10.31
So last week Valvrave suddenly and rather abruptly stopped being utter shit. Naturally of course it should turn back into shi-SURPRISE! It doesn’t.
Hey its School Days!
So yeah remember Marie Iobi? She was that annoying character that hung around background just to deliver punchlines to stupid jokes. Well it turns out SHE’S THE MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER ON THE SHOW ™. She was apparently the test case for VVVI, however instead of needing a constant supply of blood and sex, she just loses her memories every time she’s subjected to Pino the VVV-tan and thus brings about the main conflict of this episode. Save your friends or lose what you have left of your old ones.
And knowing is half the battle!
All of this is brought about by L-Elf’s cave-in plan. Marie, VVVI, and L-Elf are stuck behind the rubble and Haruto is stuck outside to mope about and do nothing. Meanwhile Kyuuma and Thunder are getting their asses kicked (again) by Dorssia’s new Valvrave knock-offs, A-Drei has a potential gaydar moment with some shota (ruined by the fact that its actually Saki), Akira is helplessly left watching the carnage while waiting for the go-ahead to hack the superkiller ship, and… frankly none of this matters. Outside of a brief scene between A-Drei and Saki in which its revealed that the current space nazis overthrew a previous Dorssian monarchy, all of this weeks episode is being carried entirely on Marie and Marie’s shoulders.
I'm sorry... who are you again?
Ultimately the payoff is a great sequence in which VVVI explodes from the cave and goes on a rampage, destroying one of the Dorssian planes before hitting overheat level 666 (OH COME ON!) and blowing up nearly the entire Dorssian garrison. In the end Marie completely passes out from the strain of her memory loss and overusage of the VVV. Whether or not she’s dead is something we’ll have to find out next week.
Hail Satan!
This was actually a hard episode to write about because quite a bit is happening this week even if its mostly just icing. Its all done at a breakneck pace and you actually do feel a lot of tension because of that manic attitude. Sunrise has really stepped it up in the last two weeks. But its not like Valvrave didn’t have the potential to be a good show, its just that the fact that its doing it NOW instead of the total disaster that was last season makes for a somewhat awkward watch. I expect Valvrave to be utter shit, now suddenly it is not and I’m not sure what exactly to say. That being said, this uptick may or may not last so who knows what next week will bring.
8/10