Vividred Operation

Vividred Operation was a weird series to watch. I really enjoyed it's message about friendship. I thought the idea of forgiving and identifying with your enemy was great. The daily life portions of the series were pretty entertaining and it wasn't too bad. It has some decent comedy as well. Then the action scenes started... I was speechless. Not in a good way, mind you, but in a "why the heck am I watching this cheesy *$#^% ?" sort of way. This is another series that really sits well with preteens (I would think) but not for the late teen or older. It has a lot of good, but the bad was just so aweful that my opinion of the series completely dropped. It has good artwork, and it's music is a little cheesy (more cheese). The voice acting is a little cheesy at times (and yet more cheese), but I loved the characters. It really does have a lot of appeal (cheese aside). But, the action scenes! Oh lord help me please! The tone of the series changes when they perform their horribly cheesy (have I used this word enough?) power ups and combining and... who cares. If you can make it through horribly cheesy (have you been counting the use of this word yet?) action scenes then there is a good message in this series. If you can't, then do skip this one. I liked it a little, but the CHEESE was pretty bad in this one. Not a must see, that's for sure.

It is truly unfortunate that an anime that has beautiful action set pieces has to be undermined and ruined due to blatant creepy underage fan-service which is why this anime as a whole has been a big miss despite it's potential to be something truly enjoyable because it certainly started that way. It had a good enjoyable episodic formula for the first 4 episodes but unfortunately it disintegrated into inconsistent mediocrity bombarded by taking a long time to establish it's story, the motivations of the enemy, and the overall world building. Vividred operation focuses on a character by the name of Akane Isshiki who is the granddaughter of an eccentric scientist who is responsible of creating something called the Manifestation engine which is an engine that has solved the world energy crisis by creating energy from the sky. This has created an era of peace around the entire planet but this peace is ultimately disturbed when an unknown alien force known as Alone start to abruptly appear to destroy the Manifestation engine and send the world into chaos. The Alone are these giant creatures that for all intensive purposes come across as bargain bin angels from Evangelion that are literally indestructible through conventional militaristic means. No matter how many jets, tanks, and battleships the government throws at trying to defeat these monstrosities they lack the ability to even do the slightest bit of damage to these creatures. In the meantime, Akane's grandfather Kenjiro performs an experiment that creates a key to give Akane access to the Vivid system which allows her to wear a Palette suit which is a special suit of armor that gives her access to abilities and weapons in order to fight the Alone. I wouldn't really call it armor because it looks like an outfit you'd see women wear if they worked at a maid cafe. However, she doesn't fight the Alone completely by herself. During the experiment of creating the keys Akane's grandfather inadvertently puts his soul inside an otter doll because I guess in the world of anime you have to have a cute silly animal mascot even though it really makes no sense why a scientist would exchange his body with that of a plush animal. There are other keys available (one for each of the main colors) that give her friends different abilities in order to fight the Alone. At least in this anime especially in the first 4 episodes, each episode is dedicated towards one of the female characters getting access to their key so the anime is smart in giving each of the 4 main female characters their spotlight and showcasing their evolving relationship in the overall plot while showcasing their power when they have the ability to transform. By episode 4, all 4 of the female characters have been established and that gives you the remaining the 8 episodes to watch their characters evolve with regards to their own personal character development. Red Vivid Key - Akane Blue Vivid Key - Aoi Green Vivid Key - Saegusa Yellow Vivid Key - Shinomiya Thankfully, the anime does a good job of making the personalities of each of these female characters easily distinguishable and their personalities never feel overbearing or annoying. I think their personalities match well with their overall temperament. Akame is friendly, upbeat, and overly positive. Aoi is shy, timid, but resilient. Saegusa is prideful, stubborn, and brash while Shinomiya is incredibly intelligent, awkward and weird. It leads for an interesting dynamic on how Akane has to develop her friendships with these girls to make full use of their power from their vivid keys. There are other side characters throughout the anime as well but while they have some importance to the story of the actual anime their appearances are so brief, inconsistent, and useless that you'll barely notice when they actually appear on screen except for the Toy Otter scientist and Akame's little sister Momo. With regards to their original power suits the girls have the ability to do damage to the Alone but in their basic forms it simply isn't enough to destroy them. Akane has the power of docking which allows her to combine herself with her friends for an incredibly powerful form that allows them to have an ability to destroy the Alone that their fighting. If Akane combines with Aoi, she has access to this incredibly large hammer that is capable of pulverizing anything that comes in contact with it. If Akane combines with Saegusa, she has access to this gigantic sword that can cut and destroy the monsters with a single slash. If Akane combines with Shinomiya, she has access to this gigantic brutal rail gun that can do an incredible amount of damage (my personal favorite). There is another combined form but you'll have to watch the final battle to see what it really is but it is incredibly devastating because it is used to defeat the final enemy in the anime. The basic transformation sequences are incredibly vivid and beautifully animated but are further enhanced when the combined transformation sequences happen. All the combined transformations look incredibly cool and there is a certain cuteness when the combined transformations happen because both both female characters have to hug and embrace each other and one of them has to kiss the other on the forehead in order for the docking sequence to fully develop because docking can only exist when Akane's friendship with one of the girls is at its absolute strongest. The biggest problem with these combined transformation sequences is that it does showcase brief underage nudity which is just incredibly awkward and unwanted to see. Even though the enemies that the girls fight are nothing extraordinary minus the final battle, all the enemies have the ability to be further enhanced when a girl by the name of Rei fires an arrow into these alien creatures that make them more powerful. This character Rei is another girl in Akame's class and she is being ordered to destroy the Manifestation engine by an omnipotent force in the shape of a crow. Akane and her friends spend a considerable amount of time trying to befriend this girl unbeknownst to them that this girl is the one that is making their lives incredibly difficult with regards to their fight against the alien creatures. Despite the boring look of a lot of the Alone creatures even in their modified forms when they're hit by Rei's arrow the fight scenes involving them are incredibly well done. The action is very hard hitting and incredibly entertaining when the action does happen but unfortunately a lot of the fight scenes don't last very long because when the combined form is about to happen you know the Alone's destruction is coming incredibly quickly. The majority of the alone creatures are animated using heavy CGI which doesn't really give them the most intricate design. Despite the lackluster look of a lot of the Alone, the action in this anime is probably the best part of this entire anime. The anime ultimately has a huge problem trying to keep it's focus because it jumps around too much with regards to what it wants to present us the viewer. It establishes a very formulaic approach in the first 4 episodes with having a new alone to fight and a new female fighter being established every episode but after episode 4 it kind of goes all over the place. Episode 5 and 6 are focused on character development with some really good humor being established during the beach episode in episode 6. Episodes 7 to 12 are kind of all over the place and a little scatterbrained because the anime struggles with when to deal with action and when to deal with proper character development. The fights against the Alone are never as prevalent as what they were in the first four episodes and you can't help but make the comparison that the design and the tactics of the alien creatures are eerily similar to what the angels would do in Evangelion. Even in the final few episodes of the anime despite the lack of action there i…

