Lengthy PV released for Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid

It’s good to know that ARMS can still make good looking anime when they have a budget.  Having the ‘dream team’ of Kenichiro Takaki and Hiraku Kaneko doesn’t hurt much either.

As good of a year as 2015 has been, I’m tempted to argue that Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid   has a chance to be the most important ecchi series of the year.  To explain why, we’d need to look at the state of the industry the last couple years:

As you all know, it’s hard to make a buck in the anime industry these days and it’s especially challenging to be profitable if you don’t fit the narrow otaku-approved anime profile that SHAFT and kyoani seem to specialize in.  There have been occasional successes in the ecchi genre, but more typically nude ecchi series end up selling below the break even point.

This especially seemed to hit home in 2014 when no true ecchi anime sold more than Grisaia’s ~4000 units per volume, and second place Maken-Ki! Two  only sold ~3,200 per.  And in 2013, only Vividred Operation  and DxD New  sold over 3k per.

This led to a substantial uptick in ‘promotional’ ecchi anime.  The Ikkitousen  OVA didn’t really need to sell great, so long as it got people to buy the BD boxes of the previous series that were released at the same time.  Grisaia  and Walkure Romanze  didn’t need to sell quite as much, because they were basically commercials for popular eroge.

Samurai AfterBikini Warriors ?  Neither one cost a ton to make, and exist purely to help Hobby Japan sell their corresponding figurine line.

Granted, these financially hedged compromises are not as likely to deliver us a masterpiece like Monster Musume ,  but they do offer a reasonable risk averse option for companies that yearn to make ecchi fans happy but don’t want to eat a loss in the process.

But I think none of those ideas were quite as groundbreaking as what Senran Kagura  did earlier this year.  Because of some quirky Japanese gaming industry regulations, nudity is not allowed on console or handheld gaming.  So to compensate, the popular Senran Kagura  gaming franchise opted for an OVA earlier this year with a non-nude playstation version and a nude BD version.

Given that the game has a fairly large following to begin with, it probably shouldn’t be a shock that the corresponding Estival Versus  OVA actually sold pretty well (4,267 total sales).  And even if the sales hadn’t been all that great, it wouldn’t have mattered too much because even the people illegally downloading the OVA would now be accessing what is in effect a sexy advertisement for the corresponding video game.

The man behind the Senran Kagura series and the idea for this new type of model is Kenichiro Takaki.  Now he’s expanding the idea to go beyond just one OVA, instead opting to create an entire full length TV series for a brand new franchise using the same business model.  And while doing so, he partnered with the legendary ecchi director, Hiraku Kaneko.

The TV series will basically be Takaki doing all the stuff he couldn’t do for years with the restrictions he had with Senran Kagura.  He’s always spoken about how excited he is about getting creative with the eroticism in this anime, including having unique areola and nipples for every girl to help distinguish them (and who would know better than Kaneko about this subject?).  Kaneko will direct and influence the characters to an extent, but this will Takaki’s baby, and he’s going to have a lot of fun doing it.  Usually when someone has fun making something, it’s fun for everyone else too.  And keep in mind, Takaki abandoned a major franchise in Senran Kagura to do this.  So obviously he must have total belief in it.

And the cool part is that because Valkyrie Drive is tying into a Senran Kagura type of PS Vita game, there’s actually some money to invest in the animation, and it really shows here.  Further, the very title of the anime suggests they intend to make a franchise of it, and with this new business model, they might not need 4k disc sales for the anime if the game sells 100k units like Senran Kagura did.

I can’t guarantee success here, but this does seem like a remarkably stable business model and there is absolutely no doubting the talent involved with the project.  If this franchise is a success, it could have a lasting impact on the ecchi side of the anime industry for years to come.