- The battle of the sexes may seem bad on Earth, but in a space colony far, far away, things are even worse. Men and women haven t seen each other for decades, so they don’t just argue in the future – they go straight for each other’s throats. Enter lowly Hibiki, a little guy with big dreams of adventure, who finds himself in the middle of a firefight after stowing away in a top secret mech
The battle of the sexes may seem bad on Earth, but in a space colony far, far away, things are even worse. Men and women haven’t seen each other for decades, so they don’t just argue in the future – they go straight for each other’s throats. Enter lowly Hibiki, a little guy with big dreams of adventure, who finds himself in the middle of a firefight after stowing away in a top secret mech designed to purge the galaxy of estrogen! But as the gender war rages on, a mysterious crystal weapon forever links their starships – and their destinies. Time is running out as men and women explore their sexual differences, struggle to suppress raging hormones, and fight to survive the threat of a deadly common foe!
The Complete 26 Episode TV Series!
Season 1 – Vandread
1. Boy Meets Girl
2. And… I’ve Lost My Way
3. This is the Path I Choose to Live
4. I Want to Know More About You
5. Sweet Temptation
6. What a Wonderful World
7. Easy Life
8. Impossible!
9. More Barbaric Than Heaven
10. White Love
11. Together…
12. They Don’t Care About Us
13. To Feel the Fire
Season 2 – Vandread The Second Stage
1. Red Angel
2. Be My Baby
3. Blossoming Path
4. Everything
5. Somedays
6. Original Smile
7. Kiss on My Cheek
8. Reality
9. Embrace All
10. Easy Come, Easy Go
11. Paradise
12. Himegoto
13. Trust
Stills from Vandread (Click for larger image)
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Buy “Vandread: The Complete Series” For Only $27.99
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March 16, 2010
#1
Vandread is an interesting example of the giant robo genre of japanese animation with a little bit of harem comedy added in for a bit of spice.
March 16, 2010
#2
After watching the first season, while I was left feeling happy with the quality of the series for what I paid, the shallowness of Vandread makes me happy I didn’t pay a huge amount for it.
Plot: 7/10
Women are an alien species: We men already know this much already. Vandread takes what we know a step further, really making men and women aliens by putting them on different planets.
At the start of the series, the men of Taraak and women of Mejere were about to start a war. The men got fed up of a group of women space pirates and decided to put a stop to them, unleashing a new battleship against them. However, much to the dismay of the men, the launch of the battleship went badly, the women space pirates stealing the ship.
During all this, a young 3rd class worker, Hibiki, decided to sneak onto the battleship to steal a Vanguard (male mecha) part, ending up getting stuck on board when it launched. He soon found himself thrown in the brig by the men, just before the women attacked.
After the women took over the ship, the men decided to destroy it rather than let the women have it by firing missiles at the ship. This resulted in the ship *somehow* blocking the missiles and getting sent to a distant part of the galaxy. The men and women on board the battleship then had to start working together since they soon discovered a new alien race that wants to “harvest” humans…
—-
The plot did have a lot of potential. If taken seriously, a plot involving a war of the sexes could have been amazing… If turned into a comedy, it had the potential to be insanely funny. Sadly, however, Vandread turned out to be light-hearted, shallow and not very funny.
The plot does not develop much at all once the Nirvana (the battleship mentioned previously) gets warped to a distant part of the galaxy. The crew face battles against their new alien enemy, known only as “harvesters”, go down to the mostly deserted planets they pass for supplies, fight with each other, play with each other… Episodic stuff.
It’s really quite disappointing that the series was taken in such a light-hearted direction when it would’ve worked much better as a more adult series.
Characters: 7.5/10
The characters, while not exactly being deep or unique, saved the show from being bad.
The main character of Vandread is Hibiki, a young male who wants to prove himself. He’s simple minded, direct, bad tempered… The type of lead you see in shounen series on a regular basis. Truth be told, he isn’t very interesting, with no background details revealed outside of him being a 3rd class citizen; no depth.
Dita, the female lead, was much more likeable. She insists on calling Hibiki “Mr. Alien”, following him around everywhere due to being curious about the male gender and generally annoying the hell out of Hibiki. She was the most funny character in the first season and by far my favourite, if only for being a redhead.
The other 2 female main characters, Jura and Meia, were less interesting. Jura is your stereotypical flirtatious woman and Meia is your stereotypical military type, hiding her emotions and commanding the others in battle. Meia had the most development (not that that’s saying much…) in the first series since her past has been revealed, but the sequence about her past wasn’t designed very well and had little to no impact on me.
The other 3 characters I found to be interesting are male: Bart, a wimpy guy who ended up steering the ship since only a male can, the male doctor Duero and Rabat, a Han Solo type. Rabat will hopefully get fleshed out in the 2nd series, him being one of the few intriguing characters.
Art/Animation: 9/10
For a show that aired back in 2000, Vandread most certainly looks impressive. It was a rather nice surprise to discover that the the DVDs are in widescreen format.
There was no obvious corner cutting on the art and animation side during the first season; everything looked smooth and nice to look at. The colours made everything look bright and eye catching.
CG is used for all of the space battles in Vandread. I’m sure it looked amazing back when Vandread originally aired, but the CG sections haven’t survived the test of time and don’t impress in this day and age. I didn’t really like the speed the CG battles went at since I found it hard to follow what was going on a lot of time… I suppose the idea was to make the CG battles as fast-paced as possible in order to impress more.
Overall, Vandread looks excellent for its age.
Sound: 5/10
The soundtrack was more distracting than anything. The person who created the soundtrack deserves to be shot… That’s all there is to say really.
