Wow. Just wow. Besides one other anime, I don't think I've ever known what the definition of "bad anime"/"shitty anime" meant until I saw Virgin Fleet. Created by the same guy who brought us Sakura Wars, It is the second worst anime I've ever seen in my life besides Sailor Moon Crystal's first two seasons and Jungle de Ikou. How bad is it? Well, let's see:
Story:
The plot takes place in an alternate Pre World War II era where there is a naval academy for girls who are virgins that can unlease a power known as "Virgin Energy". It focuses on a girl named Shiokaze Umino trying to learn to unlock her energy whilst dealing with two jealous rivals Satsuki and Komachi, wanting to marry her boyfriend named Mau when she graduates, and the nation must prepare for war, resurrect the 36 Virgin Minstrels or whatever they are and deal with....gender conflicts, spies, and death.
The concept of girls having their own powers from being a Virgin is stupid enough, but it gets worse. Being one of those 3 episode OVAs there's not much development in it, but no one would really care about the characters anyways, you'll see what I mean. There is not much of a story and it has a very conflicting tone starting from unfunny slapstick that wildly changes to tragic/seriousness way without much breathing time. And yes, the "humor" in here is extremely unfunny and mostly consists of the anime picking on and abusing poor old Mau, whether it has him getting his face stuck in his girlfriend's chest or him getting tied up and nearly contracting alcohol poisoning, but also has stuff like Wakamoto the Gaston lookalike at one point going all "HULK SMASH" after having a bunch of people fall on him. Does that sound like fun to you? Well, it gets worse. The way the characters are portrayed literally makes it feel like this anime was not written by Ohji Hiroi, but instead Anita Sarkeesian, Chanty Binx, Kevin Smith and Kathleen Kennedy. The males in this series are portrayed as blow hard, power hungry misogyntic assholes who constantly insult, disrespect and deman the female characters (even with a bunch of guys yelling "WOMEN CAN EAT SHIT"), especially characters General Tastugawa and the female characters are just as bad, being annoying idiots who are misandric to the male characters, even going so far as to have Komachi claim "men are the enemy" and assault Mau with rocks with the help of students she's brainwashed, and her and Satsuki trying to rig each others' planes to fail so they can get the 36 Minstrels spot and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....oh, I'm sorry, was I supposed to be awake and reviewing this?
Does anything, any of this this sound even remotely interesting to you in the slightest? No? Well let's check the art/animation...
Art/Animation
This is just appalling. The art and animation are absolutely horrendous for a 1998 anime, an anime OVA, even for an AIC one. if one word could describe it in a nutshell, it would be ugly. The art is very rough looking and the characters mostly are poorly drawn, especially the girls, with generic looking hair styles, ugly looking faces, and the color schemes for them are tacky and don't bode well at all, with the exception of maybe Kohka and Nikola, and some of the character just all look the same because of matching colors and it can be hard to tell them apart sometimes. The guys aren't much better looking, especially with Tatsugawa, who looks like a poor man's Dr. Robotnix, making those creepy ass faces in episode 3, and Wakamoto looking like an uglier version of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. The animation is choppy and stilted, and though there are SOME moments that don't look bad and some of the backgrounds are alright looking, this anime obviously did not have a good budget at all and all three episodes suffer and look horrible. The only good art/animation thing I saw was when Mau pulled off a pissed off Chris Bores/Irate Gamer look, that was funny.
But overall, it looks like a rough/first draft that didn't get checked over. If I hadn't looked up the date, I would have guessed that this anime came out in 1990 by some obscure no name studio, not by the same company that distributed/helped produce anime like the Tenchi Muyo and Ah My Goddess franchises, which came out five to six years before and looks far superior. Fail, fail fail.
Sound
This was seen in both the Japanese and English versions and I'm just going to state this: both versions sucked, though I'm not blaming the actors, more the terrible scripts the actors had to work with. Considering their role of talent they had for both versions that's just shocking. In the Japanese version, with the exception of Yoko Soumi as Nikola Paupilo and the wasted Mami Koyama as Kohka Hirose, the voice acting is just terrible or nothing to write home about with the seiyuu sounding like they're phoning it in. Sumi Shimamoto, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind herself (was she so desperate for voice work here?), is wasted as Shiokaze and doesn't have the charm of the warrior from Ghibli's film, Satsuki Yukino (Aquila Yuna from Saint Seiya Omega) sounds like she's doing a (very poor) Michie Tomizawa impression trying to voice the character with the same name as her and comes off more as utterly obnoxious, and Komachi, voiced by Chinami Nishimura (Saori from Battle Skipper, Reika/Cure Beauty from Smile Precure) is beyond annoying, with her screeching voice just being too obnoxious for words. Same applies to a lot of the other voices. While Yoko Soumi (Arachnea from the Yes Pretty Cure 5 series) and Mami Koyama (Shaina from Saint Seiya and Esmeraude from Sailor Moon R) put passion and effort into their roles, they, along with the other voices seem to just be doing it more for a job and Mami doesn't sound as good as she normally does in other anime she's voiced, must be because of said script. Norio Wakamoto, aka Cell from the Dragon Ball franchise and Kagato from the Tenchi Muyo franchise, is also terribly wasted as the unfunny comedic relief general who happens to share his actual surname.
