Vividred Operation - Warning: This Review Contains Butts

Let's get to the bottom of things. Vividred Operation is a storm of cliches, filled with gratuitous service shots, and is one of the cheeziest things you could ever watch. That said, it seems to be aware of this status and comes off as something that one could either love or hate. However, from my experience the world's response to Vividred was a collective, "Eh, whatever." It's the kind of series that people know about but don't really discuss much, and what they mostly know about it comes in the form of butts.

STORY: 4.5/10

The plot of Vividred is about as stock as magical girl series get... Though it also adds in a normal Super Robot element in the form of Isshiki. Still, the idea of "color-coded team fights monsters that are trying to destroy the world" has been around forever. Vividred doesn't hide that it's playing everything straight as an arrow. It just isn't very ambitious, that's all. In fact, a large portion of series deliberately try and set up for a sequel, whereas Vividred leaves the opportunity but seems content with staying in it's one season.

I personally wish there was more to the action, but Vividred Operation is trying to focus more on the writing aspects. Key word here being "trying." I can totally get behind character-driven narratives, or ones where the plot is the focus, just... It doesn't really pan out in Vividred. There are a few plot holes, some major and some minor, that don't really get touched on. The most obvious of these is the final boss' goals not lining up with their actions until the last couple episodes. The strongest episodes were 7 and 8 to me, since they shook things up and had a chance for the fights to be more than just Docking into Stock Footage. I don't quite get it, usually a stock footage sequence in something like Precure I can understand, since they have 40-50 episodes to fill and they're working on a budget, but with a single cour then they could have easily allocated budget away from some slice of life scenes in favor of enhancing the action, right? Other than that the series is just people being all-around pleasant to one another and good drama that does not make.

Not much of the overarching plot is really addressed. We find out in very vague terms what the main antagonist is but learn little of what the race that created the Alone really are or what their motivation is. Suffice to say that the main plot is shoved out of the way for more friendship slice-of-life parts, but it's serviceable and wraps up by the end of the runtime, so I'd say it's just below average.

Premise: 1/2
Pacing: 1/2
Immersion: 1/2
Setting: 1/2
Theme: 0.5/1
Complexity: 0/1

ART: 7/10

Hope you're ready for butts because there's a lot of them.

Quite frankly, Vividred has this weird style that I can't put my finger on but it feels like it's all over the place in newer anime. It's got this softness and color to it that seems like it's staying safe. Though the butts means it's taking more risks. I can't really say much about the art in Vividred. The costume design looks nice, but since it's pretty much all uniforms (be they school uniforms or Vivid uniforms) there isn't much variation aside from some palette swaps. Animation is still really good, and something about the hair colors stands out to me, but the overall art looks like the kind of thing you can see from any series.

I wish I could say more about the art in Vividred, but I can't. I can't complain, it looks fine, but something about it strikes me as being kind of lifeless. The best way to describe it was that the entire series looks too "soft." There are many series that have designs that are very cutesy and have a feel of softness, but almost none of them reach the same level as Vividred. If these choices were deliberate, then they certainly got what they were aiming for. It sort of makes it hard to hate the atmosphere, since it's just plain cozy.

General Presence: 1/2
Visual Design: 1/2
Backgrounds: 1.5/2
Animation: 1.5/2
Attention to Detail: 1/1
Visual Effects: 1/1

SOUND: 7.5/10

Voice acting is a weird one. Most of the cast is made up of people I've never even heard of, which is kind of odd considering how much anime I watch. It's fine, nothing too annoying or bad. Akane probably has the most charismatic of the voice actresses by bringing something that sounds unique, but even at that, the characters' voices aren't really the kind of thing that sticks out. They're memorable for hiring people who haven't gotten much more work, if nothing else.

The music is a weird place. It sounds really quite good and the main theme is very memorable. I would argue that having bombastic orchestral pieces sort of clashes with the content we were given, but the main theme that mixes in the electric guitar and violins definitely hits the exact tone of the series and while I can't recall most of the tracks in the series, I can say that the ones that stand out really do stand out a lot.

Sound effects are actually pretty above-average, mostly since they all sound fitting and there are definitely some sounds that sound absolutely wonderful from time to time, in this case the mechanical crunches of Yellow's collider. Though that may just be my love of mechanical sound effects shining through.

Voice Acting: 3/4
Music: 3/4
Sound Effects: 1.5/2

CHARACTERS: 3.5/10

Here's where things get important. If there's one thing to learn from Vividred, apart from what butts look like, it's this: if you make a character based narrative, have some meat to your characters. Pretty much every character falls into a "what you see is what you get" archetype. The five main characters get an entire season and quite honestly I don't remember getting any real depth out of them, each one you know exactly from the first episode they appear in.

It's not bad, I mean having simple characters can be a good thing. The problem here is that the character moments got the most screentime, and as I said earlier, they mostly just consist of people being pleasant to one another. The various character arcs are fairly predictable, and many of the conflicts just come from the fact that everyone is friendly with one another and they want to stay being super friendly instead of just regular friendly.

Of course there's the obligatory yuribait. Vividred is embracing the magical girl stock all the way, and with only one major male character who happens to be a stuffed ferret for the series' runtime, there's not going to be much for romance no doubt. Some people like it, personally I think it can get a little dry when it's this blatant, sort of like it felt tacked on just because it's popular in the genre, especially among the Seinen crowd (which, given the butts, Vividred is being aimed towards).

Presence: 1/2
Personality: 1/2
Complexity: 0/2
Memorability: 0.5/2
Development: 0/1
Pathos: 1/1

FINAL JUDGMENT : 4/10

In the end, Vividred Operation is nothing substantial, but harmless. It's the kind of series that you can forget very quickly after watching it, but one can look back on it with decent enough memories. I remember seeing the name being tossed around a lot a few years back but now it's barely mentioned at all, which is sort of the general reaction I got.

Pros:
+Cozy atmosphere
+Looks and sounds nice

Cons:
-Easily forgettable due to bland characters and plot
-Action is very simple