Hypersexualized and exaggerated, VD: Mermaid was created by MARVELOUS, in an initiative by and for women.

It is no mystery that Japan has many of the rarest things in the world: talking toilets, vending machines for oral sex and television contests with zoophilic fetishes, among many others.

The extravagant Japanese market, too, has given rise to hundreds of unique projects, as is our case today: Valkyrie Drive (VD). The gigantic project was born from the production company Marvelous! Entertainment, which consists of three parts: Bhikkhuni, a game for PS Vita, Siren, a social game for Android and iOS that was already discontinued and Mermaid, a 12 episode anime.

The main grace? VD is a 100% women-owned project.

All the official VD material sung and designed by women, including their opening and ending songs, are part of a multi-platform project to promote feminism in Japanese industry. Only a few staff members are men, but all production decisions were made under the supervision of the creators of the project.

The first two projects of VD reached a significant lesbian visibility in the international field. Siren, co-founded by Susie Lee & Katrina Hess, stopped working on April 4, 2017 and was focused primarily on the online dating market that neither Tinder nor other apps managed to reach for some lesbians. Despite having been a brand 100% composed by women and that the game reached international visibility as one of the first lesbian-themed social games to reach a "top 10" in the most downloaded apps of Japan in 2016, the creators had Who close his company for lack of money.
Bhikkhuni, the PS Vita game, had moderate sales success in Japan and its impact was minimal in the US gaming sphere. The console PS Vita was not a sales success in South America, reason why the arrival of this game has been partial.

But the true jewel of VD is Mermaid, the animé that best represents the argument of the three stories.
Mermaid deals with a shy girl named Mamori, who awakens on an artificial island, populated only by women who have been infected by the strange "Virus A" (Armed Virus), a strange disease that empowers women. The females are separated into two classes: Extars, girls who become excited when they become different types of weapons or "Arms", and Liberators, who are capable of handling these weapons and provoke the transformation of the Extars through a process called Drive, Which basically consists of foreplay or graphic foreplay on camera. These girls are imprisoned on these islands until one of the government-appointed supervisors decides that they are able to reintegrate into society. A delight of argument.

In the first chapter, Mamori discovers that she is an Extar and that is why she is on the island, where she finds herself almost immediately with Mirei Shikishima, an extremely powerful Liberator who decides to protect her and transforms her into her companion. The story follows the adventures of Mamori and Mirei to escape the island and is full of action, exaggerated attributes and totally free nudes.

Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid is a rampant sexuality carousel with superb and exaggerated animation and a self-discovery story full of metaphors from the life of a teenage lesbian in Japan.
And many, but many naked. If you search enough, on the web you can find the versions with and without censorship.

https://pousta.com/valkyrie-drive-mermaid-soft-porn-feminista-anime/

Mind you, they confused the Mobage VD: Siren with an actual dating App called simply Siren but still, this is quite the interpretation on the series.

Can't help but think that if the production staff were mostly men, then this article would be very different :(
buuuuuuut yeah, hooray for sexy lesbian! I want another anime but not a sequel of the first one.

I won't give up the hope for a sequel.

Oh no... and for... Valkyrie... Drive... AHAH...
ahah... ah...

Is the feminist cancer is trying to reach for anime now?

flips posted:

Is the feminist cancer is trying to reach for anime now?

It is already doing it for quite a bit. Everything is sexist and misogynist in jp as well after all. Not to mention jps patriarchy.

Is the feminist cancer is trying to reach for anime now?

A fucking ass-load of Het-Harem anime have the whole "Accidental Pervert" trope where a guy inevitably touches a girl lewdly and the girl responds with harshly assaulting the guy either with their bare-hands or with the first object she can use as a weapon. So I would say it unfortunately already has.

last edited at May 23, 2017 6:49PM

Also the Valkyrie Drive anime was never good to begin with, So I'm not really bothered.

Thanks for the translation of the article.

I still haven't gotten around to watching this though...

Is the feminist cancer is trying to reach for anime now?

A fucking ass-load of Het-Harem anime have the whole "Accidental Pervert" trope where a guy inevitably touches a girl lewdly and the girl responds with harshly assaulting the guy either with their bare-hands or with the first object she can use as a weapon. So I would say it unfortunately already has.
The guys in those anime deserves that. And more. And the staff doing those too. But is all for nothing, because the girl will always fall for the guy no matter that. Taken to the logical extreme in shitsurakuen.

Anyways, Valkyrie Drive Mermaid is fine and fun. Sometimes even cute. But the excess of lewdness is kinda annoying to be honest.
I'm for sure want to try the game when it comes to Steam. Maybe in the future they will combine both storylines and characters.

"Is ___ feminist?" doesn't really mean anything for a lot of reasons. There's a lot of different feminist ideologies. So you first have to answer what style of feminism you mean. Then make the argument for why a work in your mind qualifies as that style of feminism. Tho even there I take issue. "Is a book third wave feminist?" doesn't really mean anything to me still. You can say that the book advocates third wave feminism, and to be fair I'd say death of the author means it doesn't really matter whether that was the intent of the author when writing that work, but no piece of media will advocate a particular philosophy flawlessly. At least, that's my opinion.

I think people make these claims because they want to feel validated in enjoying the things they do. I think everyone does it. Feminists. Centrists. Anti-SJWs. Republicans. For all of us we have philosophies as lenses through which we view the world around us. That influences how we interpret a particular work.

