Valkyria Chronicles (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Valkyria Chronicles (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I'm currently watching the Chronicles of Valkyria anime adaptation via my Crackle "app" on my PS3. The series is lamentably "sub-only" and also on Crackle only for a limited time, as it will vanish after 1 July 2013. So I'm breaking a longstanding trend to watch this sub-only show. I'm already further ahead in the Anime than I have gotten with the video game.
It's a pretty good show, set in a fantasy European setting some time after WW2 but just before WW2. It feels like circa 1935 rather than 1939. And there's one major difference, which is (so far) the absolute lack of any combat aircraft, or indeed any flying machines of any kind. This show is all about tanks, specifically a supertank called Edelweiss, in the lowland country of Gallia, which has been invaded by The Empire.
Gallia is clearly a stand-in for the Benelux nations, whilst the Empire is like a Germany where the Kaiser never abdicated. The technology has advanced beyond Great War tech, but with the notable absence, again, of any aircraft--not even hot air balloons (which were a factor in the American Civil War).
It may be nit-picking to point out, but the Edelweiss flower grows in Alpine regions, notably Austria and Switzerland. It would be quite foreign to Benelux nations, and moreover, it is definitely NOT a variety of Dandelion. These are a few annoying things the series gets wrong but you just have to accept it.
Also, the tanks depicted, especially the Edelweiss, are more manueverable than a modern M1 Abrams tank. Tanks do not turn on a dime, and WW2 era tanks especially do not. The videogame at least gives you a more realistic model of tank combat and is considerably more challenging.
I haven't played far enough into the videogame to compare for sure, but the female character of Alicia seems way more "tsundere" in the Anime than she is in the videogame.
Also, some of the writing is a little naive/ill informed. The Town Watch commander berates Alicia for "leading the enemy straight to us", as if the attack on Bruhl wasn't planned out months in advance by Imperial forces, and as if the Empire launched their invasion blind, without the aid of, I dunno, MAPS!?
Also, there is an ethnic minority known as the Darcsen that sounds disturbingly close to "Dark Skin" in English that I wonder if that's what the Japanese script writers were going for. They are a race similar to North American Native peoples, i.e. Indians. The main character Welkin Gunther has an adopted sister Isara who belongs to this ethnic group. In the fantasy European context, they seem to suffer the same sort of racial discrimination faced by historical European Jews.
Welkin Gunther is a biology major at one of the main universities of Gallia and a rather bookish nerd who doesn't relate well to people. He likes to sketch local wildlife and this leads to a misunderstanding when Alicia of the Town Watch encounters him for the first time, not realizing she's about to arrest the son of a famous General and national hero from the previous war; Alicia believes Welkin to be an Imperial spy. This misunderstanding gets resolved in slightly different ways in the videogame versus the anime adaptation.
I am enjoying this series so far and look forward to finishing it before the month is out.
