Manga / Venus Versus Virus

Lucia & Sumire

One day middle school student Sumire Takahana meets the mysterious Lucia Nahashi, who is part of a group called Venus Vanguard. From that day on, Sumire is drawn into Lucia's ongoing battles with "Viruses", evil spirits that snatch people's souls away. Sumire discovers that she not only has the power to see the Virus, but that she can turn into a mindless living antibody, called "Berserker mode"—an ability that Lucia finds highly useful for her purposes. It's needless to say that these events turn Sumire's life totally upside down.

Venus Versus Virus started as a manga series by Atsushi Suzumi, which originally ran from 2005 to 2008 (first in Dengeki Comic Gao! for most of its run, before finishing in Dengeki Daioh after Gao! was discontinued). It was adapted into an anime series by Studio Hibari in 2007 (with Lucia voiced by Ayahi Takagaki and Sumire voiced by Minori Chihara). Even though it's filled with action and supernatural mystery, the focus of the series is on the relationship between Sumire and Lucia in the face of the threats they encounter.

---

Venus Versus Virus contains examples of:

• Action Girl: Lucia and Sumire.
• Action Prologue: The beginning of the anime.
• Added Alliterative Appeal
• A God Am I: Aion thinks of himself as this. In the anime, Lucif does.
• All Love Is Unrequited: This appears to be the case with Lucia to Sumire. Though the ending of the manga is just vague enough to suggest that it's no longer the case.
• Artificial Human: In the anime, Lucif's henchmen, including Yoshiki.
• Art Evolution:
  • Compare the oneshot to the actual manga.
  • Also, during volume 6, the characters look (somewhat) noticeably rounder and cleaner.
• Bait-and-Switch Lesbians:
  • Combined with Bait-and-Switch Credits. The opening to the anime shows Lucia and Sumire lying on the grass◊ with Intertwined Fingers. The girls are not quite so lovey-dovey in the anime itself, except...
  • In the manga there are more over-tones, it's even dubbed a Yuri series, but it's still subtle.
• Battle Aura: Sumire's doesn't glow, but it has enough heat to vaporize the snow in a radius around her feet.
• Because Destiny Says So: A lot of things, according to Lucif. Also, maybe Lucia and Sumire's friendship, since they are the key and the gate. Sumire has Lilith's powers, which didn't awaken until she touched Lilith's brooch.
• Big Bad: Aion in the manga, Lucif in the anime.
• Bishie Sparkle: In the anime, Yoshiki does this toward Nene and Riku.
• Blessed with Suck: Lucia and Sumire sometimes feel this way about having Vision.
• Blow You Away: Sumire displays this in the last episode of the anime.
• Body Horror: When a human becomes a Virus.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Sumire in the final volume of the manga, when she buys into Aion's whole spiel about the True World being a paradise for all.
• Comic-Book Time: Averted. The characters appearances change over the time of the manga, especially for Riku. He had a noticeable growth spurt.
• Cooldown Hug:
  • Sumire does this literally to Lucia on one occasion.
  • Perhaps this is also what happens during Lucia and Sumire's final showdown in the anime.
• Creepy Twins: Lola and Layla have some of this when they're together.
• Dark Action Girl: Ruka.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Lucia's definitely qualifies.
• Deflector Shields:
  • Used extensively by Guy.
  • A variation is also used to contain Sumire when she's in her Berserker mode.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Lucia, and she begins to warm up to Sumire as the series progresses.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: When Sumire goes into berserk mode, all the time in the anime and at first in the manga, she acts as if she wants to rape Lucia.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: Lucia, Ruka, Lola, and Layla.
• Emotionless Girl: Layla, especially in the anime. Lucia often behaves like this too.
• Enemy Within
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: In the anime, Nahashi, Lucif, Sonoka, Ruka, Guy, and Yoshiki all die, and the fates of Lucia and Sumire aren't made clear, at least not without going into Wild Mass Guessing territory. But in the manga, the only ones who die at the end are Aion and Sonoka.
• Eyepatch of Power: Lucia has one over her left eye.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Or at least arrange flowers.
• Gecko Ending: In the anime, leaving the viewer with a game of "guess what the symbols mean".
• Girls with Guns
• God: Aion is considered to be the God of the True World he and Sonoka are trying to make.
• God of Evil: This is the the protagonists describe Aion as, although he claims the True World is beyond the concepts of good and evil.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: Nahashi's glasses give him The Vision, as he lacks it normally.
• Grand Theft Me: In the manga, Aion possesses Lucif and Yoshiki, and Sonoka possesses Ruka.
• The Gunslinger: Lucia, although she loads her gun with blanks containing Virus-antidote.
• Gun Twirling: Sumire tries this once in the anime. She ends up dropping her gun.
• Happily Ever After: The manga and presumably the anime.
• The Heartless: When people with Vision lose their Fragments, they turn into Viruses.
• Heel–Face Turn: In the anime, Yoshiki betrays Lucif to save Sumire, and in the manga Ruka betrays Sonoka to get even for Sonoka treating her like a disposable minion.
• Hellish Pupils: Viruses, plus Berserk!Sumire and Lucif, have cross-shaped pupils.
• Homoerotic Subtext: There are hints between Lucia and Sumire, as pointed out by a few characters.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Sumire, at regular intervals.
