Valvrave the Liberator: Episode 07 Review by Miki

Streaming Allegiance: Crunchyroll
Reconnaissance Report by: Miki
Progress: Episode 7


valvrave promoAfter episode 4, the show was meandering in all kinds of directions. Was it a mech show? Was it just a sci-fi school rom-com? It finally has meshed the two together into what this show should have been from the beginning.

While I understand the need to set up the characters in the show for some of the interpersonal drama that occurs over this span of episodes, there are new glaring plot holes to join the ones that have plagued this show since the beginning. Why is this module an entire city with no adults? Why aren’t the teachers on the module taking charge over the students? How can one guy be so many places at once and orchestrate everything he does?

At the same time, a new pilot is introduced, the mystery of L-Elf deepens, and a brief flash-forward in the show’s chronology at the beginning of episode 7 shows the scope of where the series is headed, and it’s finally got me hooked.

I’ve been really hard on this show, but I think it’s finally starting to pull away from the pack. There are still some unforgiveable mistakes keeping this from excellence, but it’s becoming a better show than the first episode (or the first five) showed it to be. The biggest obstacle to me liking a mech anime is sticking with it long enough to reach this point, getting past the obligatory exposition that 95% of the time has to cover the same exact ground. I thought the obligatory cliffhangers at the end of the previous episodes were cheap tricks to keep viewers wanting to come back, but that’s just the way they chose to stall for time while developing the characters. Now that it’s got me, I hope it doesn’t let me down.

Episode 1 Score: 7.75/10
Episode 4 Score: 7.25/10
Episode 7 Score: 8.00/10