Kakumeiki Valvrave - 3

"L-Elf's Prophecy"

I swear, whoever decided on the name L-Elf probably got a good kick out of it.

I'm finding it really funny that though there's a general outcry of absurdity for this series, there's still a huge response regardless. If it were really as terrible or unwatchable as many are claiming it is, why bother watching it in the first place? I can understand how difficult it might be to drop something (seeing as my OCD demands I finish near everything I pick up), but is there really a need to cry foul as ardently as so many seem to be doing? Maybe it's just that we've gotten used to the more contemporary trend of having our plots make sense, but really, in the old day mecha was a genre full of weirdness, and that was always something to enjoy rather than hate on. Maybe that's why I myself have so much fun watching Valvrave every week; you don't always need a tightly woven plot or straight-laced events to make an entertaining experience, and this series knows it.

I have to stop and appreciate the fact that, unlike most action heroes, Haruto doesn't spend a disproportionate amount of time worrying about what he's done or become. That's not to say he has no reaction; he definitely feels shock and horror at the fact that he's turned vampire/bodyswitcher and conflicted at his new fame as hero of JIOR, but rather than sitting there feeling sorry for himself, he takes action when it's asked of him. Taking the role of motivator and symbol, he helps coordinate the evacuation movement and realizes that it's neither the time nor place to start mulling over his life and the turn its taken. That's pretty mature for a guy who swore reckless revenge two episodes ago, but at the same time I suppose it's a different way to help him escape from the realities of the battle he's just fought.

On the other side of the coin, we have L-Elf, the world's most ridiculously badass teenage soldier. Not only does he manage to get a screw out of its socket while tied up (c'mon, are you serious? Screws are hard to take out even with tools!), but he somehow manages to use that screw (one screw) to free himself and singlehandedly decimate his captors (who all have machine guns pointed at him), escape, and take down battleships without even being in a machine himself. Yet despite all this, his first course of action is to track down Haruto and propose a contract to "free Dorssia", whatever that means. Clearly L-Elf is a very central force in this narrative, not least because of his curious "prophetic" words to Haruto at the start of the episode. Just who and what is this boy, and who is he really loyal to?

N.B.: Thanks to Ivan for the screencaps!