A magical girl show with yuri elements. I think the art and animation are consistently good and it follows a simple story where the girls transform to fight monsters called Alone that threaten humanity and do some gay stuff there and there. The show also contains a lot of ass shots. A lot of budget definitely went into that. The story isnt that good and all they talk about is the power of friendship. However I think it is a funny and enjoyable show. The characters are also nice and cute. Rewatching this made me rethink how many things I have missed and forgot when I watch it back then, especially all the yuri sences.

I would said that Vividred Operation is definitely worth checking out, but it will definitely have you scratching your head as to what sort of Anime it is trying to be. Vividred Operation feels like an odd version of Strike Witches, basically loli flying around in outfits that their parents would murder them in real life if they wore them trying to stop some alien invasion of sorts. The only thing is Strike Witches KNOWS its audience should be primarily teen males interested in naughty outfits and some drama for their age group. Vividred Operation appeals to the male demo with the clothes but the drama is mostly light and feels like it appeals it a much younger crowd, almost to the point of annoying your older viewer. That is why I place it at a 7. The fight scenes were definitely very beautifully drawn and the sci-fi element was enough to keep me interested. Also, some nice plot twists, especially near the end to keep you in it if just to see how everything plays out. All in all, worth the time, only 12 episodes so you don't have too commit too much, but it seems all demo's will be disappointed in one way or the other.

This anime is devoid of logic. And not in a funny way. It might be feel-good enjoyment if you are able to shut down your brain entirely. Where other shows at least invent some ridiculous reason to make sense of things or character decisions, this anime just does not. More than once it is established how something does or does not work, only to entirely forget about and break its own rules a few episodes later. It is the kind of anime that is only worth it for the fanservice but even that is only occasionally and poorly executed. Lots of missed opportunities and very repetitive. Which is weird since the western release is even uncensored. The ecchi tag does not make sense to me, there is nothing ecchi here, just some mild fanservice. It is closer to a mahou shoujo parody than a serious anime. All of that being said, I did complete it and I can see how someone might like it for lighthearted feel-good enjoyment. Personally, I think it was somewhat of a waste of time.

If you like seeing little girl panty shots, then this is the anime for you. I'm serious. It's called Vividred Operation, but its codename should be "Vividbutt Operation", because all it has to operate on are the panty shots. OK, maybe if you don't mind like 200 panty shots you can watch this as a hybrid magical girl / Gundam anime... who am I kidding here? Either you are a panty shot monster or not. Most people aren't. Even I'm not one. So the bulk of the show is them fighting magical girl battles, but with robots (and panty shots). I can only imagine that the reason they win all their fights is that the enemy is subjected to all the panty shots too. That's one way to bring down a villain!