Valkyria Chronicles Anime Full Review
There is a spoiler part in this review. But it is clearly marked at the end, if you do care about spoilers, mind yourself when scrolling down that part and into the comment section
Tons and tons of games exists that depict their version of World War II. It’s hard to deny the joy of being part of the fight in a game or to watch it. And only 2 years ago, april 2008, a video game was released with quiet an interesting view on the second world war.
With colorful water painted inspiring graphics we were shown an alternative version of what a second world war looked like. It was hard to believe such a colorful game with such a cartoon-ish feel would be able to take the theme of war serious. The game wasn’t received too well in the west, not because of the game being bad, but because of the game being forgotten among more hyped titles such as Metal Gear Solid 4.
Those who found the game, I being one of them, can see themselves as lucky to be able to have played this game. And i do recommend playing it.
A year after its release, the game spawned an anime. And with an open mind i went on to watch it.
Review
Story:
The story is in general the same, with only a few changes to make the anime be different from the game. Certain events are new and some old events placed in somewhat different order.
We follow a protagonist named Welkin Gunther, twenty two year old university student, and his fight against the Imperials in the east. It’s very easy to see the reference to the axis in the second world war, and it surely is intended.
In general, the whole universe in Valkyria Chronicles is very similar to our own during the time of the war. Guns, tanks, cities and to some extent clothing is similar (well, i don’t think anyone wore a skirt in battle during the war 
). They even present the oppression of a large group of people, named darcsen in the game and anime, also referred to as “the dark haired people”.
The major difference in “realism” is the valkyrias, spear and shield wearing maidens who shoot blue lazors across the battlefield and they make up for the “anime fighting action” like scenes. Their existence in the series makes it a little more spicy, and mysterious at the same time. And the producers do this well by not overusing the powers of the valkyrias, it makes you respect them for when they actually are on the screen owning stuff.
Also something that is special to the story is Ragnite, a mineral used for powering almost everything; tanks, cars and whatnot. In the game they are even used as a way to heal comrades.
Welkin lives in the fictional country of Gallia, a country stuck between the the fighting of the west and east. It didn’t take too long before the Imperials noticed the amounts of Ragnite that were inside Gallia. And as the Imperials invade Gallia, the anime (and the game) begins.
Presentation:
There isn’t much bad to say about the animation, in fact it’s really well done for an adaptation. They cleverly use 3D to present tanks and vehicles most of the time, while leaving the rest in traditional anime style. The overall presentation is very well done.
Tanks, being a central part of the fighting, look and move realistically across the battlefield. And the sound of everything from the tanks and guns are well done, inf fact many of the sounds comes directly from the game.
Being on the subject of sound, i must say the soundtrack is one of the best I’ve heard so far in an anime. Sure they pretty much stole it from the game in added a few track like the OP’s and ED’s, but once you hear the music during the battles and whatnot you will come to admire the music. If you are one of those people who judge something by its soundtrack (something i do often) you will find this anime interesting.
The OP’s and ED’s reflect the mood in the anime, the first episodes building up the action and having a lot of comedy in between the battles. And about halfway, when the OP’s and ED’s chang, the anime becomes a lot more serious in terms of drama.
Most of the comedy is between Welkin and Alica, the heroine of the series.Welkin usually seems to speak alot as if he is an idiot and Alicia often picks on him for that. Welkin also have ALOT of interest in animals and nature, and his seriousness about is also makes up for some humor. Alicia also seems like a bit of a airhead being anti against Welkin, much more than she was in the game in fact. Wherever that’s comedy or not it’s for you to decide .
Not to ignore other characters in the anime of course and their part in comedy and the story. The game had around 50 characters in total all chooseable by yourself to either be with you in combat or not. In the anime they take some of the characters with them and leave the rest out. And it’s a large pool of of characters to keep track of, but as you view the anime you don’t feel a need too, they’re just part of Squad 7 (Welkin’s Squad).
The humor and action is most of the time separated, but sometimes it makes you wonder how they can pull of a joke in the heat of battle. It’s an anime after all, you’ve got to expect some silliness
Action
Being a war story, fighting is a central part of the story. And the presentation of that is usually good, and as they use 3D to show tanks moving around that is what you mostly will see. The game focused a lot on tactics since it is a turn based game. And as much as i wanted the tactical aspect to continue into the anime, it didn’t. The “tactics” usually are presented before engagement in the anime, and after that its just them running around and shooting until the battle is over.
