What the fuck happened?

T-G: VALKYRIE DRIVE: Bhikkhuni’s plot centers around Liberators and their supporters, Extars. What was the impetus behind giving VALKYRIE DRIVE this kind of hierarchy?

Takaki: The SENRAN KAGURA games focus on battle and communication, with each team containing five characters on average, and in more recent games we’ve added many more characters with even livelier personalities, but that has also meant that the focus on each character becomes shorter and less-personal. I (and also other SENRAN KAGURA fans too) have gradually come to feel sorry about this aspect.

So when developing VALKYRIE DRIVE, I decided to create a new way of thinking when creating the story drama by describing more about the relationships and the minds of the characters. In Japan, it is a very popular trope to have a cast of ‘Top’ and ‘Bottom’ for a pair of characters and the thought of the character in the ‘bottom’ role taking initiative in the battle scenes was a very exciting proposition.

There was one idea that never came to fruition but sadly I couldn’t make it happen, but I wanted to make it possible that each pairing of characters, rather than the defaults, would each have a unique weapon mode, but due to their being seven characters, that would mean many unique and possible combinations to contend with outside of the defaults.

That explains a lot.

http://www.tech-gaming.com/qa-with-takaki/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmACkLO3Dg8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcxhygNSoCE

June 20th

If you own SV on steam, you get an additional 25% off for the complete edition (with all the DLC)

Also Takaki revealed some stuff his company is working on

During the interview, Takaki mentioned that other than Shinobi Refle: Senran Kagura, the studio has another title for Switch in development that makes use of the system’s functionalities. This other title will be a packaged release, unlike Shinobi Refle, which is an digital-only release, and will also make use of Switch’s HD rumble functionality.

Additionally, Honey∞Parade Games is working on two PlayStation 4 titles. The first title may be able to be released this season. The second title is relatively big and is planned for the next term.

Other than those, several small things and mid-scale titles are also moving forward, which Takaki says should all be present next term. There’s a traditional smartphone title, and about two new and existing TV anime he’s working on. Takaki wants to announce all of his upcoming titles collectively around the summer, and is currently in preparation.

SK7 for next year, probably more Valkyrie Drive in the future

Really nice start but I can't help to dread the upcoming drama.

This was wonderful.

Is not like I'm a lesbian or anything!

Keep saying that girl

last edited at May 26, 2017 2:54PM

To be fair is mostly due the internet giving a lot of extremists a place where they can spout their own twisted ideals about what feminism should be and more often than not, attack all of those who don't blindly agree with them, "poisoning the well" so to speak and creating an equal extremist opposition in response.

last edited at May 24, 2017 1:18PM

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Nope, just that it will release in the summer.

It took a while but finally Senran Kagura's Daidouji went full lesbo on Peach Beach Splash. A small story focused on her and Rin was added and it goes like this

Dai knows from the start that Miss R is Rin, >The whole thing kicks off with them in a hot springs, with Rin in her Miss R outfit and refusing to take it off, so Dai decides to fight her to get her naked
Then they basically take the fight all over the place with Ikaruga, Murakumo, and Murasaki joining at various points, they get into an argument over speed vs. power, then Dai says that Rin's her most important person, and Rin says Dai is too at first, until Dai asks the million dollar question
"Including Kiriya?"
Then Rin kinda spazzes out, they keep fighting, and when Rin won't give a definite answer, Dai decides to go challenge Kiriya to a match and whoever wins is Rin's most important person.
The ending is Rin trying desperately to stop her.

The author has mentioned they are animators by trade, so is expected.

That was so cute. Well worth the wait.

Final version of the new pages

https://twitter.com/Chocobaguette/status/863434096793485312

No love confessions but the love for another girl is the motivation of at least three characters. Four if you count the main antagonist

No hypnosis.

Bhikkhuni will be released on Steam this summer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUwblHRYaFc

http://www.pegi.info/en/index/global_id/505/?searchString=57616

PEGI has rated Nurse Love Addiction for Vita

New pages are up on /u/

So I had the chance to see the dub and I'm pretty impressed. I don't usually get dubs, but I was pleasantly surprised at the fact the subs weren't just a transcription of the script but rather, the same subs used for the japanese track (even for the newly translated specials) that makes interesting to see what were the changes taken by the ADR director.

https://twitter.com/figsoku_b/status/854236937485336576

The specials are dubbed

https://my.mixtape.moe/xcxtfs.webm

Man, what a time to be alive.

And going by comments on other sites, his work has gotten a lot darker now if not full blown edgy.