Common Name: Ange Vierge
Score: 2/10, 2/5
Length: 12 Episodes
Genre: Action, Magical Girl, Yuri
Summary: When the five worlds began to connect with one another, a variety of different powers within the young girls of those worlds began to awaken. These girls, now known as the "Exceed," are tasked with protecting every world from the threat of the Ouroboros--beings who wish to accelerate the great cataclysm where all five worlds fully collide. The easiest way to accomplish this goal, however, would be to attack and seize control of the Exceed home base on the Blue World, Earth. During an attack on the Exceed base, the Ouroboros succeeded in not only capturing and converting the vast majority of the Exceed to their cause, but they also singled out all of the Alpha-Drivers, Exceed who are less combat capable but offer protection and enhanced abilities to their team of battle-capable Progress Exceed, effectively making it impossible for the few remaining Exceed to fight back without getting harmed in the process. Even so, Sougetsu Saya and the rest of the girls bound to their shared Alpha-Driver, Ayashiro Amane, have sworn that they will not only free Amane but they will save all of the lost Exceed and save all five worlds in the process.
Review: While it shouldn't have come as a surprise to me that this show is based on some half-assed digital card game meant to compete with things like Kancolle and Granblue Fantasy, it certainly explains at least a few of the myriad problems I have with this show. What it doesn't explain, however, is why the hell this thing exists in the first place? I mean, what was the end goal in creating this god-awful, tone-deaf, repetitive mess of an anime that lacked any of the hallmarks of what makes an anime even close to "good?" Quite frankly, the only things worthy of even a little praise in this show are the character designs and the animation which warrant a reaction along the lines of, "Eh, they're OK, I guess." Even the main conceit of the show isn't worth even the slightest of praise since the yuri aspects of the show, the only real reason to have any vested interest in this show, are either exploitative at best or turned into a milquetoast drama about feelings at worst.
Then again, maybe having 60% of the show's runtime (not an exaggeration) taken up by
bath scenes and blinding god rays was an attempt at normalizing nudity.
No matter how I look at it, Ange Vierge (which fittingly translates to "Angelic Virgins" in Italian) is more than just a bad anime. Somehow it manages to be both boring as sin and the most offensive yuri-bait garbage I've seen in a long time. To elaborate, the main premise of the show is that the enigmatic Ouroboros, who want to destroy all of the five worlds the Exceed call home for reasons, have finally succeeded in undermining their enemies. More than that, they have sealed off all the Alpha-Drivers from their teams of Progress, weakening the battle-capable Progress substantially, and even turned roughly 90% of those Progress into Ouroboros forces. On the one hand, the success of this invasion could be interpreted as the Ouroboros finally getting a victory simply on a fluke. On the other, it states just how inept the Exceed organization is as a whole if they can be so easily conquered when the Ouroboros direct their attention on the Exceed base rather than one of the five worlds since I recall an off-handed line that stated the Ouroboros have never attempted such a direct attack on the Exceed until now. Once the Exceed are rendered functionally powerless, the show just tries to backpedal to the norm by slowly taking back all the worlds, in the hope that weakening the Ouroboros on those worlds will weaken their hold on the Alpha-Drivers. Granted, that's only an assumption since jack shit is known about the Ouroboros. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for wanting to destroy the worlds. The best guess I think any character makes is that they are basically the forces of entropy or antibodies that are trying to destroy this unnatural connection between these worlds. Again, that's just an assumption though and one that doesn't explain why they and their plans seem to run on negative emotions.
It is worth noting, however, that the great, enigmatic enemy of these Sapphic warriors tend to
take forms that look or act vaguely phallic. Eat your heart out, Freud.
So, how do these girls go battle against the Ouroboros you might be asking? Long story short, they pretty much just don't. The vast majority of this story is just the same story repeated over and over until the show just kinda ends. Namely, during the attack on the Exceed base, the Ouroboros took control of a handful of super-powerful girls and twisted their already conflicting emotions until they willingly became the acting generals of these forces. Again, there is no real answer as to why the Ouroboros need to do this, but I digress. Go figure, each general is a corresponding representative of each of the five worlds. Also, go figure, each of the remaining Exceed girls, once again corresponding to each of the worlds, has some kind of connection to one of those generals. For example, the vampire Almaria looks up to and is vaguely romantically entangled with her senpai, Sophia. The laid-back badass that is Nya Lapucea looks after and feels responsible for the ruining the life of her former subordinate, Exaura Eins. With each an every world, the plot generally follows a pattern of establishing both the world and the characters' ties to that world. Then it explains what each Progress's relationship was with their shared Alpha-Driver, Amane. Then, stepping into something of a surrogate mother/sister/lover role for each of the girls, the "talentless" Sougetsu Saya encourages the girls to fight for both their and their enemy's (the converted Exceed, not the Ouroboros) happiness. Then, in one gloriously stupid battle, the converted Exceed are returned to their senses while their clothes are, for some reason, utterly blown away.
And so we're back to that idea where not wearing clothes is not only natural, but ideal.
Clearly, the true villain of this series is clothing.
Needless to say, everything does end up getting resolved, but not without the cast jumping through a few ill-conceived hoops first. To put things as simply as I can, the show is like a weasel--a dumb, ADD, nudity-obsessed weasel. I say the show is a weasel because it just can't keep it' attention on anything that actually matters. Rather than moving this terrible plot forward, the weasel just runs around and does whatever it wants whenever it wants. Like I said earlier, claiming that the show is like 60% the girls just sitting around and shooting the breeze in the bath isn't an exaggeration, but what I didn't mention before was the stupid mini-series within Ange Vierge centered around a couple of Ouroboros-possessed, military otaku sisters dicking around in the woods. All the more galling, this weasel of a show just jump-cuts to each segment without a second thought. One moment we'll be in a key battle, the next two characters are chatting up each other in the bath. BAM! Back to the battle. BAM! Have some flashbacks. BAM! Incestuous lesbian forest training time, motherfuckers. BAM! Battle's over and all the other villains are suddenly monologuing about how losing one of their own doesn't matter, even when there's only one of them left because, boy howdy, she the strongest and the Alpha-Driver-less Progress don't stand a chance against her.
If I've learned anything from this show's villains, it's that the bath is the perfect place to monologue
about your senselessly evil schemes and overwhelming power.
While, yes, the show is insulting because of all the yuri-bait and the lack of any kind of meaningful plot, my biggest issue is that the show directly insults the audience's ability to recognize simply patterns. Like, that kind of villainous grandstanding is fine in a kid show, since kids legitimately don't get it at that age, but this is not a kid show. This is some hormonal fap-fest that tries to play itself off as being some pure-pure story about the power of friendship. At the end of the day, this show is garbage and I can actively say I regret that I bothered watching it. I think that fact alone speaks volumes about whether or not I recommend it. If you want to have some fun riffing on a shit anime with some alcohol and friends, this show is perfect. In any other scenario, avoid it like the plague.