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

Oonuki, Kazuo 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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Jan 20, 2016

Uzunyan03

Not Recommended

Ecchi has never had a big presence in the wide niche genre Yuri, or Shoujo Ai as it’s more accurately called. Yuri has always been a genre that I’ve always leaned toward the “erotic” side than the actual “romance” one, only because most anime tend to be too sugarcoated with soap opera quality stories. That doesn’t mean that there can’t be any good ones. I think yuri fans deserve better than Valkyrie Drive Mermaid if they want their “dumb ecchi anime.”

If I had to describe the quality of Valkyrie Drive Mermaid in a very short statement, it would be, “Not even trying.” What does it ... not bother to try? It is an entertaining ecchi anime. The boobs, butts, curves, kissing and tripping all amount to pure nothingness. None pack any charm or sensibility that generally makes ecchi anime exciting escapism. Whether it be from really poor comedic timing or the characters being incredibly stale and formulaic, upon further examination, the latter seems to be the biggest culprit than the former.

It’s not even that none of the characters have any profound characterization that makes them stale. It’s the fact that their personalities, created by their dialogue and actions, are completely devoid of any humanity to them. A few of them even top my list of the worst characters of 2015. These characters are Mamori Tokonome and Mirei Shikishima. Mamori being the biggest crux of them all, is by far one of the most annoying characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing and listening to. It isn’t just the bad, shrill voice performance by Mikako Izawa that makes her insufferable, but also how completely one-note her character is. All of the characters suffer from being one-note, but she takes the cake from her just being a character. Mirei kisses to gain power and be mocked because her name is the same as “virgin.” When something isn’t that clever the first time does not mean it will be funnier five more times.

Mirei Shikishima does do more than our damsel Mamori. However, her development is predictable when she is introduced as a silent character. You could replace her with a cardboard cutout of her, and it wouldn’t make much of a difference; that is how wooden her archetype is. The other characters, besides our two main ones, fall into similar territory. Our only male character in the anime, without spoiling anything (but you can probably guess anyway.), has one twist that comes off as so laughably random. Nothing can distinguish that character other than that noticeable moment before or afterward. The only character that was only semi-intriguing was Meifon Sakura because (1) she is voiced by Yurika Kubo, so I could imagine Kayochin from Love Live doing the things Meifon is doing and (2) she has some charisma that feels genuine.

Setting aside the other characters that are too forgettable even to bother reminiscing, the art is somewhat interesting to look at. On the one hand, the animation feels as though Studio Arms was going on a lower budget than what they usually work with. As much as the girls' gorgeous art designs are nice to look at, I don’t think there was enough material to go around to make these designs blossom. The first episode alone had way more dumb ecchi service than all of the episodes combined. Instead, we are forced to sit through the most contrived story that one can get from an ecchi anime; hell Ikkitosen at least had interesting lore to it that made it intriguing. Valkyrie Drive Mermaid has little to no meat to its story that garners any praise.

Indeed, I don’t watch many yuri anime that come out once or twice a year. I have not seen the great classics like Oniisama e…, Maria-sama ga Miteru, or even Yuru Yuri to appreciate the genre fully. Valkyrie Drive Mermaid seems like one that openly insults the genre. It comes across as, “Well, let’s just put a Shoujo-Ai element to this so that we can attract this niche audience to make money off of.” No, not even putting an ecchi spin on it will somehow make it somewhat different or unique when there is nothing to it. It is lazy implementation as one can get when watching this rubbish. As much as that one episode with the colossal naked girl at least gave me a single ray of sunshine in the mix, that was still not enough after it was over.

You know you've done goofed when you can’t entice me, the self-proclaimed ecchi connoisseur, with boobs and butts. Describing Valkyrie Drive Mermaid in one word is “soulless.” Soulless in every sense of the word. Boobs and butts that have no soul in them might as well not be boobs and butts at all.

Grade: D-

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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