o the all-male inhabitants of the planet Tarak, women are creatures of legend, the subject of horrific fables that cast them as hideous ogre-like monsters. Two generations of lab-created male children have never seen a woman, and have been raised to fight their female counterparts on the planet Mejale. As the TV series Vandread begins, the generation ship that first brought settlers to Tarak has been refurbished and is ready to be sent into battle. But unbeknownst to the politicians and strategists who believe the Ikazuchi's launch heralds a new age of male domination, there's a stowaway on board. After backing himself into a corner with an idle boast, "third-class citizen" Hibiki Tokai slips onto the Ikazuchi to steal a "Vanguard," a military mecha suit, to prove himself to his peers.
Caught on board shortly after the Ikazuchi's launch, Hibiki is imprisoned and promised a slow, painful execution. But the ship is quickly taken over by female pirates, who eject most of the men. Only Hibiki, the young doctor Duero McFile, and spineless bootlicker Bart Garsus (who was hiding under a table while his fellow men headed into combat) are still on board when an explosion causes the ship's crystal power source to mutate. The Ikazuchi and the pirate ship are linked by strands of crystal and tossed across the galaxy, where they're attacked by a high-tech, unfamiliar alien force. The pirates quickly find out that some of the composite ship's reconfigured systems, including the unconventional navigation/piloting device and the mutated Vanguards, can be operated only by males, so they quickly form a partnership with their captives.
Hibiki, who wavers between despair, manic pride, a burning desire for self-affirmation, and panic over his certainty that the women mean to eat his internal organs, discovers that he can operate one of the new Vanguards. Further, his mecha can merge with the female pirates' small "Dread" ships and take on new configurations. Since the resulting "Vandreads" seem to be the only effective weapon against the new enemy, it's fairly obvious that Hibiki and his female captors are going to have to learn to live with each other.
Lewd, lascivious and generally likeable
The initial episodes of Vandread take a complex and intriguing idea and stuff it into a very small and familiar pigeonhole—the fan-service comedy. The science-fiction concept of gender-exclusive societies that regard each other as alien has been done before, but it packs a solid conceptual punch whenever it's done well. Vandread just doesn't do enough to exploit the conceit. The show rushes through the opening setup, glossing over the stressful first-contact scenes and focusing on relatively standard humor involving broken equipment, a braggart who's also a coward and, inevitably, breasts. (It's interesting to note that ship's uniforms for Vandread's massive female cast seem to range from skimpy dominatrix gear to little pink French maid outfits.)
Vandread does clearly have an agenda regarding the synergy between men and women. It's hard to miss the symbolism involved in the union of the Ikazuchi and the pirate ship into a new and more powerful creation, and even the show's title refers to the merging between the standard male
and female mecha. But the gimmick isn't taken particularly seriously. The overall pacing and humor level, not to mention the candy-bright designs (and the horrible female hairdos), are closer to frantic space operas like Martian Successor Nadesico or Lost Universe than to serious gender-bender stories like Gall Force.
But Vandread's still generally likeable, for those who don't mind breast obsession and the occasional lewd innuendo in their mecha adventures. The mecha scenes themselves are striking: Studio GONZO, which also produced the ultra-shiny 2-D/3-D hybrid Blue Submarine No. 6, tried a less jarring visual experiment here. The interior and character-interaction animation is cel work, but the space battles are all glossy, unpainted CGI, which makes for fast-moving and visually unpredictable combat choreography. The general shape of the story leaves plenty of room for mystery and adventure, and the interactions between the men and women are often both funny and cute. It's an enjoyable, lightweight series with a solid framework. It's just obvious that the same framework could be used to support more significant things.
Generally, these episodes aren't overtly sexual, though some of the females are over-endowed to a ludicrous degree. But the humor keeps veering into off-color territory, as when Hibiki, disgusted to find himself in a woman's lap after his ship merges with hers, gasps, "I don't know how long I can last
in this position!"
— Tasha
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