Vividred Operation

Situated on Blue Island, the Manifestation Engine has been the answer to the world's energy problem for five years. On the neighboring island of Izu Ooshima reside the cheerful Akane Isshiki, her dependable little sister Momo, and her grandfather Kenjirou, one of the inventors of the Manifestation Engine.

As they live peacefully alongside the powerful creation, it all seems like a dream until mysterious entities known as the "Alone" appear seeking to destroy it. With military forces failing to repel the invaders, Kenjirou grants Akane a special key containing the "Vivid System"—empowering her to fight the Alone.

Joined by Aoi Futaba, Wakaba Saegusa, and Himawari Shinomiya, Akane and her friends stand together in the battle against the unforeseen enemy as the last hope for humanity.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kuroki, Rei Main

Uchida, Maaya Japanese

Isshiki, Akane Main

Sakura, Ayane Japanese

Shinomiya, Himawari Main

Uchida, Aya Japanese

Futaba, Aoi Main

Murakawa, Rie Japanese

Saegusa, Wakaba Main

Ootsubo, Yuka Japanese

Isshiki, Kenjirou Supporting

Terasoma, Masaki Japanese

Crow Supporting

Sonozaki, Mie Japanese

Isshiki, Momo Supporting

Oogame, Asuka Japanese

Teacher Supporting

Itatori, Masaaki Japanese

Principal Supporting

Kikumoto, Taira Japanese

Toba, Yousuke Producer

Maeda, Toshihiro Producer

Kananiwa, Kozue Producer

Fukushima, Yuuichi Producer

Reviews

Apr 10, 2022

PROTOTYPEE

Recommended

A magical girl show with yuri elements. I think the art and animation are consistently good and it follows a simple story where the girls transform to fight monsters called Alone that threaten humanity and do some gay stuff there and there. The show also contains a lot of ass shots. A lot of budget definitely went into that. The story isnt that good and all they talk about is the power of friendship. However I think it is a funny and enjoyable show. The characters are also nice and cute. Rewatching this made me rethink how many things I have missed and forgot when ... I watch it back then, especially all the yuri sences.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jul 21, 2016

zombie_pegasus

Mixed Feelings

The actual plot of the anime is quite unrealistic since it involves loli fighting evil aliens trying to destroy futuristic technology that the world runs on. Although the technologies aren't too impossible, most of them would be impractical in the real world. This anime is much more well-know for the fanservice than it is for its story.
The art and animation is the main attraction here. Everything from the character designs to the world layout are done quite well. Some of the villains look a bit generic, but they at least die in interesting ways. The school uniforms ditch the traditional skirt and instead go with ... boy shorts in order to display the characters' beautiful asses. The lolis are all very adorable even when they're intended to be antagonists.
The voices all fit the characters with the intentional exception of the grandfather who looks like a stuffed animal, although this was in order to keep the "magical girl familiar/recruiter who looks like a stuffed animal" trope while also keeping the show sci-fi only without other magic. The aliens sounded generic, although not out of place, and the music was nice to listen to.
The characters personalities all fit fairly standard archetypes for the most part, but they were still fun to watch. Their feelings towards each other were surprisingly realistic considering their own mental ages. One of the girls has odd dietary habits and has tried to encourage the others to try it out.
Despite the mediocrity of the components of the show, this was extremely enjoyable to watch. The cute characters, the illogical lore, and unique transformation scenes all help to create an atmosphere that is fun to partake in even if it wouldn't be your first choice to recommend when someone asks for "good anime". It all depends on your taste, but if you're okay with nonsensical battles and constant fanservice then you'll probably like this show.
With all things considered the show itself may not be of any literary merit, but it's still unlikely to feel like wasted time. It's also great if you're a bit tired and can't take the effort to pay attention to an in-depth story but would rather just watch cute girls fight monsters. Don't expect to come out of this with a new favourite anime, but you also shouldn't pass it off just because it isn't well written. It's definitely worth a shot, but don't be afraid to drop it since the quality is pretty consistent throughout the show.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Sep 28, 2024

TheCompletionist

Not Recommended

It is truly unfortunate that an anime that has beautiful action set pieces has to be undermined and ruined due to blatant creepy underage fan-service which is why this anime as a whole has been a big miss despite it's potential to be something truly enjoyable because it certainly started that way. It had a good enjoyable episodic formula for the first 4 episodes but unfortunately it disintegrated into inconsistent mediocrity bombarded by taking a long time to establish it's story, the motivations of the enemy, and the overall world building.

