An examination of gender politics and cultural divisions played out as a
Space Opera Mecha Show. No, really.
In the far-flung future, there are a pair of colony worlds, Tarraku and Mejeiru, locked in a constant state of cold war.
Tarraku is the Orwellian, industrial, militarized planet of men. All food is synthetic, flavorless pills. All public gatherings are related to sports, marching, and being manly. Everyone wears a unifom. Babies are made by merging your genes with those of your buddies in a factory, and they are raised by dedicated orphanages/schools.
Mejeiru is the beautiful but impractical planet of women. All things are polished and shiny. All military uniforms are
excessively flattering. Appearances are all important. The citizenry form couples, of the lesbian top/bottom variety, called the Oma and Fama in the native vernacular (probably derived from
homme and
femme), and make babies by merging two eggs and implanting them in the Fama.
Naturally, the two worlds hate each other.
The story follows a young man named Hibiki, a factory worker from Tarraku who wants more than anything to be a mecha pilot. When his attempt to steal a mecha get him thrown into the brig, things seem to be looking down.
When the ship gets attacked by Space Pirates, and Hibiki, a
Bishonen doctor, a cowardly officer, and a malfunctioning robot wind up as prisoners on a ship full of women,
things couldn't possibly get any worse.
That's when the Pirates find themselves stranded on the far end of the galaxy, with a mysterious alien force out to kill them.
But, as a result of some serious
Plot Technology, the pirate vessel is merged with the men's starship, and one of the Vanguard mecha and three of the pirates' Dread fighters are altered. The Vanguard, piloted by Hibiki, can combine with any of the three Dreads into a form with amazing abilities.
All of the sudden, Hibiki is the focus of
three girls with different personalities whom all want to try and "merge" with him. Of course, none of them have any concept of heterosexuality, and Hibiki doesn't even seem to know about
any sexuality. They clumsily rediscover their biological imperatives as they fight a mysterious shadow enemy across the universe.
The three main girls, the pilots of the Dreads, are a variation on
The Three Faces Of Eve principle with a military twist.
- Dita, a child-like, bubbly Genki Girl, who is obsessed with aliens. She calls Hibiki Uchujin-san (literaly Mr. Spaceman). She can't cook too well, but then, Hibiki was raised on synthetic food pellets.
- Meia, The Stoic leader of the squadron, is a consummate fighter pilot and professional officer. She acts as a mother figure, despite her lack of domesticity.
- Jura is vain, voluptuous, and self-absorbed. She has a lover, Barnette, who is exasperated at Jura's attention towards Hibiki.
The characteristics of the merged Vandread mecha are unique metaphors for Hibiki's relationship with each girl.
- Vandread Dita is a large, powerful humanoid mecha armed with a pair of beam cannons. When they merge, Dita loses her seat and winds up in Hibiki's lap.
- Vandread Meia is a fighter that resembles a robotic bird. It's extremely fast and manueverable. Hibiki rides in her lap.
- Vandread Jura is a bizarre, slow fighter, with a collection of remote pods, that can fire beams at the enemy, and project an energy shield around an entire planet if needs be. The cockpit has a round control console with mobile chairs, meaning Hibiki and Jura are constantly jockeying with each other for control of the ship.
- In addition to all this, Super Vandread (aka Vandread Pyoro), formed by combining with all three Dreads at once, is a massive humanoid mecha with the abilities of all three Vandreads It can also mix their abilities, such as combining Vandread Dita's cannons and Jura's shields into a Wave Motion Gun. It's even got enough chairs and control stations for everyone. See what happens when we all work together?
Most of the crew fit dual roles fit for both a madcap romantic comedy and a military story.
The Captain is also a wise grandmother. The medical technician is also a naughty
lolicon nurse. The chief engineer is a
Meganekko and a
Gadgeteer Genius, and the communications officer is a friendly, pregnant housewife type (the doctor gets to deliver his first baby, after studying up on what a woman's reproductive system looks like). The first officer, BC, is essentially the
Harem Nanny, and the Quartermaster Gascogne is like a wise
Cool Big Sis.
Over time, the three men and the enormous gang of women come to an understanding, and they work together to unravel the bigger mysteries of the universe, like the origin of their robotic enemies and the fate of the other human colonies. A very funny and enjoyable dose of
Martian Successor Nadesico meets
Love Hina meets
Star Trek Voyager.
This show contains examples of:
- An Aesop - Something about life being worth fighting for.
