Ecchi has never had a big presence in the wide niche genre Yuri, or Shoujo Ai as it’s more accurately called. Yuri has always been a genre that I’ve always leaned toward the “erotic” side than the actual “romance” one, only because most anime tend to be too sugarcoated with soap opera quality stories. That doesn’t mean that there can’t be any good ones. I think yuri fans deserve better than Valkyrie Drive Mermaid if they want their “dumb ecchi anime.”
If I had to describe the quality of Valkyrie Drive Mermaid in a very short statement, it would be, “Not even trying.” What does it not bother to try? It is an entertaining ecchi anime. The boobs, butts, curves, kissing and tripping all amount to pure nothingness. None pack any charm or sensibility that generally makes ecchi anime exciting escapism. Whether it be from really poor comedic timing or the characters being incredibly stale and formulaic, upon further examination, the latter seems to be the biggest culprit than the former.
It’s not even that none of the characters have any profound characterization that makes them stale. It’s the fact that their personalities, created by their dialogue and actions, are completely devoid of any humanity to them. A few of them even top my list of the worst characters of 2015. These characters are Mamori Tokonome and Mirei Shikishima. Mamori being the biggest crux of them all, is by far one of the most annoying characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing and listening to. It isn’t just the bad, shrill voice performance by Mikako Izawa that makes her insufferable, but also how completely one-note her character is. All of the characters suffer from being one-note, but she takes the cake from her just being a character. Mirei kisses to gain power and be mocked because her name is the same as “virgin.” When something isn’t that clever the first time does not mean it will be funnier five more times.
Mirei Shikishima does do more than our damsel Mamori. However, her development is predictable when she is introduced as a silent character. You could replace her with a cardboard cutout of her, and it wouldn’t make much of a difference; that is how wooden her archetype is. The other characters, besides our two main ones, fall into similar territory. Our only male character in the anime, without spoiling anything (but you can probably guess anyway.), has one twist that comes off as so laughably random. Nothing can distinguish that character other than that noticeable moment before or afterward. The only character that was only semi-intriguing was Meifon Sakura because (1) she is voiced by Yurika Kubo, so I could imagine Kayochin from Love Live doing the things Meifon is doing and (2) she has some charisma that feels genuine.
Setting aside the other characters that are too forgettable even to bother reminiscing, the art is somewhat interesting to look at. On the one hand, the animation feels as though Studio Arms was going on a lower budget than what they usually work with. As much as the girls' gorgeous art designs are nice to look at, I don’t think there was enough material to go around to make these designs blossom. The first episode alone had way more dumb ecchi service than all of the episodes combined. Instead, we are forced to sit through the most contrived story that one can get from an ecchi anime; hell Ikkitosen at least had interesting lore to it that made it intriguing. Valkyrie Drive Mermaid has little to no meat to its story that garners any praise.
Indeed, I don’t watch many yuri anime that come out once or twice a year. I have not seen the great classics like Oniisama e…, Maria-sama ga Miteru, or even Yuru Yuri to appreciate the genre fully. Valkyrie Drive Mermaid seems like one that openly insults the genre. It comes across as, “Well, let’s just put a Shoujo-Ai element to this so that we can attract this niche audience to make money off of.” No, not even putting an ecchi spin on it will somehow make it somewhat different or unique when there is nothing to it. It is lazy implementation as one can get when watching this rubbish. As much as that one episode with the colossal naked girl at least gave me a single ray of sunshine in the mix, that was still not enough after it was over.
You know you've done goofed when you can’t entice me, the self-proclaimed ecchi connoisseur, with boobs and butts. Describing Valkyrie Drive Mermaid in one word is “soulless.” Soulless in every sense of the word. Boobs and butts that have no soul in them might as well not be boobs and butts at all.
Grade: D-