Running time: 23 minutes
Number of episodes: 13
Vintage: 2000-10-03 to 2000-12-19
Age rating: Teenagers (May contain bloody violence, bad language, nudity)
Genres: Adventure, Comedy, Mecha, Science Fiction, Shounen
Production: Media Factory
Production Studio: Gonzo
Source: Anime News Network
The Good: Cheap-o 3D animation fighting scenes actually look alright.
The Bad: It’s not good at any of the genres it fits into.
Status: Dropped
My impressions and review:
Sigh… I just don’t get why shows like these are rated so highly among anime fans.
Vandread is a silly mecha show that isn’t worth your time unless you have nothing else to do and you’re completely bored out of your mind. Basically, its a pitch towards something to watch, rather than something to appreciate and to remember. In some cases that’s alright, but the meat of the show is just pain and suffering and hardly has any entertainment value.
The plot is silly on purpose, but it quickly spills over into retardation and boredom. It starts off with men living alone on one planet while women live on another. They’re sworn mortal enemies because of an incident long ago. However, there’s a runaway group of women that fled their home planet because of issues and they end up meeting a few men that were abandoned in space on a ship. This opens up a renewed mutual relationship between men and women and puts doubt as to why many years ago humanity fled from Earth and decided to stay away from the opposite sex.
A lot of the ideas stem from women being superficial, showing off and constantly aware of their outer appearance. Men on the other hand are grunts and feed off simplistic things such as honor and strength. It’s a little harem and a bit ecchi whenever it wants to be, but for the most part the logical stern of events you’d expect from a ship full of women and three men doesn’t play out exactly like you’d expect.
A cheerful idiot, an overly horny blonde, a tomboy squad leader, and a skinny shouta as the lead character are just some of the ingredients of this mess. I have to give credit where credit is due since I actually found the skillful perverted male doctor’s tactics to feel up the women to be funny; too bad it’s not used more often. Everybody else just didn’t impress me at all.
The initial gimmick is that men and women are separated. Things like how they reproduce and strive on their own are explained a little bit, but that’s hardly the focus. There’s benefits of getting back together due to a new threat that affects both sides. Beyond that, however, the show is terrible. Just when you think the silliness will produce a few good laughs you’ll be bombarded with terrible psuedo-serious drama. It’s very difficult to take the characters seriously when everything is wrapped in really crappy story.
There’s nothing memorable or earth-shatteringly new in this bad mecha show and the high praise it gets is beyond absurd.
I think Vandread is an average mecha show. It’s not a good show, but it’s not too bad either. Vandread has 2 seasons and some of the details of why they were separated is in the 2nd season.
I think at the time Vandread came out, it was quite good compared to other anime that came out during the same time. I remember liking it quite a lot back then. I might not like it as much now. But that’s probably because I’m comparing it to current anime, which is not fair.
… uuuyr right ryuuu …
And its very average considering the time of 3D in which this anime was produced, it’s not bad really.