- Beehive Barrier (Super Vandread aka Vandread Pyoro], not to mention the Nirvana. Also Vandread Jura when NOT using it's planetary shield.
- Bridge Bunnies - Belvedere Coco, Celtic Midori, Amarone Slantheav.
- Cannot Spit It Out - Hibiki and Dita have a slight communication problem.
- Conspicuous CG - All the space scenes were done with computer graphics, mixing animation in surprisingly well.
- Cosplay Otaku Girl - One of the Bridge Bunnies wears a costume even while on duty. But that's just to protect her from nasty boy germs.
- Disney Death - Gascogne.
- Do They Know Its Christmas Time - With the pirate's captain even dressing up as Santa.
- Dropped A Bridget On Him
- Empathy Pet - Misty Cornwell's holographic blog, Q-chan.
- Evil Knock Offs
- Eyes Always Shut - Ezra
- First Girl Wins
- Gainaxing
- Gattaca Babies - Genetic engineering lets two males have a baby who's born in a factory, while with two females, one of them carries the engineered baby to term in the normal style.
- Gender Bender - Telling who would be a spoiler, of course. ( It's BC) And if you read the spoiler without seeing the show, you now have anti-zen: knowledge without understanding.
- Gondor Calls For Aid (Actually, they came unbidden)
- Holding Back The Phlebotinum (Hibiki, just combine with someone already and get it over with!)
- Humans Are Bastards: Partially used. As it turns out: Earth is responsible for sending out the Harvest Fleets.
- Humongous Mecha
- Real Robot - the unmodified ships-of-the-line are not too implausible from a space opera standpoint.
- Super Robot - the titular Vandreads, on the other hand...
- Combining Mecha - yep, the Vandreads again.
- Transforming Mecha - The bad guys. The final version of the titular Vandread also can transform.
- Incendiary Exponent
- Last Minute Hookup - Literally.
- Littlest Cancer Patient - Shirley
- Macross Missile Massacre
- Nerd Glasses - worn by the chief engineer,Meganekko Parfait
- Nerds Are Sexy - Parfait, who even starts hooking up with the Bishonen doctor by the end
- Non Human Sidekick - Pyoro, Utan.
- Onee Sama - Meia. She literally gets called that way by Misty, causing her to break her stoic persona.
- One Gender Race - This is accomplished through technology, however. Genetically, they're still human.
- The Password Is Always Swordfish - Subverted, who the heck sets the password as the voice of a baby's cry?
- It is also played straight with the password used to protect the systems of the Nirvana.
- The Promise - Hibiki's promise to visit Dita's room.
- Rescued From The Scrappy Heap (Bart)
- Robot Buddy - Pyoro
- Schoolgirl Lesbians - Well, space pirate lesbians, anyway.
- Then again, there is only one depicted lesbian pair - and half of that one is after Hibiki as well. Yup, this is still very much a seinen fantasy.
- Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale - The Nirvana gets transported to another galaxy, at minimum a few hundred thousand lightyears away. The crew state the estimated length of the journey home is 270 days.
- Averted: B.C. states that the ship was transported to another nebula, not another galaxy. It's never stated how many lightyears they are from home.
- Sitch Sexuality - Most of the women hate men as the enemy, but as the series progresses, many of them seem to have been in same-sex relationships due to a lack of options rather than preference. It also seems as though none of the men on Tarraku pair off. (This is, after all, a seinen fantasy show, not a shonen-ai vehicle.)
- Soylent Green - you'll know it when you see it.
- Space Opera
- Telepathic Spacemen
- The Stoic - Meia
- Shut Up Hannibal
- Stripperiffic
- Somewhat avoided, actually, given that the suits worn by the pirates for ground ops are quite monstrous.
- Tron Lines
- Twelve Episode Anime - Only not really, since the second season picks up right where the first left off and provides the real conclusion.
- The Unwanted Harem - and not just the pilots are chasing Hibiki, after a while
- Verbal Tic-pyoro
- We Will Use Micros In The Future - Despite being set far in the future, one episode had the characters finding an ancient VCR tape. It was the work of moments to find a working player.
- Partially justified (not to mention Lampshaded) by the backstory Part of the Nirvana is a piece of the original colony ship from Earth; it's then perfectly reasonable for the Nirvana to have a player for a tape that the ship had left Earth with
- ...even though, by the time the show was made, videotapes were all but extinct in Japan??
- Tell that to Exabyte users - especially considering what Exabytes are used for currently :)
- Whip It Good - BC during her fight with Liz.
