Valvrave The Liberator - 10

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Love, Elections, and Rape? How does Valvrave keep one-upping the craziness?

As I found the time to catch up on the latest batch of episodes, it shouldn't have come as such a surprise that Valvrave took another step towards.....drama?  The series has had its fair share of ups and downs, though none have been as badly planned as the most recent development at the end of the episode.

Before we get to that, we should at least consider the main body of the episode.  An episode that took a break from a skirmish, in favour of bringing the slice-of-life drama to the our attention.  With this came the obvious Saki-Shouko romantic race - session for debate is now open for all shipping fans - and as uninteresting as it is, it was a fine change of tone.  Mecha series have a slice-of-life element to them, intended to compliment the series.  In  that case, Valvrave's accompaniment of over-dramatic plot and characters fits the tone.

Shoko being Shoko and some longing from Saki aside, there's not much to say about most of the episode.  Nothing notable or out of the blue, though Marie getting a few more lines didn't go unnoticed by me.  It did nothing for the quiet eccentric, but I remain hopeful she'll be brought into the story a little more along with a few others.  Even less noticeably was how we were informed of the Dorssian civil dispute arising from the coup d'etat, implying we're in for more dramatic plot twists, more likely to come next season.  I doubt there two remaining episodes will get into great detail of that, seeing as how the ending has left plenty to be covered.

Now about the ending; it crossed a line for me.  I've never considered Valvrave the Liberator a decently written series, but I did give it the benefit of the doubt at times.  Things got silly more than once, however it never got to the point when an attempt at serious drama could feel so out of place.  Without going into detail I'll say this; Shouko deserves better.  More from Saki than Haruto, but most of all from the rather clichéd way she's getting shafted.

I'll leave it at that.  Valvrave has two more episodes for its first cour and my guess is that it'll be aiming for a flashy, dramatic cliffhanger ending.  After this episode, I don't think anything is off the table.