You know, while Anime is kind of my main focus, it’s not the only interest I’ve had. One that I don’t think I’ve alluded to, at least not often, was Norse mythology. I had a Viking phase and frankly I still think that the Norse myths are cooler than the Greek and Roman ones and are under-utilized in Western fantasy. For every Asgard, there are probably a dozen copies of Olympus.
On one hand, it seems like Japan has me covered. They’ve got their fair share of takes on “Classical” mythology, true, but there are a few more Norse-coded fantasies when lensed through a culture to which both are kind of equally foreign. For example, Warlords of Sigrdrifa had a pretty unique evocation, even setting all all the weirdness aside.
It may seem odd that I’m praising a show that has such a fast and loose utilization of mythological concepts, rather than following any of the many epic stories related to the gods and heroes of northern Europe. Don’t think I’m being too positive with Sigrdrifa, but I think, when you’re dealing with world mythology, there’s nothing wrong with using it for spare parts. As an author, you want to create a new story (as much as there can ever be such a thing) within a lineage. And when you get down to it, no story is as alive and vibrant as one that is being told, able to shift and change as needed.
But, of course, there are limits to just how much bull somebody is willing to take. So despite my proclivities being interested on one side and forgiving on the other, you’ll understand if I look at the pitch of Val x Love – a show where nine valkyries come to Earth in order to power up by getting intimate with a hapless male lead – and am filled not with any positive anticipation but rather a crushing dread that pillaging the nine worlds for all they’re worth doesn’t seem likely to make the concept work. Hybrid x Heart may have pulled it off, but frankly that show was a miracle. This one starts out needing a miracle.
Anyway, there’s only so much delaying I can do. Let’s watch it!
We start by meeting our main character, Takuma Akutsu. He’s got the worst case of “resting terrifying presence” this side of Katai from Komi Can’t Communicate, to the point where random citizens might consider him a demon (or Akuma, as the subtitles prefer to not translate this time), but he’s not-so-secretly a misanthropic egghead who just wants to study and never interact with people if he can at all humanly avoid it.
Unfortunately for him, the isolated house in which he formerly lived alone has become the domicile for nine sisters he’s too socially anxious to send packing.
The Middle Sisters.
As we find out in some sense (it’s a little confusing that the show opens in media res to the point where you feel like you missed an episode or two), these girls are actually Valkyries, the daughters of Odin, here to fight Akuma and in so doing save Midgard from certain doom. However, the arc words are that “Love is a Maiden’s Power”, so the Valkyries only gain the ability to fight beyond human limits when interacting with a lover, and Papa Odin has selected Takuma for all nine.
We see this in action when an Akuma attacks while Takuma is out shopping with this show’s obligate Tsundere, Natsuki. When lives are on the line (and especially after Takuma gets hurt shielding her), she decides to strip down and guide him into having a solid grope and a big damn kiss. This causes her to engage her powers, manifesting a super outfit for exactly long enough to dispatch the enemy. We then hear Odin’s explanation, with Takuma being let in that it’s his literally god-given duty to become the lover for the nine girls crashing at his place.
Now, this is pretty much the first episode: Takuma is already playing host to the sisters, Akuma are already attacking, there seems to be some complex history and interactions for some of the individuals, and then we get our pitch proper.
I’ll pause here for a couple of notes. First, I compared this to Hybrid x Heart earlier, but Val x Love is pretty clean compared to that show. I mean, everything’s relative; we do have Takuma fondling Natsuki here, but there’s not a lot of effort taken to make it all that steamy, and there are no 18+ goods on display even when there probably should be. This is neither good nor bad, but it does make it a bit easier to watch.
Second, there’s sort of this baked in issue where, with nine girls in the mix, you know you’re not going to get that much out of any of them. Most other Harem setups this big introduce girls gradually, and over more than twelve episodes, so that each can at least have an arc. Here? You know from the outset that either they’re not all going to get time to be more than set dressing or, arguably worse, they all do get one episode each to kind of but not actually come into their own.
