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Plot Synopsis

When Hibiki Tokai accepts a dare to steal the vanguard mecha he helped produce, he becomes involved in a story much greater than the conflict of men versus women in the Mejere system. Interacting with the strange reactor/energy unit called the Pexis, he and three Mejere pilots of the starship Nirvana become the only warning of the impending attack of a race of machines on their home solar system.

Credits: Norsehound

Story & Characters

Vandread is Yet Another Space Harem show, but with some goofy twists.

The setup: humanity has left the Earth behind and gone to the stars. One colonisation ship with most of the crew in hibernation found two more or less inhabitable planets, called Tarak and Mejale. For some obscure and never explained reason, the caretaker crew buried the hibernating colonists on Tarak (in functioning hibernation capsules -- they can be revived) and divided the planets up between them. The guys got Tarak, the ladies went to Mejale. I really wish we would have been given the reason for that particular brainstorm, but the show simply treats it as a given.

Decades later the two planets are thriving with males and females, both genders now reproducing by genetic manipulation (and in case of the males artifial wombs, one supposes), and having forbidden all knowledge that at one time, males and females lived together.
Relations are strained, with both sides building armies and navies to fight the other. Propaganda is typical of war times; males for example are lead to believe the female fiends will eat them.

Here begins the series. The males have refitted the original colony ship, complete with a Mysterious Power Source called Paksis, as the flagship of their navy. A factory worker called Hibiki Tokai sneaks aboard on a dare. During the comissioning ceremonies, female pirates attack and capture the ship (with Hibiki assaulted by an ufo-crazy female ditz named Dita), causing the male crew to abandon ship before the own forces blow it up.

The males Hibiki, doctor Duero and rich kid Bart are for various reasons still on board, interacting with the female pirates when the Tarak men launch their missiles, reasoning that if they can not have the ship, nobody will. Just before they impact the Paksis glows, and the ship finds itself thrown halfway across the galaxy in seconds.

Now they must get home again. There are however problems. There is an enemy in space, attacking the human planets, and the crew is a target as well. The ship and its mecha have been overhauled and changed by the Paksis, and effective defences require one male mecha piloted by Hibiki and a female fighter (usually piloted by Dita) to willingly cooperate and merge like the Transformers of old. The ship herself can only be moved if Bart is at the controls, but the girls control all other systems like life support and the fighter bays. To survive, the males and females will have to work together and start to trust one another ...

Rating

8 (good)

Art

The art and the character designs are beautiful, only getting better as the series progresses. Colors are vibrant, and all characters have their own quirks and personality oddities. Most of the girls are drawn and clothed fan-servicy, but there is no actual nudity in this series.

CGI is used plentiful but also extremely well integrated, so that it is often difficult to tell what was hand drawn and what was CGI. The climactic battle at the end of the second season is especially good, with hundreds of seperate mecha and fighters all slugging it out while dozens of larger ships hang back and fire their cannons, without the viewer getting so confused that he loses an understanding of what is happening in the battle.

Combining the male lead mecha with a female fighter gets you: a Giant Robot. It's a different one depending on who the male mecha combines with; with Ditas fighter it is something that could show up in Gundam, with the fighter of the Nirvanas chief pilot Meia it turns into a bird and there is also a mechanical crab (to the initial disillusion of female pilot Jura). Most of the CGI budget seems to have gone into these three signature mecha, and it shows.

In all, the art is excellent and sets a standard many newer shows do not reach.

Rating

8 (good)

Sound

The sound is of excellent quality. The voice actors sound like they had fun when voicing the characters, and it shows in the quality.

The background music, and the opening and closing credit will not win awards, but are no slouches either. They are all solid companions for a solid show.

The special effects are on par with the rest of the sound, solid.

Rating

8 (good)

Presentation

Vandread has two TV seasons called first stage and second stage, merging flawlessly. It is a space battle romp with some humor and lots of character work. But the main theme is trust. Trust in the other gender, trust in your friends, but even or more important, trust in yourself.

The real story starts with the males in the brig, fearing to be butchered and served as dinner. Through 26 episodes and two seasons, they make their place on board the ship, which is renamed Nirvana, and the females go from gnashing their teeth as they are forced to tolerate the males, to trusting them, and then to depending on them. In the end, the males and females of the crew will walk through fire for each other if necessary.

On the way there are many humorous and dramatic interludes where the male and female groups learn about each other, and the characters learn about each other personally, changing them for the better. As a Mejale who stayed behind noted when she met the girls on the Nirvana again, they had all changed, fighting together naturally and being far more at ease with themselves as well.

Lest I forget about the enemy: he is powerful, terrible, disgusting, and until the last two episodes faceless, always fighting with their mecha and ships. As a counterpoint to the community that has grown on board the Nirvana, he is always alone and does not trust anyone.
As an enemy, it is a bit of a cardboard cutout, Evil without redeeming qualities. But that is of little consequence, for Vandread is not about him, but about the crew of the Nirvana.

Rating

8 (good)

Final Verdict

8.00 (good)

Reviewed by ptptn, 2y 43wk ago