The OP/ED were pretty good. Nothing too memorable but the themes made watching the OP/ED animation more enjoyable.
As ever with Japanese voice acting, the performances were mostly excellent. There was no noticeable bad performances.
Total: 7.3/10
Enjoyable yet disappointing, Vandread is a great show to watch to pass time. Just don’t go into it expecting to see the best anime of all time.
March 16, 2010
#3
Purchased this item as a gift for my son & he has watched it 7 times now! He says it is the greatest. Thank you amazon for having so many choices. Ordering with ease and never having to fight a crowd is wonderful!
March 16, 2010
#4
This is the Vandread Release or actually it is Funimation rereleasing the Pioneer/Genon Badly encoded versions. Personally I do not have any issues with the story or characters because this happens to be one of my favorite anime series Right next Gundam and Macros (yes I did say Gundam & Macross, your gapping mouths can now close). My issues with this series is poor handling or production done by the american distributors ( Pioneer/Genon). The Series was made in 2000 based on 1999 video standards witch means everything is made for 4:3 televisions. Kind of how cartoon network and ScFy broadcasts all of its programing ( the only exception to that is on SW:CW series is the only Hidef or widescreen show actually broadcast in a widescreen format because lucasarts threatened lawsuits against them But I degrees. This release just like the previous 2 releases of this series is poorly encoded come on get rid of the damn black bars on top and bottom of the screen this is a 16:9 presentation on widescreen TVs in 2010 not 4:3 TVs in 2000. Now all of the Video poor processing done by Genon and ADV that Funimation had purchased will be corrected nut usually not until that series gets its blu-ray treatment by funimation. Course you relies that Funimation’s ability to reprocess the original film rolls into Hidef digital material is one of the reasons that company has survived the downturn for Anime in the US because Funimation does its own Processing, Production and Duplication in-house The funimation menu included on the disc is better quality then the video shown on the disc in the first place), the competitors didn’t & are now bankrupt. Final word on this release if you want another copy of your Genon Vandread release that saves you some shelf space get this copy, if however you want higher quality reprocessing of the product that will play nicely on HDTV wait for Funimation’s Blu-Ray release of this series next year, then you will see a big difference.
March 16, 2010
#5
It is often in the world of anime that the viewer has no clue what is really the backdrop of the existing conflict until several episodes into the series, or in some extreme cases not until halfway through the series or, worse, until the blatant end. The opening of the first episode of Vandread says more than enough about the background: someone took a bunch of colonists headed away from Earth at high speed, divided them up between male and female, put them on separate planets, and forgot to tell them to play nice with their neighbors. Oops.
Fast forward seventy years, and the war of the sexes is in full swing between Tarak (male) and Majeir (female). Divided and petty in their own societies, both sides have really only one unifying goal: flatten the other side. Even still, there are some people here and there who don’t believe in the war so much as they believe in doing what they want to do, like interplanetary pirates or a factory worker who thinks he can pilot the machines he has only built since he was young. And when one such male factory worker gets caught on a ship being attacked by female pirates, instant gender-bending conflict is a given. Throw in a stoic and observant male medical officer and a ‘politically saavy’ pilot officer into the fray, and it goes from ‘conflict’ to ‘this isn’t going to end well for someone’. Vandread plays every ounce and angle of that conflict for every bit that it is worth, and manages to play it completely without the air of a horrid 90′s sitcom, unlike some other anime that have gone there.
-x-x- SPOILER WARNING -x-x-
And then, there is the reality of the conflict. Towards the end of the first half, an observant viewer would notice that there is something rather unusual about the other colonies they come across, and these strange automated enemies that keep attacking the ship and crew. Know how the colonists fled Earth almost a century ago? They fled for a very good reason, and herein the title of this review comes into play. The colonists (as well as dozens of other colony groups) were allowed to leave by the regime on Earth so that they could escape the hostile environs the planet had become, and would later be harvested for body parts to be used as replacements for the failing bodies of the inhabitants of Earth. Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Battlestar Galactica in a very macabre fashion, though for viewing sensibility the actual proceeds of the harvest are never really shown. Less is the better on that note.
The elitists of Earth believe they are entitled to the body parts of their colonists to sustain their lives theoretically forever. Thankfully, the Pirates step down the Jolly Roger and pick up their guns, ready and willing to stick it to the harvesting fleets from Earth. One ship of mismatched crazies, however, is not ample to flatten an automated mechanized invasion and harvesting fleet, so they go about picking up some heavier firepower from people they meet along the way home, and then try to convince their respective home planets that something evil this way comes. After much wrangling (and use of a whip in one case O.o) the battles lines are drawn and things get brutal quickly.
I’ll leave the rest to your viewing pleasure.
-x-x- END SPOILERS -x-x-
Vandread is a bit unusual, in that it makes use of conspicuous CGI for the space combat scenes, but everything else is standard anime cel-shading. The first time or two you see this, it can be a bit jarring, but the battles are executed with flair on the part of the production staff and the cel-shading is not at odds with the CGI, but rather the CGI provides a very good compliment to the anime as a whole.
The storyline starts off on the anti-side of boy meets girl, and ends up asking more than one existential question by the end. Vandread comes off as one of those rare series that you can watch for the basic entertainment value of drama, gender conflict, or gratuitous space combat, or you can read into it as far as you want and come out with more than a few social-political questions that need better answers nowadays (or else fear that something this twisted becomes cold, hard reality for all of us, not just in a show).
For anyone who can stomach mecha anime as a whole, I highly recommend it.