Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Valkyrie Drive - Mermaid

Valkyrie Drive - Mermaid is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most offensively tasteless anime I have ever seen.

It is aggressively misogynist softcore pornography, in which women are sexually subjugated in order to turn them into literal objects.

There's fanservice, and then there's… whatever this is.

How does something like this get created? Who comes up with this sick bullshit, and how the hell do they find other people that like it enough to fund its production?

I'm finding it difficult to put into words how enthusiastically horrible this show is. Its closest relative, in my viewing history at least, would be Ikkitousen, a similar "sexy battle" show where female characters were the subject of simultaneous physical violence and lecherous sexualisation - though I'm not sure if it's better or worse that Ikkitousen "only" had the camera participate in the violation. Valkyrie Drive's constant insistence that the characters are willing(-ish) participants somehow feels more sickening.

I've tried to think of something - anything - positive about Valkyrie Drive, but every aspect of it from character design to the music is cheap and nasty. The only things keeping it from being instantly forgotten are how dreadfully it treats its characters and how spectacularly low an opinion it has of its audience.