Anime Review: Venus versus Virus

Let Maine begin aside establishing something: I've grown displeased the typical "action" anime. The story is predictable, the antagonists are dumb, the protagonists are dumber, and every fight devolves into attempt-calling spam wars complete with exploding buildings, incomprehensible philosophical banter, and plenty of pillars to crash done. Thus, IT was to my capital surprise and delight that Venus versus Virus is no of these things.

Venus versus Virus is a 12-episode anime series produced by Studio Hibari that originally airy in 2007. The basic premise is thus: Evil beings known as "viruses," formed when the soul (referred to as "fragment") of a human is drained out of them, can only be seen by predestinate people who posses "the sight." The viruses are drawn to the power of these gifted people. To stop them, the aloof, revolver-and-eye-patch-sporting Lucia, along with her adoptive engender Nahashi and chocolate-obsessed helper Laura, forms the eponymous Venus Vanguard to hunt down the viruses.

During such a virus hunt, Lucia runs into Sumire, a shy and somewhat naive flooding school pupil, who gains the sight when she pricks her finger on a piece of Lucia's jewellery. While nerve-wracking to defend Sumire, the high shoal student is collision by one and only of Lucia's anti-virus bullets, and suddenly overpowers and easily dispatches the virus in front passing out. Nahashi's examination reveals that Sumire possesses a sort of "berserker-mode" triggered by anti-computer virus weapons, giving her tremendous physical strong suit and see to it over elemental magic. There is just unmatched drawback – in berserker mode, she is unable to discover ally from foe.

Ostensibly, this is a shonen series, which is strange, because there are outlying few action scenes than you'd typically carry for this genre. This is probably to the serial' credit, though, because while the animation is decent for the more everyday scenes, the fulfi sequences are sadly lacking visually. The fight animations flavor embarrassing and unexciting, and the scenes generally look back like they were animated six or 7 years past.

This is inferior of a trouble than you might think, however, because Venus versus Virus International Relations and Security Network't really about over-the-crowning fight scenes at all – IT's about the family relationship between Lucia and Sumire. Both characters get an unprecedented amount of fictitious character growing for a series of this length. Much of the early story is spent on Sumire, as she overcomes her fear of combat-ready viruses and her unfitness to mastery her berserker state. Towards the centre, Lucia's backstory is explored, and she begins to open to Sumire, allowing her cold, unfeeling disposition to change to one of more open friendship and trust. This is all highly-developed in a way that is both believable and well paced – in that location were no trice character changes that seemed contrived for the narrative.

Venus versus Virus is not without its flaws, however. Possibly the well-nig obvious of these is Lucia's special ability; her left eye, normally obscure under her eye patch, is capable of great power once exposed. How this power works is never explained, though, and it tends to do whatever is ready to hand to resolve an instalment's diagram. It also takes some time for the "action" portion of the patch to undergo moving; the real villains fundament the Viruses put on't even start out to reveal themselves until nearly halfway done the series in episode five.

Despite being brimful of bad-guy clichés (in truth, does absolutely all villain have to laugh maniacally?), Lucif – the primary antagonist of the series – generally manages to appear intelligent. I say "appear" here because the anime rarely shows anything from the viewpoint of the villains, and when information technology does information technology's only for a few short proceedings where whatsoever hints English hawthorn be dropped to Lucif's overall plan. This actually works to the benefit of the show, though – another series would likely just present the whole unrighteous plan outright, and the viewer would be left to scream at the television for the next three episodes while the protagonists plod densely through and through obvious clues only to – surprise! – fall right into the trap in any event.

Maybe my biggest problem with Virus is that the end is quite abrupt. The series ends in the middle of the fourth-year fight down, without any sort of epilogue. I suppose the writers were trying to be writer close to information technology, and to some extent they succeeded. Still, it was improbably frustrating to not start out any assort of closure.

Bottom Billet: All told, Venus versus Virus isn't the greatest anime serial ever to last up on my desk, but it's ease pleasant. There are sure things IT could stimulate done better, but overall, the believable, well-written characters and story outbalance the series' more cosmetic shortcomings.

Recommendation: If you're looking for a more unlawful, part-driven action anime, you would equal remiss to not look into Venus versus Computer virus. Honorable don't be too surprised if the animation leaves something to atomic number 4 desired.

Disdain his hopes to the contrary, Josh Viel is quite certain that if he ever had to wear an eye plot, the story behind it would non involve "I have awesome superpowers."

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/anime-review-venus-versus-virus/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/anime-review-venus-versus-virus/