Venus Project: Climax

Before I write my review on Venus Project Climax, please note if you disagree with anything I type out and want to have a friendly debate about the review and/or different opinions, feel free to leave a comment on my profile and I will respond as soon as possible. I find it a shame you cannot find my review not helpful if you found it unhelpful, but blame the folks who decided to abuse the system. Anyway, this is my review of Venus Project Climax!

VPC was an anime full of cliches seen in anime for at least twenty years such as ecchi and ... the main character is an unstoppable force that is greater than anyone else who tries to rival him/her! VPC was also an anime that had some pacing issues due to only having six episodes worth of material and also suffered from a somewhat bland set of characters. Well, I strongly believe Ruka is miles ahead than the complete VPC roster, though we'll leave that to opinion. Yes people, VPC is flawed! Heck, it may be more flawed than a majority of the anime this season alone. Though, what of it? Do flaws automatically mean you will trash a show and say it is indeed shit? Shall I be a sheep and hate on VPC due to its obviously bad for mal standards rating? I know! Want me to justify loving this anime and call it a guilty pleasure!? Well, I just will not do that. I loved VPC. Actually, allow me to take it just one step further. VPC is officially in my top twenty-five and my AOTS. I have already admitted that VPC is flawed and understandable if those flaws have caused you to really dislike the anime, but allow me to come out and say that the anime also had numerous positives and they heavily out-weighed the negatives, some of them being spoilers so I will refrain from listing them all.

VPC had a very unique tackle on the Idol genre (..even if it really is not a genre) and had my glued to my screen the entire time. I even believe this could of been a very memorable anime for fans of the medium if it had stronger world building and more episodes. With that said, the story itself is likely a hit or miss for most as a lot of people will find the flaws distracting from the anime itself, but I am sure there is at least one other fan on mal who really enjoyed what VPC offered in every department. The art and sound were fine, nothing special and nothing worth going depth in. Hey, I am NOT being lazy. Just, is there a point to discuss something that has no placed to be discussed? The art is fine as I said and the music is not really great, but is in no way distracting.

The characters..... ah yes the bland characters with bigger bust than personality! Though, let me make one thing clear. Ruka is a character I admire more than anyone in all of anime and she is by the best VPC offers in the character department. Ruka has a mysterious vibe to her, but as the anime drifts on and exposes more plot besides the boobs, you learn to accept her. Well, I admired her. Though, as I stated before I will refrain from posting spoilers so you all can enjoy the anime yourself. By the way, I just claimed Ruka as my new waifu! Haha yes, before anyone else! Stat wise, I am the only user on mal who has her as my top character in all of anime! Please note that nobody will ever own Ruka except me no matter what you try! I am her biggest fan and added her as my top favorite first, after all. Wow, I am deeply pathetic, but anyway besides Ruka, the cast is pretty bland.

My enjoyment for VPC was pretty high. Not as high as masterpieces such as Aria or Cowboy Bebop, but really high anyway. With all that said, most of my review focused on the negatives. Though, the positives and what this anime meant to me made it a masterpiece for me. How can such a flawed anime be a masterpiece you say!? Well, it just is #deal. Check it out if you want. You may not enjoy it as much as I did, but it is worth trying.

Recommendation: An interesting watch if you like idols. If they aren't your thing, you can safely skip it. Spoilers for the ending in the final points of each section below.

Positives:

+ Solid main characters. With only 6 episodes, they could have easily rushed establishing the characters, but they actually manage to make all of them interesting and give them compelling motivations. Eriko is the energetic girl that wants to inspire people the way music inspired her after she was abandoned by her mother. Ruka is the foreign girl from a poor country trying to bring light to the lives of her ... countrymen. Miu is the caged princess fighting for a life outside of the role she was born into in a powerful and prestigious family. They're likeable and you want to see them succeed.

+ Has a more mature take on life than you typically see from idol anime. Bad things happen, actions have consequences, and not everything magically works out in the end. A character even gives up on their idol dreams after losing in the Rookie Queen tournament and this is not portrayed negatively, but as her simply taking the next step to find herself.

+ The 6 episode length and brisk pacing means there is absolutely no filler and it never feels boring or like it's stalling. Even the obligatory beach episode is more functional to the plot in terms of giving Eriko a recovery arc than an excuse for fanservice and watermelon splitting (though there is still plenty of that). It can be a bit *too* fast, and the 5 other girls in the tournament besides the 3 main characters do get glossed over, but overall I think it was the right length for the story it was telling

+ Good ending, which I will talk about now, so skip down to the next section if you don't want spoilers. Going into the final episode, I felt strongly that Ruka deserved to win both as a matter of her story being more compelling than Eriko's and her specific struggles with her weak voice, but that Eriko would ultimately win by virtue of being the main character. Cue my pleasant surprise when Ruka did in fact win, even though it was a pyrrhic victory in some ways. It upset my expectations in a good way and made me feel like the writer actually had a strong grasp on the story they were trying to tell and knew what the ending that felt right was, even if it went against conventional wisdom.

Negatives:

- Bad directing and action choreography makes the battle sequences feel boring.

- Animation is subpar overall, and the dancing in particular is so bad that it's almost comical. This series really must have had no budget if their resources were spread this thin for only 6 episodes.

- Poor voice acting. It often doesn't match the tone of a scene or the expression on a character's face, and the dubbing of the voices doesn't match up well with mouth animations.

- Music is generic and forgettable J-pop that leaves no impression.

- Mechanics of the Venus system make no sense. How are singers being knocked unconscious by a robot battle that's happening strictly in virtual reality on a screen? How are they yelling typical anime battle retorts like "take this!" and "I'm not done yet!" when they're supposed to be singing? How does it even determine a winner when both singers are always in perfect sync with both their dancing and singing? The entire competitive karaoke robot battling system falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.

- Calling the impoverished fictional post-Soviet republic that Ruka lives in "Pooristan" is both shockingly lazy and pointlessly offensive. Was that really the best you could come up with? Furthermore, the idea that 80% of this country is fervently following the Japanese idol scene is laughable, and the fact that things only get better when Ruka inspires them to leave the bars and start working during the day instead of drinking feels like a cruel bit of bootstrapping Reaganism that says poverty can be solved by simply working harder.

- Spoilers for the ending follow. The coach's death in the final episode was unnecessary and felt like it was done for shock value. While it wasn't totally unexpected given that he spent much of the series in the hospital and was hinting about how much time he had left, having him show up in ghost form and only revealing later that he was dead the entire time and not actually there seemed like it was done just to catch the audience off guard (though his white clothing is an obvious giveaway anyway)

The best word that can describe this anime is average or mediocre, but is not bad, let me explain.

This is a very good concept, but that's it, the series is all a just a bunch of good concepts that never try to acomplish anything.

The idea of idols who can make robots fight when they sing to decide who's best is really good, the character desing is actually very good even with those outfits, and the music is enjoyable, but they never try anything with it, the series spends too much time with filler that is not important and then it trows a bunch of lore ... in your face expecting you to get attached to the girl in that episode, but it doesn't work like that, and is quite funny most of them have tragic backstories so you can at least feel bad for them.

i see a lot of potential here, but it wasn't used properly and just 6 episodes make this look like a bunch of ovas more than a series (and for a while i thought that's what it was but no, the game with the same name doesn't even have a story and i read something about a card game? but obviously that doesn't have a story either) , you can enjoy it perfectly fine, but to me it was a waste of potential and good ideas, the animation was quite good sometimes i have to say, i wasn't expecting much about art and animation but it surprised me.

I guess is good to pass time