Vividred operation focuses on a character by the name of Akane Isshiki who is ... the granddaughter of an eccentric scientist who is responsible of creating something called the Manifestation engine which is an engine that has solved the world energy crisis by creating energy from the sky. This has created an era of peace around the entire planet but this peace is ultimately disturbed when an unknown alien force known as Alone start to abruptly appear to destroy the Manifestation engine and send the world into chaos. The Alone are these giant creatures that for all intensive purposes come across as bargain bin angels from Evangelion that are literally indestructible through conventional militaristic means. No matter how many jets, tanks, and battleships the government throws at trying to defeat these monstrosities they lack the ability to even do the slightest bit of damage to these creatures. In the meantime, Akane's grandfather Kenjiro performs an experiment that creates a key to give Akane access to the Vivid system which allows her to wear a Palette suit which is a special suit of armor that gives her access to abilities and weapons in order to fight the Alone. I wouldn't really call it armor because it looks like an outfit you'd see women wear if they worked at a maid cafe. However, she doesn't fight the Alone completely by herself. During the experiment of creating the keys Akane's grandfather inadvertently puts his soul inside an otter doll because I guess in the world of anime you have to have a cute silly animal mascot even though it really makes no sense why a scientist would exchange his body with that of a plush animal. There are other keys available (one for each of the main colors) that give her friends different abilities in order to fight the Alone. At least in this anime especially in the first 4 episodes, each episode is dedicated towards one of the female characters getting access to their key so the anime is smart in giving each of the 4 main female characters their spotlight and showcasing their evolving relationship in the overall plot while showcasing their power when they have the ability to transform. By episode 4, all 4 of the female characters have been established and that gives you the remaining the 8 episodes to watch their characters evolve with regards to their own personal character development.

Red Vivid Key - Akane
Blue Vivid Key - Aoi
Green Vivid Key - Saegusa
Yellow Vivid Key - Shinomiya

Thankfully, the anime does a good job of making the personalities of each of these female characters easily distinguishable and their personalities never feel overbearing or annoying. I think their personalities match well with their overall temperament. Akame is friendly, upbeat, and overly positive. Aoi is shy, timid, but resilient. Saegusa is prideful, stubborn, and brash while Shinomiya is incredibly intelligent, awkward and weird. It leads for an interesting dynamic on how Akane has to develop her friendships with these girls to make full use of their power from their vivid keys. There are other side characters throughout the anime as well but while they have some importance to the story of the actual anime their appearances are so brief, inconsistent, and useless that you'll barely notice when they actually appear on screen except for the Toy Otter scientist and Akame's little sister Momo.

With regards to their original power suits the girls have the ability to do damage to the Alone but in their basic forms it simply isn't enough to destroy them. Akane has the power of docking which allows her to combine herself with her friends for an incredibly powerful form that allows them to have an ability to destroy the Alone that their fighting. If Akane combines with Aoi, she has access to this incredibly large hammer that is capable of pulverizing anything that comes in contact with it. If Akane combines with Saegusa, she has access to this gigantic sword that can cut and destroy the monsters with a single slash. If Akane combines with Shinomiya, she has access to this gigantic brutal rail gun that can do an incredible amount of damage (my personal favorite). There is another combined form but you'll have to watch the final battle to see what it really is but it is incredibly devastating because it is used to defeat the final enemy in the anime. The basic transformation sequences are incredibly vivid and beautifully animated but are further enhanced when the combined transformation sequences happen. All the combined transformations look incredibly cool and there is a certain cuteness when the combined transformations happen because both both female characters have to hug and embrace each other and one of them has to kiss the other on the forehead in order for the docking sequence to fully develop because docking can only exist when Akane's friendship with one of the girls is at its absolute strongest. The biggest problem with these combined transformation sequences is that it does showcase brief underage nudity which is just incredibly awkward and unwanted to see.