• "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight: Lucia to Sumire in the finale of the anime, and to a lesser extent at the end of the manga.
• Intertwined Fingers: Sumire and Lucia do this often, starting in the opening credits.
• Interrupted Suicide: Lucif. This is the way Lilith, Lucia's mom, dies in manga. It's a Tear Jerker and The Reveal.
• Invisible to Normals: Only those with Vision can see Viruses.
• Keep It Foreign: A joke early in the anime revolves around saying the phrase "I love you" in English, Chinese, and Russian. In the English dub, the languages are changed to Japanese, Spanish, and Russian.
• Kissing Cousins: Riku, Sumire's younger male cousin, has a crush on her.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Near the end of the anime, after Lucif kidnaps Sumire, no other characters remember Sumire, besides Lucia, Lola, and the villains.
• Left Hanging: The fates of Lucia and Sumire in the anime.
• Limited Wardrobe: Lucia usually wears the same dress. In fact, most of the characters have little variety in their wardrobes, except Sumire who usually wears something new each volume.
• Limp and Livid: Sumire in her Berserker mode.
• The Lost Lenore: It's all but stated that Nahashi had feelings for Lilith, and though they were never in a relationship, it's clear he's still mourning her death.
• Luminescent Blush: When Lucia gets one, it's really telling.
• Magic Skirt: For all the jumping around Sumire does in a miniskirt, it keeps her covered.
• Magnetic Medium: The Virus prefers to attack people who see it.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Lucia's name means "light," and her parents are named Lucif and Lilith, although those ones are also kind of silly.
  • Sumire Takahana keeps flowers around to lend cheer to Lucia's environment. For those non-Japanese speakers, hana means "flower." The name Sumire is also Japanese for "violet".
• More than Mind Control: The way Aion prefers to manipulate others.
• Older Than They Look: In the anime, Lola and Layla are ageless artificial humans, so they're much older than Lucia and Sumire. In the manga, they're just preteen girls with psychic powers.
• Onee-sama: Lucia gets addressed this way by Sumire's classmates.
• "On the Next Episode of..." Catch-Phrase: "I'll kill you gently! Teehee!" (As said by Lola.)
• Our Ghosts Are Different: In the anime, Lola summons the ghosts of Nahashi and Lilith to restrain Lucif from attacking Sumire and Lucia. They fall under types 2 and 7 and look like blue-white versions of themselves.
• Our Souls Are Different: Those with Vision have a Fragment of the True World within their souls.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The Virus often has the appearance of zombies.
• Parental Abandonment: Lucia's mother is dead and her father is the big bad in the anime, or possessed by Aion, the actual main villain, in the manga. Sumire's parents are rarely mentioned, but they are alive and well.
• Perpetual Frowner: Layla, and Lucia to an extent.
• Poor Communication Kills: In the anime, Lucia tries to kill Yoshiki, even though he was in the midst of a Heel–Face Turn. Lucif finishes the job.
• Psycho Lesbian:
  • Sumire, in Berserker mode! It's a little bit subtle as she is violent with the Viruses and more sexual (in a rape sort of way) with Lucia, as at one point she says they should "become one."
  • Also, Lucia appears to be this in the anime, when she stakes Sumire's boyfriend.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Ruka, and Sumire in her Berserker form.
• Religion of Evil: Aion and his followers are described as being a cult and responsible for many of the problems involving the Viruses, and their religions has shades of Gnosticism.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Lucia prefers a revolver over the half-automatic gun Sumire uses, although Sumire also uses a revolver in the manga.
• Say It with Hearts: Ruka is fond of doing this.
• Screw Destiny: Lucia and Sumire reject their destinies as the "Gate" and "Key" to the True World at the end of the manga.
• Sex as Rite-of-Passage: One of Sumire's friends, Mika, exclaims how Sumire has "become a woman" after she thinks Sumire lost her virginity during the spring.
• Shower of Angst: Lucia has a few.
• Smoking Is Cool: Lucia, but only in the manga. Subverted, as of Volume 7 where Sumire finally convinces her to quit.
• Sparkling Stream of Tears
• Sweet Tooth: Lola loves chocolate, whereas her twin sister Layla prefers konpeito.
• Took a Level in Badass: Automatically Sumire when she enters Berserk mode. Even more so in the manga, where she can activate it whenever she wants and control herself.
• Too Long; Didn't Dub: The English translations of the manga keep the Japanese honorifics and terms such as "sempai/kohai".
• Unbalanced By Rival's Kid: Refreshingly averted—Nahashi cares for Lucia like his own daughter, and at the end of the manga she even refers to him as her true father.
• Vague Age: For the most part, Lucia is depicted as being older than Sumire, but she is apparently only one year older (two years in the anime).
• Whole Episode Flashback: Chapter twenty-two in the manga and episode seven in the anime, focusing on Nahashi's past with Lucia's parents.
• Yandere: In the manga, Layla, when she's not being an emotionless girl. Although it's not romantic, she has a creepy obsession with "becoming one" with Lola.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In the anime, Lucif knocks off his minions, apparently For the Evulz, and in the manga Sonoka does this to Guy after Yoshiki desouled him.
• Younger Than They Look: Lucia is only fifteen years old, although she looks like she is at least eighteen. It doesn't help that she smokes...

---