The English dub is also terrible, and a lot of the big name dub actors here weren't too good here, probably because they realized how shitty the script was. For some characters, Jessica Calvello (Honey Kisaragi/Cutey Honey from New Cutey Honey, Mink from Dragon Half) is not at her best here and makes Shiokaze sound too cutesy, irritating and her screeching grates on the ears, Megan Hollingshead (Mai from Yu-Gi-Oh!) is too old for Satsuki and makes her even more insufferable than she already is, Angora Deb (Jo Diamonds from Ja Ja Uma Quartet/Wild Cardz and Hikaru from Hyper Speed Grandoll) makes Komachi even more ear splitting. And one will recognize Crispin Freeman as Mau. He actually isn't that bad compared to the others (along with the other guys), but I haven't heard much of his other roles (sans Prince Justin from Howl's Moving Castle), so I don't know if he was at his best here. The other voices are nothing special also, Rhonda Ayres' Russian accent she gives Nikola also is pretty bad.
The music is mostly terrible also, the music comes off as generic, forgettable and like they just played keys randomly and once something sounded like a song they released it. The best parts of the music are the opening song "Aitsu", performed by Sumi herself, which isn't too bad, and "Go! Virgin Fleet", sung by Sumi, Satsuki (the VA) and Chinami, which is catchy but sounds like a silly national anthem for a country of virgins, especially when you read the lyrics:
"Cutting through the wild waves
The Virgin Fleet goes forth
Embracing the sea breeze,
Go forth, go forth
Into the great sea
The blue of the sea
And the salty red of blood
Burns again today
Proof that I'm alive
It is a pledge
The cheerful virgins go forth
For you as you sing of love
Raising our voices to the sky
Let's sing, let's sing
The song of love
Go forth, go forth, higher and higher
As we shout in victory
The Virgin Fleet goes forth
Catching the sea breeze
Run, run
With all of your force
Tomorrow will surely bring calm seas
As we wish for that
We fight today
With all our force
Higher and higher the virgins go
For you as you sing of love
Raising our voices to the sky
Let's sing, let's sing
The song of love
Let's sing, let's sing
The song of love
Go forth, go forth
Higher and higher
HEY!!"
Anyways, enough with songs.
Characters:
These are some of the worst characters I've ever seen in an anime. Shiokaze is just a perfect Mary Sue character who's just as bad as Usagi from Sailor Moon Crystal, being very irresponsible and careless, skipping flight class and risking nearly getting expelled so she wouldn't be able to marry Mau, not taking her relationship with Mau seriously at all, and even skipping her eventual marriage to stop what is a dud bomb, rendering the whole thing pointless (plus one can still be married and a virgin), Satsuki (who comes off as a poor man's, or in this case, woman's, Rei/Sailor Mars) and Komachi being so annoying and irritating you just want to smack their faces, the generals being so irritating and unlikable you'd wanna beat them up, and you can tell how bad characterization is when you do not care if one dies or not. In fact, when Satsuki was actually killed by Nikola, I actually was happy and glad, see how bad that is? Some of the characters like Ise, the nurse, Mau's mother, Mari, and this guy in a top hat called "The Silk Hat" seem to just be in there for no reason at all whatsoever and contribute absolutely nothing. In fact, the only character who is worth a damn in this anime is that Russian woman Nikola. she kicks ass. She is cool. She's awesome. She deserves her own spin-off series. God, I love that yell of hers!
Mau himself wasn't too bad though. At least he tried to take his relationship with Shiokaze seriously.
Oh wait...they had Satsuki actually not "die", but instead live in one of the most stupidest ways ever trust me.
Overall:If you are a fan of anime, avoid, avoid, avoid, AVOID. Whether you're a fan of magical girl, Sakura Wars, anime with planes or something, stay away. It makes the CD-I Zelda cutscenes look like an animated masterpiece from the 90's, and makes people from both genders look bad. In fact, the only people this failed anime possibly could appeal to are SJWs (I like to call those people Socially Jading Wankers) and rabid feminists like Kathleen Kennedy and Neil Drunkmann (surname purposefully misspelled), that's how bad it is. The only good thing to say is that fortunately this now has drifted into deserved obscurity, despite there being a manga it cannot be found unlike other obscure ones like Voogie's Angel, there was a crappy PSX game that no one seems to care about, and that's OK. Scarily enough though, it still does a "female empowerment" (if ANY) message better than Sailor Moon Crystal...
If you want better anime with strong female characters/protagonists, look at Sailor Moon, Sakura Wars, Futari wa-Smile Precure, Bubblegum Crisis, Nausicaä, Kiki's Delivery Service, Kiki's Delivery Service, Children of the Sea, etc. This one though... if you see it anywhere, throw it into the ocean like Bennett the Sage did. You're not missing ANYTHING passing this one up. Trust me, while there are bad anime you'd want to get through no matter what, Virgin Fleet is one of those anime that make you wish you'd never touched an anime in your life. EVER.
"I get it...this is war...war..."
"What? Satsuki Yukimizawa is what...?"
"No...NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"
Eh, fuck off.