I think if you want to view Valkyrie Drive through a feminist lens tho you'd be better suited learning about the feminist movement in Japan first and foremost. Plus the way this article starts off comes off really racist! Not a great start for making your point.

I do think there are some cool sex positive things in Valkyrie Drive. I do know that there are a lot of women, including queer women who either liked the series or liked things about the series. I'm one of those women. I also have criticisms of the series. Such is life. I don't think I'd say it's feminist or anti-feminist. It's just softcore porn with a plot, and it has appeal outside the target demographic for which it was made.

Also calling feminism a cancer is kinda... distasteful, to put it kindly. Plus calling the accidental pervert trope a symptom of feminism is a laugh riot. I think a great many, perhaps even the majority, of people who self-identify as feminists would be glad to see that trope gone as it's just an excuse for groan inducing fanservice and embarrassment of the female characters.

You're right, the author of the article is framing Valkyrie Drive as a feminist work simply by the fact women are the protagonists, the huge focus on the way their relationships are developed and how men have zero impact on the plot. Under that lens, I can agree with their assertion that if it goes a bit into hyperbolic with its praise is fundamentally right. And yes, the staff has gone multiple times on record to acknowledge that the majority of the fanbase are women (with a significant amount of queer women as well)

As an aside, is extremely unlikely that the author was trying consciously to be racist -In fact I doubt it even crossed by their minds they might come off as racist- See, the article was written in Latin America and singling out Japan with curious trivia about its customs is not done to call superiority or whatever, but simply to highlight the cultural differences between the two regions. For the average latin american the concept of Valkyrie Drive -let alone being broadcasted as any other series- is unthinkable. So is more to put into context the nature of the series.

Wait have they said the majority of the fanbase is women? I saw Lady Lady's voice actresses say they had a lot of women fans and got fanmail from a surprising amount of them but nothing suggesting the women were in the majority of fans. That's awesome if true.

Also I don't think racism has to be deliberate to still be shitty, but people have a disturbing fixation on "Japan is so weiiiird and wackyyyyyyy" whenever they talk about anything from or in Japan and its really obnoxious.

last edited at May 24, 2017 1:06AM

Yes, Kaneko mentioned on one of the live tweets he did last year. I've also heard from people that went to Comiket on 2016 that all the fanworks made for Valkyrie Drive were done by women and it was common to find middle aged women buying those goodies and excitedly talking about the characters and their relationships.

I can see why it can be obnoxious but then again, for the average person their only contact with Japanese culture is anime and the clickbait articles about how wacky Japan is that flood the net nowadays. Is similar to how some people still think Mexico is a huge town with cactii everywhere.

last edited at May 24, 2017 1:09AM

That's rad. That makes me happy.

Indeed is pretty awesome.

Kaneko also seemed to enjoy interacting with the fans over twitter, following the most prolific fanartists, dropping some commentary on fanart he liked and I'd wager the cover for the boxset was inspired by a fanartist.

VivianGames posted:

"Is ___ feminist?" doesn't really mean anything for a lot of reasons. There's a lot of different feminist ideologies. So you first have to answer what style of feminism you mean.

I agree with you, but the problem is majority of those feminist don't bother specifying which feminist ideology they talk about. They just say feminism, because there is only 1 definition of feminism. Equality for women. So no wonder nobody ever specify which feminism they talk about since people spreading this ideology usually don't bother to do it themselves. At this point both sides just assume we talk about the same thing aka the feminism ideology that is the most common right now.

At this point both sides just assume we talk about the same thing aka the feminism ideology that is the most common right now.

Which would be...

At this point both sides just assume we talk about the same thing aka the feminism ideology that is the most common right now.

Which would be...

Who can say?

last edited at May 24, 2017 11:21AM

A5PECT posted:

At this point both sides just assume we talk about the same thing aka the feminism ideology that is the most common right now.

Which would be...

Only feminism I ever heard about is everything is sexist and misogynist. Men are lower being and should have no rights and all the power in the world should be given to women. Men are scum and assholes by default and they should do everything every women tells them. They should get ride of their toxic masculinity because it is oppressive to women. And women are oppressed in every single aspect of their life by male patriarchy that day and night work to make life of every women on earth into hell and we need to fight it. Not to mention habit of making up facts or twisting stuff in order to fit their agenda, like saying that women get paid less on average than men which is not true. Also of course ignoring or dismissing any problems or inequalities men have because they are privilege sex. So basically equality for women, means to them more rights even if the stuff is already equal between sexes and they have no problem demanding more and making it unequal for men, because they are women so they deserve it and men had their fun already. At least all of it apply to feminist activist in America that focus on America, because those are the ones I only heard about, probably since they seems to be the loudest.

LOL, I was right!

Nezchan posted:

LOL, I was right!

Except they are real and not made up, unless you don't use internet.

That's seriously the most /r/TheRedPill thing I've seen all day. Thanks for the laugh.

Nezchan posted:

That's seriously the most /r/TheRedPill thing I've seen all day. Thanks for the laugh.

Thanks to know you are just as dishonest and ignorant as always.

All right now, this is all fun but cool it on the insults please.

All right now, this is all fun but cool it on the insults please.

C'mon. You can't associate someone with Red Pillers and then call no insults. That's just not fair.