This isn’t too bad but as a fan of the game, i cannot avoid to downgrade this aspect of the anime. There is no excuse to not be able to show changes in tactic during combat, since for example Code Geass cleverly shows use of tactics (until season 2 at least).
Drama
Sooner or later, people will die in war. The anime does not overuse blood effects upon death, in fact it rarely is shown blood during fighting. The focus is not to show dramatic deaths, but instead on the morals of fighting and the consequences of war. It is inevitable that some characters will suffer a lot from the war, and this picks up about halfway through the anime. Things like reasons for the fighting, fates of characters and the oppression of the darcsens picks up at this time. Character’s personalities change in a realistic way to the things that are happening around them, and it isn’t too hard to imagine how it feels like.
The Parallel Story
Aside from the story about Welkin and Squad 7, we are also shown the story as seen from the Imperial side. This was something that also was used in the game but not near as much, and its an good thing that makes the anime more interesting special for those who have played the game. The story revolves around Selvaria, general and a valkyria in the army serving directly under the prince Maximillian, the one in charge of the conquest of Gallia. It adds something more to the story instead of just portraying the Imperials as bad people, and the parallel story has its own comedy, action and drama.
Summary
As a person who played the game first before the anime i can still highly recommend watching this anime, it’s a very interesting story about an alternative and fictional World War 2. It is well animated and the voice acting is flawless, the only thing i can complain about is the differences between the game and the anime, like certain plot changes and things alike. But aside from that the anime is enjoyable and I’ve watched it several times already. The ending settles things perfectly, it surely does make you want more. And for all i know there is only an upcoming PSP game, Valkyria 2. We can only hope to see an anime adaptation for it soon enough.
SPOILER WARNING, this part will contain spoilers. Read at your own risk.
These are the things that set the game apart from the anime in a bad way.
- The Fate of Selvaria
In the game, her death was more dramatic in a way that she sacrificed herself with no reason left to live. And i couldn’t get that feeling in the anime. And also she made sure that no one in Squad 7 was nearby when she blew herself up, and that meant something.
- The Fate of Isara
Isara’s death was shocking in both the game and in the anime, and there isn’t much to complain about how she died. It was just that in the anime it felt as if Welkin was fighting solely for Alicia’s sake and love. Sure he did this in the game as well, but in fact he fought a lot more to justify the death of Isara and her sacrifices to Squad 7. Also, Welkin was already with Alicia quiet early in the game since Faldio was never really with Squad 7 as he was in the anime. So a lot more focus was on Isara’s fate and how to justify it.
- Faldio being more active in the anime
It made for an interesting change surely, but it could annoy you since Welkin had to focus more on trying to get Alicia from Faldio. And in the end it also took away focus from Isara’s death.
- Welkin’s confession
This came as late as actually in the ending episode of the anime. Something that felt really cliche for me, in the game he confessed before the Imperials charged into the Gallian city with their massive tank. And he then made sure to tell Alicia to not use her powers as a valkyria since it could kill her. Again when this happened so late Isara’s death wasnt the main focus.
- Alicia as a Valkyria and the new opening
This was the only major thing that made me somewhat upset. The OP spoiled the part about Alicia being a Valkyria around 5 episodes before it was announced, it felt somewhat stupid. The OP is amazing in general, its just weird they had to spoil it so early. Also Alicia was exploited a lot more in the anime as a valkyria then in the game, Welkin made sure to stop them from using her early on. And the way Alicia suddenly thought she was an outsider felt silly.
Spoiler End
What do you think about the anime? and if you have played the game and watched the anime, what are your comments on the changes in the plot and what not?
PSP2 for 2010?!
It seems the PSP2 will see the light on 2010 and it will bring some surprises…
Due to the degree of competition for game handhelds, Sony took the plunge and will incorporate PowerVR SGX543 graphics technology for their newest version of the PSP.
Here are some of the consoles that will compete with this PSP2
- Apple iPhone 3G s / 4G = ARM Cortex + PowerVR SGX
- HTC = ARM Cortex + PowerVR
- Microsoft Zune HD = ARM11 + GeForce 6
- Nintendo DS2 = ARM Cortex + GeForce 9
- Nokia platform = ARM11 only
- Palm Pre 2 = ARM Cortex + PowerVR SGX
- RIM BlackBerry = ARM9 only
- Samsung = ARM Cortex + PowerVR SGX
- Sony PSP2 = ARM ? + PowerVR SGX
Expect the PSP2 within the next 12 months.
