the Valvrave mech is also very oddly done. You have this guy who doesn’t seem to have any combat ability or training at all. See his love interest die in front of him, hard cut to him jumping in the Valvrave, and than just not doing anything. Doesn’t read the screen or try and understand what this is in a very infuriating fashion. Are you trying to make it seem like this guy is competent or not? Because in the very next scene after agreeing to the Valvrave T&C’s, he goes crazy and wipes out an entire enemy squad like he is a harden military pilot.

I’m going to be sticking with it for some time, and give it a shot. Lets see how this actually develops. But this first episode isn’t very impressive at all, and honestly pretty disappointing.