The answer turns out to be more of the former. Natsuki is the most preferred of the lot by far. She’s the Tsundere classic, probably the most vanilla loving of the lot, but when put on the spot she glitches out and goes for violence. Sadly, her getting the most screen time doesn’t lead to her having a dramatically more developed character, since she retreads the same low self esteem notes several times like she’s not drop dead gorgeous and treated as the same by most folks she interacts with.
She’s one of the group I’d call the “middle sisters”, who go to school with Takuma. Each of the three of them gets a dedicated episode, a good deal of personality for this show, and seems to be treated seriously for the actual romance that the show doesn’t get more than its foot in the door for, even if Natsuki is an obvious favorite.
Those two are Mutsumi (the pink idol with huge boobs, who gives off vibes like she has the potential to turn into Darkness from KonoSuba) and Itsuyo (The Student Council President. She’s little miss perfect and since the middle sisters get two notes each, she’s also little miss daddy issues who folds like origami to being patted on the head). They’re the alternate flavors that do anything resembling actually rivaling Natsuki.
We also have two younger sisters: Yakumo (the acerbic imp, who gets spicy scenes but can’t really conjure an episode of her very own. She has super hearing and is sort of like the youngest of the Amagami Sisters without the charm and with extra mean.), and Kururi (who is mercifully spared from any serious entanglements. She’s really little, it would be creepy as hell.).
On the other end are the elder sisters, and I’ll sort of take them individually. The most prominent of the three is Futaba. She plays the traditional big sister role where she’s sweet, but with the capacity to be scary, and she gets more spicy scenes based on being a “mature woman”. To be fair she actually gets a bit of exploration, with frankly more “why” to her than the middle sisters, but at the same time she’s not taken seriously as being in the same bracket as Takuma.
The second is Misa, the sporty tomboy. She’s a little harsh to Takuma but not as much as Yakumo or the third of the elder sisters, so that gets sort of tabled, leaving her awkwardly short on theme. She has a couple good scenes but they sort of start nowhere and go nowhere.
Finally we have the eldest sister, Ichika. Or, to call the one valkyrie who folks not as invested in Norse myth as I am might recognize, Brynhild. She spends the first half of the show looking after the other characters from the shadows, present but not interacting with anyone. She angrily doesn’t accept Takuma and considers him a weakling, which is a crux of the drama in the second half when she joins the party properly, which I’ll get into more when I’m actually doing plot.
Clever counters may have noticed that’s only eight valkyries. #9 is named Shino. She’s technically an elder sister (fourth in birth order) but she has maybe five lines and is only introduced properly at the end of the final episode, so she doesn’t really figure in the story.
As for the plot, I compared this to Hybrid x Heart before, but really this is the lame and slightly pervy Nordic cousin of Date a Live in terms of how it structures itself. Some of the challenges to “level up” the Valkyries (yes they use game terms, and yes it is obtrusive. At least they don’t feel like they go all in) get into rounding bases, but plenty of them are just normal date stuff. All in all, there’s a lot of dating filler and two real arcs to speak of.
The first comes to a head at the school culture festival (where else?) when a minion of the dark side hiding in the school attacks. This is Garm. He sets a trap for the valkyries and kidnaps Takuma. Futaba shows up to spring him but Garm decides to take a bite out of out Einherjar.
So, that should kind of be game over, right? A supernatural evil has bisected our main character. Well sure enough a lot like that other protagonist he has some sort of invincibility power that shows itself when it’s needed, allowing him to be fully healed and run to the Valkyries who can actually fight the summoned nasties.
This leads to a very intimate encounter with Natsuki in order to power her up for the big battle at hand.
No, they don’t go as far as Hybrid x Heart, but there is a disrobed make-out session that we see a little of as long as the shots never provide nipples or genitals.
Anyway, Natsuki is allowed to go ham on the enemy and she does. Garm slinks off for future evil.
