In a way, I’m actually glad to place my foot at the finish line for Venus Versus Virus. It’s been quite a while since I started the series and now I’m finally finished. Needless to say I’m breathless for the wrong reasons, unfortunately.
VVV isn’t a great series; it’s not even one I’d recommend as it doesn’t really leave a strong impression in my mind. The character construction could have been much better, the animation values more consistent (though this improved quite a bit as the series went on), the allusions treated more succinctly, and the events…well, in areas where it could have sped up, it didn’t, in areas needed slowing down, it refused.
It tries hard to appeal to a dual audience, but it doesn’t quite establish what it wishes to be. I thought this might have been more of a shounen series considering the whole “girls with guns” aspect and the sci-fi undertones, but as it progressed, the romance aspect lent to more of a shoujo audience. So it’s one of those give-take series that doesn’t really know what it wishes to be.
I can’t say that VVV didn’t have some trace of legitimacy, because it draws from rather fitting sources in religion as well as gothic undertones. Yet, it never uses those sources in full to embellish or deepen the series in terms of meaning-then again, one could say that it never intended to do such and it’s just for fun. In the same vein, it tries to be cool and keen to the times, sometimes even cute with the event-by-event interactions between characters (namely Sumire and Lucia…even Lola with her obsessions with chocolate, which I found to be cute and worth the laugh). I definitely appreciated some of those interactions in the aftermath. Sometimes they were simply funny and some were just downright cute. The downfall, and I think those of you who have watched the series note, is the over-saturation of drama, almost melodramatic in the sense where it really didn’t need to be, especially since it had pressed itself out as a combination of comedy, romance, action and drama. It didn’t seem well balanced, and gets worse as the series moves forward. Furthermore, the only strong, constructed characters (if you could call them as such) were Lucia and Sumire. Nahashi did have a bit of background and you could certainly note him for that, but Lola and Lyla’s characters were not explored that much.
Let me make one point clear: this series had not a trace of main psychological themes/conflict: absolutely none, and those who might have thought along that route missed the point of the series entirely. Religious allusions, though, were definitely what this series was “trying” to aim for, but didn’t deliver well.
The ending will probably make most people pull their hair out: it’s inconclusive; for others, however, it’s quite sweet in a tragic way, but it doesn’t make a full definitive statement as to the fates of the characters, which is a problem and somewhat of a cop-out either way you look at it.
That stated: moving on to the extended discussion of events and reflections upon episode 12 beneath the cut, as well as an appropriate scan of Lucia and Sumire.
