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.
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.
