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Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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Watch | 9 | 8 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | Ggultra2764 | [series:2679#1552] |
Last updated Thursday, January 01 2015. Created Thursday, January 01 2015. |
Vividred Operation is about as cliched as you can get for an otaku-pandering title as it mixes around elements of sci-fi, mahou shoujo and fan service in its focus on a group of school girls tasked with fending off an alien threat trying to destroy the Earth's sole power source. The series is essentially a hodge-podge of cliches milked from differing sci-fi and mahou shoujo themed titles such as "monster of the week" scenarios, an evil magical girl and power of friendship style plot devices to prevail against seemingly dire threats. Fan service is also milked at a number of points in this series with our female leads in states of undress during transformation scenes, an obligatory beach episode, nude shots and the series having a creepy obsession with getting any butt and crotch shots they can get from the female cast where possible. The characters are also just as cliched having archetypes typical of sci-fi, magical girl and high school titles. On the plus side, the animation for this is solid for the most part as action scenes were fluid in movement, though the fight choreography is a bit on the generic side with the title's milking of magical girl plot cliches. Unless you're into otaku pandering stuff like this, Vividred Operation is mostly generic and forgettable fare.
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Unevaluated | Stretch | [series:2679#628] | ||||||
Before a single line of dialogue is spoken, we see the sun rising through a girl's crotch. 'Somebody shoot me now', I thought. Actually, Vividred wasn't as pornographic as it first seemed; it almost seemed targeted at young girls, what with the female superhero theme. The fanservice-verging-on-ecchi shots seemed like a crass attempt to scoop up yet another group of viewers without making any serious investment of talent to do so. The real problem with this show was the simplistic pure-white-good versus pure-black-evil premise, which followed a tired formula which we have seen countless times before. Cheerful, sweet girl Ayane turns out to be a high-tech superhero, thanks to her wacky scientist grandfather, and is the only one who can save earth from the sinister force known as 'The Alone'. We are supposed to sympathize with her, because she suffers from an intense fear of heights (although she shakes this off in the blink of an eye once the situation gets serious). We are also supposed to root for her, since when the going gets tough she always does what's right. Basically, she is perfect; but perfection is boring. Perfect people have completely predictable and uninteresting personalities. If you're going to use a tired old plotline, the characters have got to be dynamic and intriguing. Something very odd and kind of amusing happens halfway through, which again begs the question of why the sleazy crotch and ass shots were included. But it seems like nothing more than a joke to explain why another overused plot element--an speaking animal friend for the protagonist--was included. Other than a few gadgets there's really nothing new about this show. It's a show which has a simple premise, but seems to expect us to accept that premise exactly as it is fed to us, rather than reaching any conclusions ourselves. Who are the 'Alone'? Nevermind, they are just there to provide a contrast to Akane's squeaky-clean morals. They're trying to wreck something good, so that makes them bad. There's no need for you viewers to do any thinking. But I couldn't help thinking about things like why all sorts of convenient coincidences work to Akane's advantage, why the characters are so uninteresting--and why it was necessary for the camera to focus on Akane's ass as she rode a bike. Last updated Friday, January 18 2013. Created Friday, January 18 2013. |
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Other Sites
Name | URL |
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Domain for the franchise | http://www.vividred.net/ |