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Ikusa Otome ValkyrieSynopsisThe warrior maiden Valkyrie was a soldier of justice and tore through swaths of demons in the great wars of control over Midgard. Or, at least she did, until she was betrayed by her own mistress Freya. Without her ring and her weapons, proud Valkyrie is reduced to being the sex slave of the demons she once fought. Can she rescue her protege Skuld? Can she get out from under the relentless advances of the demons? (Can we say, "Not a chance?") ReviewSince Cool Devices, there has been what amounts to an arms race between hentai artists to produce progressively grosser and grosser titles. This, apparently, is one of them. It seems as if, somewhere in Japan, someone decided to make a checklist of everything I absolutely despise about this genre, and made an anime out of it. Let's see: Extreme ultra-violence? Check. Does the storyline make up for this? Well, apart from a scene or two where Valkyrie and Skuld still have their powers and slice and dice some demons, it simply devolves into an interminable cascade of forced sex. At one point Valkyrie is gang-raped by soldiers of an entire town while in a pillory (!), while the demons rant and rave about their "new world order". I can't imagine this being an allegory for something greater -- even if it were, I wouldn't want to give the creators credit. If anything, the egregious misuse of Norse mythology here is enough to make my Norse ancestors cry for vengeance. You can't even inject any light-heartedness into this at all. The only ones enjoying themselves are the demons (and arguably, Freya, because just as in mythology, she'll screw anything). When the "great victory" of the piece is having Valkyrie screw Skuld instead of the demons, you know we are in deep trouble. Yeah, I know, a Lolita character named Skuld. We should be fortunate she looks nothing like the Ah My Goddess character except in body type, well, except for the obvious factor that neither Skuld has finished puberty yet. Animation-wise, it's about average ... for a hentai title. Valkyrie's body design is somewhat dodgy (her breasts often look malformed) and the camera angles often feature skewed perspective. It's very telling that the best animated scenes involve the obviously underage girl -- this sort of gives you an idea about the mindset of the creators here. Oh yeah, and the tentacle monsters as always look remarkably stupid, though frankly, they're almost a respite from the fat, huge, disgusting-looking demons. The music is completely a non-factor ... if anything, the only thing that kept me from losing my dinner was the censorship mosaics. You get the point. Ikusa Otome Valkyrie is highly offensive material, and I frankly don't want to know the audience this is aimed at. I know it's supposed to be fantasy, but this is a fantasy no one needs to be watching. At least it's not snuff and it's not guro ... but that's cold consolation, and you should never have to leave a show with that mindset. This has a SEQUEL?!? — Carlos/Giancarla Ross Recommended Audience: ADULTS ONLY. Explicit violence, explicit sex, this is stuff that would offend most audiences in general. Version(s) Viewed: raw Japanese Review Status: Full (2/2) Ikusa Otome Valkyrie © 2004 |
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