Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid

Naïve 16-year-old Mamori Tokonome is accustomed to being teased at school for having an unfortunate surname that can also be read as "virgin." However, young Mamori will soon have to get used to being teased in other ways...

Kidnapped during gym class, Mamori wakes up only to find herself stranded and under attack on the exotic island of Mermaid. Luckily, enigmatic fellow castaway Mirei Shikishima knows exactly how to take the lead—through a passionate kiss, Mirei unleashes Mamori's Exter transformation abilities, turning the innocent red-head into a battle-ready cutlass through the power of arousal.

The duo will need to tap into that power as Mermaid Island is full of potential friends and foes: Charlotte, the sadistic Liberator of an Exter harem; the gluttonous and crafty Meifon; the mysterious but charismatic Akira Hiiragi; and the erotic biker duo Lady Lady. Mamori and Mirei's powerful and intimate embrace is the only way for the pair to ensure their survival on this scandalous island.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Shikishima, Mirei Main

Iguchi, Yuka Japanese

Tokonome, Mamori Main

Izawa, Mikako Japanese

Lady J Supporting

Asakura, Azumi Japanese

Hasumi, Rain Supporting

Oonishi, Saori Japanese

Sakura, Meifon Supporting

Kubo, Yurika Japanese

Sagara, Momoka Supporting

Harada, Hitomi Japanese

Hiiragi, Akira Supporting

Yoshino, Yuna Japanese

Scherzen, Charlotte Supporting

Seto, Asami Japanese

Kazami, Torino Supporting

Inoue, Kikuko Japanese

Shigure, Kasumi Supporting

Tazawa, Masumi Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Tanaka, Shou Producer

Isogai, Noritomo Producer

Hatakeyama, Takurou Producer

Reviews

Jan 9, 2016

busterbeam

Recommended

This is, putting it simply, a softcore lesbian porn anime. It exists primarily to arouse the viewer; nothing more, nothing less. The story is simply an excuse for seeing sexy girls interact, fanservicey fight-scenes and borderline hentai scenes. The truth is, actual hentai anime tends to be stuck with very small budgets; meanwhile "softcore" anime can more often afford significantly better production values, as this anime shows, and I much rather enjoy a softcore show with decent production values over chicken-scratch "hardcore" OVAs.

The story of a bunch of girls being trapped on an island, the "Soul Eater, but with orgasms" premise of the action scenes... ... all of this, as I said above, pretty much an excuse for boobs and yuri, and the characters primarily exist to fit specific fetishes. In that regard, both the "plot" and characterization do a pretty good job.

The visuals are pretty nice; sometimes the amount of polish obviously falters, but the lewd scenes tend to look quite good and the character designs are obviously the best and most appealing out of all the Valkyrie Drive projects. They lack the typical VN-esque cheapness often found in such anime, instead managing to be quite stylish and charming and, while not particularly unique, nonetheless have their own look and feel. The animation is pretty competently done when it matters and the series succeeds at having many genuinely sexy scenes.

Sound-wise there's nothing to complain about; the VA cast is fine, as is the music, and the obligatory moans do their job quite well.

As a fan of competently done lewd yuri, I quite enjoyed this series in the basest way imaginable; and really, given what its intentions are, that's just about all that I needed.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Dec 27, 2015

HaXXspetten

Mixed Feelings

Studio Arms has a rather—shall we say—less than impressive reputation in the anime community. Although they have done numerous different types of shows in the past, the most prevalent one is action/ecchi... and I mean the very worst kind of it. If there is one company who seemingly has a full monopoly on bad ecchi anime, then it's Arms. I still consider Queen's Blade to be the single worst full-length anime TV-series I have ever seen, and my faith in the studio since then has been rather limited to say the least. And thus it is hardly a surprise that I wasn't exactly expecting much ... out of Valkyrie Drive either, but to my amazement... it wasn't actually that bad. Certainly not more than average at best mind you, but a hell of a lot better than what I've come to expect from Arms at this point.

