Vandread

Vandread to me is the cover poster of the mediocre early 2000's animation period, the shift between the charming 90's animation to the similar looking but very bland art style that dominated the period. Vandread while not terrible, unfortunately will succumb to being an anime that in the future most people will have no desire to watch.

The biggest issue with Vandread is the fact that it was one of the earliest animes to adopt the use of CGI, to quickly state, I myself do not find Anime CGI to be ever pleasant, to me it looks absolutely awful, even modern shows ... that use CGI leave alot to be desired in the quality department. The CGI in Vandread was already atrocious looking even back when it was released, with the ships looking like they came out of a poorly rendered PS1 FMV, with aliasing issues galore. The CGI clashes with the mostly alright albeit uninspired regular animation. The reason I am making a deal out of this, because while older animation can become outdated, they have a certain level of charm and style that allows them to transcend the bounds of being considered unattractive. Vandread does not, it looks like an outdated tech demo from the early 1990's, this will not bode well for its future watch ability.

The story itself is the typical anime cliches and plot lines that have been infesting anime since the 1980's, the only difference being the premise, the premise here is pretty unique and at least gives the show some original identity in the sea of uninteresting anime from its time period. The plot itself is a rather straightforward affair that has been seen numerous times, to me its fine, it for the most part hits all the notes needed for a coherent story and character development without ever really being excellent at it. Simply put, its an anime with the same average plot but set in a more unique and rather absurd premise, it is up to you to decide if that premise is enough to be interesting to you.

Sound was alright, I didn't personally think very highly of any of the music used in the series. The openings and endings were okay. Overall Vandread is an average show marred by an adaptation of a technology that was too early for them to use, even now they have yet to produce anything decent with it half the time, let alone back when Vandread was made.

tl;dr Was a very nostalgic series for me. Hoewever, now that I've taken the obligatory trip down memory lane, I kinda wish I hadn't. 5/10

Story - 5
Men and women fighting each other was a great concept when I was 8 - we all know the classic chant "BOYS WIN, GIRLS IN THE BIN!". However, 15 years later I sit here and think there's got to be more to do with this premise than what Vandread gave us. After this point was visited and abandoned for all intents and purposes, the real big bad of the show is fairly vague and 100% irredeemably evil. However, it ... doesn't seem much better or worse than an average silver age Spider-Man villain - looking at you Thumper. Though this all would be forgivable in my books for 20 minutes of midless entertainment. That is if I could watch it mindlessly.
Certain professions have certain delights ruined for them - in my case, studying physics, particularly relativity, has forever ruined sci-fi space travel and the concept of galactic empires. Some episodes make my physicist brain twist and tremble in pain (such as the Christmas special), while others are just mildly inconvenient. Nevertheless, I've seen worse.

Art - 8
Can't fault the art - all the ecchi parts look appropriately bouncy, the faces are expressive, and technology looks about as cartoony as you'd expect from any decent anime. I was genuinely surprised finding out that this anime is more than 20 years old at this point.

Sound - 6
No complaints here, nothing too offensive nor spectacular - apart from the ending which reminds me of trashy early 00's MTV pop and therefore is an automatic banger.

Characters - 5
Ibiki is the angsty protagonist, Dita is the simple-minded love interest/interested party, others are all side characters. Seen any anime with a good amount of ecchi elements? Cool, you've seen these characters before. As the series is episodic with a loose overarching plot, side character development takes place on a case by case basis each episode and is more or less forgotten by the time you watch the next one.

Enjoyment - 9
I must hate this anime, right? Nah, I fucking love it. Although I can't in good faith give it a higher overall rating than I have, I found going back to my primary school days and reliving my first ecchi experience as a full-grown weeb simply delectable. Your mileage may (and likely will) vary.

Overall - 5
Finishing the first series didn't feel as good as it did 15 years ago. Sitting in front of the closing credits for the 13th time in 3 days, vibing to the lovely tunes and images on my screen, I didn't really feel the same sense of awe and wonder that space anime tiddies brought to me back then. It's not that no anime tiddy will ever be the same, it's just that these particular sets of cartoon mammaries should have remained in my childhood memories.