Look. I knew I was getting into something pretty questionable. This is the show that said "You think Eromanga-Sensei is trashy? Hold my beer." This is a show that credits both a "Special Breast Effects" person and "Giant Breasts Producer"--yes folks, there were two people whose entire full-time job was animating giant pendulous breasts. In some cases, literally giant (aforementioned).
But there's no point interrogating the logic of porn. Which I think this is--it's the worst kind of exploitative view of (female) sexuality. A view that doesn't even try to make sense. The entire premise is that certain women, when sufficiently aroused or in a trance-like state, will transform into weapons. Okay... well, anybody who's ever had a frank conversation with a woman would realize the flaw with this, namely sexual response just doesn't work that way, when you need a weapon you need it now, not after several minutes of heavy petting, and for many--perhaps most, I would venture to guess--the immediate life threat would make it pretty hard to get well and truly turned on anyway. I say there's no point interrogating the logic of porn, but is it too much to ask for basic plausibility? Although I should have known; even the silhouette of the main character pair shows a wanton disregard for the realities of biology, with Mamori's rib cage clearly in a different time zone from her hips. And for a show that's supposed to be all about a bunch of women having sex with each other, it... sure seems to have no real idea of how that actually works.
I've (elsewhere) praised Monster Musume for being refreshingly straightforward about what it is. Most ecchi harems are coy and unconsummatable; this one opens with a snake handjob. Most harems spend at least some effort coming up with an excuse for the women to pursue the main character; MonMusu, someone just sort of tells them to, so they do. Most harems wouldn't have basically the entire cast just give up and call the guy a variation on "MC-kun". But Monster Musume knows exactly what it is.
Not so Valkyrie Drive. The show keeps reaching for a narrative weight, a seriousness and importance, that it has no way to earn, neither through its compelling plot (which it doesn't have) nor its lovable characters (also missing, instead we get one-note cliches, from Miss Protect Virginity to the various Obviously Psychotic Sexpots who show up, always with the non-consensual S&M routine). But because it has pretensions or aspirations to legitimacy, it tries to deal with ideas well outside its weight class. The threat of rape--weaponized rape, rape to turn its victims into weapons--looms heavy over the show, but won't be seriously examined. It can't be examined, because it's a cheap source of drama and menace, but also (so far as I can tell) supposed to be *hot*; and never mind that the already flimsy premise of plot-convenient arousal falls apart when women can be raped into ecstatic transformation--unless the show is seriously trying to sell a view that's seriously despicable.
The show can't seem to decide if it wants to be Fantasy Island or Lord of the Flies, and when the serious high-drama plot starts happening you'll have seen it coming from literally episodes away. The only real question is how did anyone allow the situation to get to the state it's in, where all the dominoes can come crashing down so readily.
There's a way to read this show that as actually a statement about unbridled female sexual desire being such a powerful force that society will do anything to subjugate it, keep it under wraps; that women--especially women who love women--are oppressed and contained because of their *power*. There's a way to read this show as making direct commentary on the very objectification--literally transforming into objects--which it engages in and depicts. There's a way of reading this show that shows that the real monsters are the ones who try to keep these forces repressed, and that the real tragedy is the way women's solidarity turns into a power-struggle catfight as their society immediately reproduces patriarchal norms of dominance from the outside world. Or, rather, there *should* be. But the show's just not up to it. And I wouldn't mind that so much if it would just be honest about it and stop trying to claim some greater significance.
There's a way to read this show as being about militarism, psychological trauma, about bonds of love and the awakening of same-sex desire... but instead violence is just a thing people do, some because they're broken and others because they're stupid and sadistic; and desire is just a thing that happens when you touch your nipples together or lick the right parts, no matter what the circumstances. Guess it's lucky all the women with the virus happened to be into other women too, huh.
Ah well. I guess I should've known. Turns out it's just porn after all. But if that's what I'd wanted, I could've found something that didn't drag for three hours.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch one episode each of three different shows to get this thing off the top of my recently-watched list.
