8 December 2013: I guess the Valvrave school festival Shouko promised is cancelled
Don't worry, Shouko, it'll get worse.
I was pretty annoyed with this season of Kakumeiki Valvrave until episode 21. It was as lousy as ever, but the last few episodes had also been sort of boring. That's a really bad combination, but I'm pleased to say episode 21 brought back the good kind of Valvrave lousiness: Suffering and stupidity. [P.S. Spoilers herein abound.]
Nope, even worse than that.
Is it spoilers to say people died? [Spoilers: Lots of people died.] Is it spoilers to reveal that the only people who died were characters I didn't care about? [Spoilers: Nobody I cared about died.] Wait, that's not true. I care about Saki. She also died, but she got better. [Spoilers: Most of the people who died didn't get better.]
It was sort of funny watching these students slowly swimming away.
Gripping war melodramas frequently invoke as a main theme the futility of fighting. Kakumeiki Valvrave, on the other hand, doesn't so much condemn violence as it celebrates (possibly inadvertently?) the wages of idiocy. I guess it's entertaining in a perverse sort of way. (Not in the perverse sort of way Saki's rape in season one was entertaining.) You know how some shows distress their viewers by having bad things happen to good people? (Baseball anime, I'm looking in your direction.) Yeah, in Valvrave, bad things happen to despicable people.
All things considered, the Best Girl is taking this rather well.
To be fair, not all the Valvrave characters are despicable. Most are merely irrelevant or unsympathetic or too shallow to inspire interest. I think at this point the only ones I have any interest in are Saki (because she has the best hair) and the useless trainee teacher (because of HOCCHAN). Speaking of Saki, it's pretty fucked up all them all just left her behind a few episodes ago and nobody seemed to remember or care.
You're no Lacus Clyne.
I can't by any stretch of the imagination recommend Kakumeiki Valvrave to anyone who hasn't already tried watching it, and there's a good chance most of the viewers still following the show have wildly divergent opinions about its qualities. Nevertheless, by remaining so bad that it's good, I don't entirely feel as if I've wasted time that could have been better spent re-watching The iDOLM@STER TV. You can thank Saki's hair, HOCCHAN, and Haruka DeTomaso Pantera for that, Sunrise.
