Vandread Genre: Comedy/Drama Shouryu's Overall Score: 7.0

Reviewer: Shouryu
Type of Review: General

Refreshing a standard genre is a common task in entertainment today. Neon Genesis Evangelion brought new dimensions to the mecha genre, as did Trigun to the bounty hunter genre. By throwing a twist into the characters (Eva becomes a psychological theatre while Trigun's hero is a coward who doesn't want to hurt anyone), something standard becomes something new. A recent addition to this trend is Vandread, a combination of the strangers far from home genre (a la El Hazard and Star Trek: Voyager) and merging mecha genres (think of Voltron or any basic sentai show like Power Rangers). Now toss in the twist of humans being alienated by humans, based on gender, and you come up with a delightful context in which the tried and true plot of trying to get home alive while fighting against a strange new enemy. Although only the first stage of Vandread is currently available (the second stage is due for release soon), it is quickly proving to be fun to watch.

Vandread is a standard 26 episode series split into two 13 episode stages, each on four DVDs. The series opens with the declaration that women are monsters; in the distant future, men and women have actually segregated to the point of existing on different worlds and believing each other to be an alien enemy race. While the male fleet lifts off to journey to the female homeworld to attack, they are surprised by a band of female pirates, and in the battle, the pirates, along with several male captors, are transported nearly a year's distance out of their territories. Out in the uncharted territories, they soon encounter a new, unknown species with malevolent intentions, and the men and women must learn to work together, even though nearly none of them have ever seen a member of the opposite sex before. The unique point in this approach is that there is no real sexual tension between the characters, since they aren't even attracted to each other. What happens instead is that reactions vary from befuddlement to fascination to fear. This becomes the side conflict that adds a different flavor to a standard story.

The animation is clean, and very diverse. Each female in the series has a unique overall look, going far beyond the standard-body-standard-face-different-clothes-different-hair cliche that many animes follow. Each of the main female characters have uniquely shaped eyes and their bodies all vary (with Jura being the standard fan-service presence) enough that even if they all had the same hair, you could tell them apart. The CG animation is clever and smooth; all of the space battles are CG productions, giving Vandread a perfect balance of CG content (compared to Cowboy Bebop, which used CG very sparingly, and Blue Submarine No.6, which used it almost exclusively). In the first stage, the animation never suffered from a lapse in quality (which is not uncommon, as such lapses are readily apparent in other quality works such as Ranma 1/2, Bebop, and Trigun), although the second stage may prove otherwise. The music is fairly repetative and while not of bad quality, is not outstanding or truly innovative. The end theme is a rather catchy pop tune with a Britney-esque style voice that has a more seductive yet less slutty feel that sometimes kept me from skipping the end credits (although the two-ton helping of fan service that is the ending sequence might have contributed as well).

In retrospect, Vandread has one main failing, and that is the number of featured characters. While long running, episodic series like Ranma 1/2 can get away with a character list a mile long, it does so only by having 90% of those characters show up not more than once or twice, most of them being villians or opponents. Vandread, on the other hand, has so many protagonists that it focuses on that it's hard to keep track of each character from episode to episode. There are around fifteen characters that make appearances on a regular basis, and all of which play notable roles (although Hibiki, Dita, and Meia each get a shade more attention, but not much). While it's no secret that a large spaceship needs a large crew, learning about all the various characters is hard to do in 26 half hour episodes; all the Star Trek series' pulled off the stunt with more than 50 full hours each.

Despite the rather blocky character alignment, Vandread is still worth a watch, and even worth a purchase. While only moderately exciting and tense, it is genuinely funny and well thought out in the gender conflicts. The opening scene of an episode has a few females discussing a rumor about men having "a funny tube" to deal with, which is funny at first, but at the same time, something to ponder, because to these characters, it's a completely foreign concept. These twists and misunderstandings keep the series from becoming stale and standard, from being just another box on the DVD shelf with robots on the cover. It's good entertainment with a good mix of different elements, blended just right into a concoction that goes down smoother than a martini.