The story is about as nonsensical as you'd imagine it to be. It takes place on a set of artificial islands with an all-female population. The girls are divided into pairs of Liberators and Exters. If a Liberator sexually stimulates her partner, the Exter will transform into a physical weapon which the Liberator can then wield in combat. Sounds weird I'm sure but it's pretty straightforward, and that's the way this world works. There is an established society on the islands with different internal factions and individuals pursuing their own goals. And that leads us to what I'd probably consider the anime's greatest weakness, namely the lack of any real long-term purpose for the majority of the story. For about two thirds of the show, there's no one bad guy on the islands to defeat, nor is there a personal ambition for the main duo to reach or anything like that. They just... go with the flow of events and one thing leads to another which gets them tangled up in various incidents, and eventually it converges on to a single goal. It's a bit awkward, but then again you have to consider this a secondary notion since you'll certainly not be watching Valkyrie Drive for the story anyway.

And that is where this anime exceeded my expectations: the ecchi. Historically speaking, Arms has pretty much the worst ecchi on the market, basically having the "big breasts solve everything" approach with absolutely no creativity put into it at all (and when I say big breasts I mean REALLY big). In Valkyrie Drive however, this is not really the case. Well okay, it certainly does have a lot of needlessly busty girls in it, but it's got a lot more than that. Since the series revolves around girls sexually stimulating each other in order to draw out their partners' powers, it obviously can't just get away with shoving tits into the camera every 5 seconds. It needs actual physical stimulation. And as a result, Valkyrie Drive has a plethora of uncensored yuri sex in it. That's not something you see every day. Now of course that doesn't mean it's at hentai level, but it comes pretty close sometimes (especially the BD specials, hot damn). For example there's one scene where two of the girls are blatantly 69'ing and licking each other out; we may not actually be shown their genitals on screen but... you know exactly what's going on as a viewer. Case in point, Valkyrie Drive is actually pretty hot. Not all the time of course, but often enough. For an Arms anime, that's a tremendous achievement to me. And let's be honest here, how many borderline hentai anime does there exist out there that's girl-on-girl? Yuri is normally stereotyped as something cute and romantic like in Yuru Yuri or Sakura Trick for example, not something as lustful and perverted as this. That alone gives it a lot of points for originality when you think about it.

And really that is pretty much all that needs to be said about this anime. The art and sound is about what you'd expect it to be, nothing remarkable but not bad either (I like the OP song though). The plotline is incredibly dumb but I don't think anyone believed it to be otherwise before watching it either. And the characters are for the most part not anything more than plot mechanics for the sake of ecchi, though I'll at least have to give some credit to Meifon for being somewhat of an unexpected wildcat who kept things interesting with her deceitful antics. But in the end, all that really matters in Valkyrie Drive is of course the ecchi, and although it still suffers from having a lot of oversized breasts and clothes ripping during action scenes for no apparent reason, the yuri scenes more than make up for it. There's something magical about seeing a pair of horny anime chicks passionately tongue wrestling and greedily indulging in each other's nipples, and Valkyrie Drive tries its very hardest to showcase exactly why. It may be considered crude, but so be it; at least it's crude in a damn arousing way.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Apr 24, 2020

AldenEmroch

Not Recommended

Look i'mma be honest about this anime
I started watching this cause someome told me it was awful and they bet me to complete it
And it's fine i guess, i don't mind ecchi i don't mind bad stories like this, it was in a ''Is that bad is funny'' category, the animation music and character design is good even if most of the girls show her boobs 90% of the time.

But then the new plot hit, and i hated all of it so fucking much.
Is not just the fact that this was really sudden i didn't mind at the start, but when that blue haired girl ... started to appear everything fell appart.
The plot started to make less and less sense even for the poor world building they already had, the second main character broke character...how is that even possible.
They completely ruined the governeur character development.
The ending is the worst deux ex machina i've seen since darling in the franxx or hunter x hunter.

i really hate it , and i don't even have the energy to explain why the second half is so damn awful because i already wasted it all just watching it
Please don't watch this, (unless you just wanna watch hardcore ecchi) is just bad, is really bad, don't listen to the people saying is good, is not.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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