Kakumeiki Valvrave is set in the future when most of the population has moved to space. Jior has lived in peace so long that they do not know how to handle it when kids from the militaristic Dorssia Military Pact come to find their greatest secret. After the kids open the Jior nation to their mecha they go after the Valvrave just to have it taken away by a scientist as his last act before dying. The other kids know little about the situation. Haruto is one of these kids and has had a crush on Shoko for a long time. He is about to confess in a popular location when his world is changed by war. While Haruto is running away with Shoko, she goes away from him to help someone in a car. There is an explosion where the car is and the saddened Haruto decides to pilot a mech he finds to get revenge for Shoko. Even after Haruto takes down several mecha as revenge Jior surrenders.
Kakumeiki Valvrave does something different with the mech genre by finally adding something interesting to the mech pilot. Haruto bites people to switch bodies with them. While he is in their body he can do things that the person would do regularly like killing when he was in the body of L-elf. This gives Haruto as a pilot something interesting to do besides shoot beam weapons in space. It also gives him a different struggle than most pilots since he no longer believes himself to be human.
Other than the unique pilot a lot of the story is the same. A militaristic nation comes to take the secret weapon of another nation, but only succeeds in getting the weapon into the hands of an inexperienced boy. Which if you have seen any mech shows you will know that those are some of the best hands a mech can get into. Then the inexperienced boy manages to pull off some of the best combat ever. It keeps going along mostly normal plot lines besides having a cool gimmick for the main character. Hopefully the show will do some interesting twists on the same old story to go along with their interesting character.
The artstyle of Kakumeiki Valvrave is very nice and the way they animate the mech battles is better than most shows that I have seen recently.
Kakumeiki Valvrave has echoes of Madoka in it for better or worse. Haruto made a contract to resign from humanity without knowing all that it entailed. Now obviously the soul of Haruto is not connected to his body because he can switch between his own body and the body of someone else. Apparently his soul is now in his blood that injects into someone or he is able to infect the other person with his soul when he bites them. Seems like a better deal than the soul gem from Madoka that would just separate your soul from your body to help with fighting. Another thing that is similar to Madoka is at the end of the second episode where Haruto decides he can no longer confess to Shoko because he is monster and has no right to. That is the same argument that Sayaka had for not confessing to the guy that she liked. It does not look like Valvrave will go in the same direction with the monster idea though.
Status: Watching