Even though the enemies that the girls fight are nothing extraordinary minus the final battle, all the enemies have the ability to be further enhanced when a girl by the name of Rei fires an arrow into these alien creatures that make them more powerful. This character Rei is another girl in Akame's class and she is being ordered to destroy the Manifestation engine by an omnipotent force in the shape of a crow. Akane and her friends spend a considerable amount of time trying to befriend this girl unbeknownst to them that this girl is the one that is making their lives incredibly difficult with regards to their fight against the alien creatures. Despite the boring look of a lot of the Alone creatures even in their modified forms when they're hit by Rei's arrow the fight scenes involving them are incredibly well done. The action is very hard hitting and incredibly entertaining when the action does happen but unfortunately a lot of the fight scenes don't last very long because when the combined form is about to happen you know the Alone's destruction is coming incredibly quickly. The majority of the alone creatures are animated using heavy CGI which doesn't really give them the most intricate design. Despite the lackluster look of a lot of the Alone, the action in this anime is probably the best part of this entire anime.

The anime ultimately has a huge problem trying to keep it's focus because it jumps around too much with regards to what it wants to present us the viewer. It establishes a very formulaic approach in the first 4 episodes with having a new alone to fight and a new female fighter being established every episode but after episode 4 it kind of goes all over the place. Episode 5 and 6 are focused on character development with some really good humor being established during the beach episode in episode 6. Episodes 7 to 12 are kind of all over the place and a little scatterbrained because the anime struggles with when to deal with action and when to deal with proper character development.

The fights against the Alone are never as prevalent as what they were in the first four episodes and you can't help but make the comparison that the design and the tactics of the alien creatures are eerily similar to what the angels would do in Evangelion. Even in the final few episodes of the anime despite the lack of action there is some really good heartfelt character development with Akane's friends and we get to learn more about Rei's motivations to why she feels obligated to destroy the Manifestation engine. One of the biggest problems with this title is that it takes way too long even in a 12 episode anime to establish what the Alone are, why the Manifestation engine needs to be destroyed, and why Rei is being coerced to help with the destruction of the Manifestation engine. Even when you do discover these important plot points of this anime, it does come across particularly weak if we're being completely honest.

However, the biggest problem with this entire anime and I can't just dance around the issue is the unnecessary creepy underage fan-service. The topless nudity of some of the characters is absolutely unwarranted and not needed especially during specific bathroom or shower scenes that don't serve any purpose as far as I'm concerned. There is a monumental amount of scenes that don't even have nudity but there is too much emphasis on putting one of the characters butt in the frame as if that is what your trying to get the viewer to focus on when transitioning from one scene to another. There is also a strange perverted fixation on Akame's love of Mayonnaise when it comes to eating her food to the point that overloads her food with so much of the stuff. I think the anime's emphasis on it's unnecessary fan-service really detracts from the things that can make this anime enjoyable and I certainly would of enjoyed it a lot more if they kept away from this stuff.

The animation is incredibly beautiful especially when it comes to the action set pieces and there is great care put into the individualistic designs of the combined forms of the main female characters. The music can be a little inconsistent. It works especially during the action scenes and the opening track is tolerable. The anime does struggle with a proper ending track. For the first 5 episodes of the anime, there is a different ending song dedicated to which character the focus was on for that specific episode. It wasn't until episode 6 that the anime finally had a proper ending theme song which wasn't overly great to be perfectly honest. I do personally have a lot of fondness for the theme song that plays after episode 2 called We Are One.

Overall, there are some brief moments of brilliance throughout Vividred operation as a whole. The action is enjoyable, the characters are tolerable, it has a nice ending and the anime as a whole is drawn and animated incredibly well minus the cgi style monsters. However, it's negatives greatly outweigh its positives and due to it's creepy underage fan-service your better off avoiding it. Sometimes you should trust your anime enough on it's action alone despite a razor thin plot device that you don't need to cater to an uncomfortable amount of underage fan-service to get people to watch your product.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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