The second arc starts with the fact that, in the wake of that, Natsuki is supernaturally drained and can’t transform for an unknown period of time. This results in calling in Ichika to do things right, since she’s the other valkyrie who actually has a good offensive power and can reliably kill things. At the same time, a new antagonist cluster shows, including Garm’s boss and the top of the currently seen foodchain, Skuld (one of the Norns. She comes with a freakishly devoted maid.)
As such, Ichika is quickly given a lot of screen time to make up for lost time both out of character and in character (since she’s still level 1 to start even if she is badass). She is, recall, angry and unaccepting of Takuma, but her superpower is a sense of touch so good she can feel enemies moving even far away, so she’s kind of weak to skinship.
Eventually, we actually clash with the Norn, and she does her best to give us a cool final boss fight.
Futaba shows off, we get emotional work with Ichika and Takuma so she accepts him and he sheds his fearful role to actually be a badass and stand up to evil for the sisters, which also lets him wield powers of his own even if they’re support type rather than fighting, it’s all very fancy. We get a big brawl with the Norn that goes through plenty of phases, including turning the maid into an extra big monster despite some villainous attachment where both she and her master care and cover for each other, and wrap things up by sending them running with their tails between their legs… but that only takes us to the first half of the final episode.
For the final part of the final episode they tack on a very rushed scene where it’s revealed that while the strike team (including Natsuki getting revitalized partway through) was dealing with Skuld, Garm and his boss under her were attacking the house to steal the Macguffin. They take it, and for good measure, they murder Misa.
This doesn’t even get a moment to settle before it’s revealed that Misa’s power pulls her body back together. Takuma can heal her, but there’s a problem: they have a body, but no soul. Her soul is down in Niflheim, sinking into the freezing abyss of Hel when, through the magic of “we just want to squeeze this scene into the anime” Takuma astral projects his soul to her, risking his existence to princess carry her back to the warmth of Midgard. This kind of annoys me because the talk they have there is actually kind of good but Misa had next to no work going in and it’s being done when the show has basically already ended. This isn’t Return of the King, you don’t need three separate finale scenes.
We then say hello to Shino, who has gone from helmet weirdo to looking very “Dark Sakura from Heaven’s Feel” with the white hair and ribbed black sweater motif, only to say goodbye to her because, with one last underwear shot of the middle sisters and one last walloping of Takuma by Natsuki, it’s time to roll the credits.
That was Val x Love. Was it good? No! Moving right along…
Alright, I’ll say a little more about it. This is a show with some similars that are clearly superior, the most recommendable of the closest ones being, of course, Date a Live.
The framework is basically the same: Lots of super-powered girls so there’s a flavor for every viewer. Going on dates that a system says have to be done just so for mystical purpose. An indestructible lead who still can’t fight directly. A heavy favorite first girl. Something about the end of the world to distract from the fact that this is a large percent romcom.
What we gain is nudity cleverly shot to not break the rules of broadcast standards.
What we lose is the character and interest that came from Date a Live’s longer runtime and steady format. Date a Live had the time to create memorable characters. It tended to give, what, three or four episodes to each new girl? That’s basically a movie each, which is enough time to do a lot of character study. Val x Love doesn’t offer anyone who can stand on the same playing field as Date a Live’s more notable characters like Tohka, Kurumi, Origami, or Kotori, and it fundamentally can’t because it wasn’t built right to do it.
And that’s a problem because even if this is also technically an action/battle sort of show, it’s more romance focused, and romances live and die on the strength of their characters. If the girls aren’t interesting, the show isn’t interesting.
As for Val x Love, setting aside that it can’t reach the bar set by something that it clearly desires to imitate, it doesn’t really manage. They’re not the worst harem I’ve come across, not by a long shot, but they’re mostly pretty generic or underdeveloped. Their antics never really got so much as a chuckle and their serious feelings are sidelined and trampled on by the whole needing to do it to save the world bit.
It’s a rather watchable bad anime, but it is a bad anime. D+ is all that’s deserved here.