The first episode of Madan no Ou to Vanadis almost feels like a cross between Tears to Tiara and Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance.
(Neither of which had nudity.)
The story in the debut episode is decent enough, although it is a little silly how this hot babe of a battalion leader (Ellenora Viltaria) is desperately throwing herself at the MC after knowing him for all of about two minutes. Hey, this is fantasy genre, why not make this the other kind of fantasy too?
Ellenora also supplies the fanservice quota almost exclusively by herself in the debut episode.
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Ellenora is voiced by one of the more diverse seiyuu in the business, Haruka Tomatsu. She’s no stranger to ecchi, having previously played Lala from To Love-Ru , Manami (the busty CIA girl) from Asobi ni Iku Yo! , and Mataemon from Samurai Bride . But to most fans, she’s the voice of Asuna from Sword Art Online and Naruko from Ano Hana . She’s usually pretty good in everything she’s in, and she’s off to a good start here as Ellenora.
It was also pretty interesting to see the very busty sidekick warrior girl Limalisha played by Yuka Iguchi – this being one of the rare times she’s playing a character and not using her patented Index voice.
As far as the prospect of nudity goes, I have to say that I found this first episode to be fairly discouraging. The missed opportunity for nudity or at least the suggestion of future nudity during Ellenora’s bathing scene was pretty much identical to the way that Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance led things off. And obviously, that show didn’t turn out great for ecchi fans, or anyone else for that matter.
But hey, things can change in a hurry, and the manga and light novels were ecchi enough that a non-nude anime would be a bit of a middle finger to fans of the original.
Though the art and character design are excellent, the animation is surprisingly choppy and hints at this show having a tight budget. Anime with lower production values tend to be more willing to take risks with nudity, so I did feel slightly encouraged by that.
Satelight typically avoids nudity in most cases, but then again it’s rare that they adapt something as ecchi as this. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Hopefully Madan no Ou to Vanadis can show more encouraging signs in the next few episodes.
