Valkyria Chronicles (some thoughts on the animated show)

I believe that it's healthy every once in a while to explore something that's not usually in your area of interest. I try to do this as much as I can because I think it can do either of these two things:

1. Broaden your taste
2. Strengthen your existing taste

And both are good; sort of. If you end up liking a completely new genre then great! You have a lot of new things to explore and learn. If you end up disliking your new venture then you learn something about yourself and you move a step further away from being a blob that just swallows up everything. You develop, you know, your character and opinion on things you find pleasing and of those you do not.

This summer I stumbled upon Valkyria Chronicles which seemed interesting enough and it's something that I would usually not go with. So hey, why not? I have a really cruel love & hate relationship with Japanese animation. Basically I'm really picky about the stuff I watch which is why I every once in a while, sort of, force myself to venture into something that I would not usually watch. Because if I keep being an elitist faggot I'll stop watching anime for a long period of time (happened a few times).

The anime itself is an adaptation of a video game so it's flawed from the start because it already has a predefined plot and everything that goes with it. I watched maybe half of the first season and then decided it would be best to stop or I'll have to repeatedly stab myself in the face with the rustiest barbed wire I can find. This isn't really because of the plot (it's fine for the most part but I'm not really in the position to judge since I didn't watch the whole thing) but the setting and the practicality of the system is impossible. Usually this isn't really something to bother with when it comes to TV logic but this bothered me so much that I just could not take this anymore.

First of all let's look how the cast looks like:

So without knowing the plot and the setting of the story could you guess what the anime is about judging from the looks of the characters? A lot of blue uniforms, lots of girls that apparently wear miniskirts, a nun of some sort, some guy in a suit, ties etc. Yeah, looks like your regular school/slice of life anime right? Except this is supposed to be a fucking paramilitary unit in a semi-fictional world war two.

The plot is apparently about a country that looks something like Netherlands which gets caught up in a war between two alliances. One is evil and one is good blah blah and everything from world war two is sort of changed but not really. The story is focused on a militia group formed out of citizens and farmers of the country that are trying to defend their homeland. The tanks look like they are from 1945 yet the rifles look like something from 1918. The plot is supposedly taking place in 1935; they didn't really work this through. But okay, things like that can still be overlooked for the most part because they are tolerable.

 

But the uniforms I can not overlook.

The sad part about this is that these are not their formal uniforms, they are wearing actual combat uniforms. BLUE combat uniforms in a land that's mainly LIGHT GREEN. That's like if all the SS divisions in the Ardennes forest decided to wear their black uniforms IN THE MIDDLE OF WINTER. Apart from the completely missed colors why are they wearing ties? Both males and females are wearing ties? What's going on? Is this supposed to be an allegorical outlook on the post modern society of Japan symbolizing that every worker on his day job is going through an ongoing war yet he can not do anything to prevent it? Or is it because it's supposed to be cute? -_- Those who wore ties know how impractical these things are. They get in the way all the time and are in no way practical on the battlefield. Except maybe in a very gentlemanly battlefield. And yes of course the big red bandana on the girls head in case they don't get spotted at first because of their uniforms from 10km away.

Sadly this just goes on and on. Some of the female characters even wear earrings and the worst part is that our protagonists aren't infantry they are a tank unit. They are cramped in a small tight tank in those uncomfortable clothes, ties and earrings because, hey, they need to look good while they are being dismembered by an artillery strike. All of these things (and I left out a lot of things) are tolerated because this is a high school anime pretending to be a serious war drama. That's all there is to it. Why not then just make a high school drama? Why bother with all this? Oh right that's why, because they are adapting a video game that's equally brainless. But wait, what are women doing here in the first place? Why are they in the military? In same units with men? Which brings me to another main problem I had with the series.


NOBODY 

GETS 

RAPED

Imagine you're in a warzone and things aren't looking pretty well for your side. You're getting punched on all sides, communications are down and there's less and less ammo around. Night falls, you and another companion are all that's left in the bunker. The first thing at dawn you'll hear are artillery shells and then a final push that will probably end in your death or imprisonment for the rest of the war. There you sit, thinking about your last hours and you look at your companion who's sitting there beside you like this:

In those lovely thigh-highs that match her miniskirt that give her that young look and with a frail, slim body slightly blushing and that fucking ridiculous bandana on her head as if she just came back from a 50s cooking show. Obviously the first thing to come on your mind is to play a chess game with her, right? If I were in her shoes I'd aptly volunteer for a tentacle rape just to avoid that situation.

This sort of problem never comes up. Nobody really notices that an army that's mixed like that can't work because of obvious nature restrictions. Everybody just goes along with it. This was just too much to tolerate.

This anime actually had an really interesting premise. Not a lot of anime series tackle our past like this. This could have been an interesting look on paramilitary forces, how they operate and the role of women in the army. How they handled the frontlines? How desperate must a country be to force all of their citizens into fighting? But no, they had to make another school anime with stenciled characters.

I am disappoint. Maybe it gets better afterwards?