For a more technical report, here are the details via Gigazine
Pangya Golf artist SeeD passed away!
I play a lot “Pangya Golf” on my PSP and I am almost near the end of the game. Suddenly, I got this terrible news…
Korean music composer esti has reported on his twitter account that SeeD, the art director for the online golf game Pangya has passed away from an illness. SeeD had done a lot of the art in Pangya till sometime later in the middle of Season 3 when most of the art was done by nyanya while SeeD worked on the PSP version of Pangya. He has been working on an unannounced project recently.
SeeD’s website can be seen here, seems he was born in 1981.
Source: Canned Dogs
He was only 28 years old with so much talent. His legacy will survive in the golf course. RIP SeeD
PSP Phone coming soon?!
There are some rumors about Sony producing a PSP phone that can compete with the iPhone…The rumors are getting stronger apparently!
Is Sony finally taking aim at Apple’s iPhone? Over the weekend the Japanese business daily Nikkei reported that Sony plans to form a skunkworks team whose job it will be to design a hybrid video game-cell phone gizmo—one that taps the company’s years of producing PlayStation Portable gaming consoles and Sony-Ericsson handsets. A spokeswoman at Sony wouldn’t confirm whether the report was true, and would only say that executives were considering “various possibilities.” Combining elements of a PSP and handset would seem a “natural process of thinking,” the spokeswoman said, without elaborating.
This comes as a bit of a surprise. CEO Howard Stringer has often talked about Apple as one of a new crop of competitors that also includes Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft. But in the past Sony has made a point of not making me-too products—even when those products go on to become hits. (No surprise there: Its engineers in Japan are too proud of their heritage to create a product that is a knock-off of a competitor’s.) That’s not a bad thing. Consider how many iPhone look-alike handsets have appeared in the past couple of years. None has even come close to the iPhone’s popularity.
The iPhone has shown how a cell phone can also work as a compelling gaming device: Of the 50,000 programs available on the iPhone through the App Store, games account for the biggest chunk, or about a fifth of the offerings. Many are given away for free or sell for just 99 cents. That, no doubt, riles Sony’s gaming division. Sony’s PSP has lagged Nintendo’s DS portable gaming console since the two machines were launched in late 2004. And sales of Apple’s iPhone, which was released in mid-2007, are fast closing the gap with the PSP.
If Sony has the iPhone in its sights, the question facing the Japanese tech giant is: Can it develop a phone that did more and generated more buzz than the iPhone? The jury is out. Sony’s best efforts to end the iPod’s dominance in portable media players can only be rated a mild success, at best. Coming up with software that rivals Apple’s iTunes continues to be Sony’s biggest challenge. (Sony isn’t alone, either.)
Rumors that Sony was working on a PlayStation cell phone first cropped up two years ago when Sony’s engineers filed a patent describing such a gizmo. The Internet rumor mill went into overdrive again in April, after Kazuo Hirai, who had led Sony’s video game division, was named as the head of a broader portfolio of networked products and services. The PlayStation Network is Sony’s biggest success story in online services. Under Hirai, the PlayStation group has rolled out online downloads of music, movies, TV shows, games and created a content platform for developers to create applications and games, sell videos, and post trailers and sneak previews. It’s clearly the model that Sony wants other divisions to emulate.
What’s unclear is why the video game group might have rejected having the PlayStation brand extended to Sony-Ericsson’s products in the past. (Sony says that’s not what happened but it hasn’t offered an explanation, either.) Sony’s gaming team could have been wary of such a product after Nokia’s failed attempt with the N-Gage gaming phone. Cell phone chipmaker Qualcomm also showed off a prototype, dubbed Slingshot, of a clamshell phone with a screen that swiveled around to reveal buttons and a joystick and could hook up to a TV but the concept went nowhere. One of the things that had made a PlayStation phone seem unlikely in the past was that fact that the PSP allow Net voice chat software Skype (over a Wi-Fi network). Still, Skype would seem a small thing to prevent Sony from pushing ahead with a PSP phone.
Source: Business Week
If Sony manage to produce the “PSPPhone”, it should be a pretty interesting competition for the iPhone…Hurry up SONY!
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