Valkyria Chronicles looks and feels pretty damn nice. That’s pretty much all I feel like saying and thus ending the post here, but at least for the time being I try to avoid turning this blog into a one man’s /a/. But let’s see here: Cute girls – check. Soldiers – check. Cute soldier girls – check. While Valkyria’s basic setting sounds pretty typical stuff with a small righteous country where everyone is happy facing an invasion by a large and nasty empire, it skillfully dodges some landmines Tytania ambitiously marched right into.
First off, Valkyria doesn’t seem to be taking itself too seriously and is much less ambitious than Tytania. The atmosphere of the first episode is light despite the oncoming invasion but not too carefree. A1 does a great job with the visuals – backgrounds are colorful and lifelike, and character animation leaves little room to complaints. One of the reasons to Tytania’s misery was that it severely lacked technical execution to back up its ambitiousness, but this most likely will not be a problem with Valkyria. But more importantly Valkyria’s bunch of protagonists is several magnitudes more likeable than that of Tytania, with a cute but gutsy soldier girl Alicia and a scatterbrained son-of-a-hero (or something) Welkin. Sort of reminds me of Wil and Allison from Allison to Lillia, a show which blatantly underestimated its audience but got away with it simply thanks to its likeable characters. And granted, without Alicia the show would feel quite flat – her charm brings color and energy onto the screen and makes the viewer willing to forgive possible shortcomings in some other areas. Also already tried and true by Regios (FELLIIII).
She can pump me full of lead any day if you know what I’m saying.
Not having played the game I have little to no idea about how the story and characters will develop – aside from some tank mayhem in episode 2 – but Valkyria Chronicles pulls one hell of a start and in my initial favorites ranks right next to GONZO’s Shangri-la as the most interesting new series of the spring. Also, I award the guys at A1 one internets for animating recoil. Allow me to illustrate.
Blatantly breaking my golden rule of never putting animated .gifs into posts.
But holy shit gais! What just happened? Sure, the bolt doesn’t move and I don’t see a cartridge flying out but still, the gun moves when fired Silly me, it’s right there ejecting to the left. Excuse my fail, I’m used to firing an AK-variant with ejection to the right. Anyway, believe me when I say that in anime this isn’t an everyday’s occurrence. Looks like Alicia follows similar guideline as we Finnish GI’s upon contact with the enemy – two quick shots and evasion (although she should evade before telling her comrade to do so but I’ll let that one slide, she doesn’t look like a scarred frontline veteran to me anyway). So all in all this mechanized infantry jaeger wholeheartedly approves Valkyria Chronicles. Keep it coming A1!