Once upon a time, Sunrise executives got into a drinking contest, or a party at the strip club, or whatever it is they do when they run low on cash and have to think of a new title. They needed something good, something genre-breaking. The artist already gave them a beautiful design, so now they only had to think of a story – piece of cake, right? Well, not really. They could only come up with a list of all the overused crappy cliches:
- a teenage protagonist that's a coward and want to make peace not war
- a female tsundere childhood friend that is his ever-unfullfilled love interest
- a bunch of random background characters
- an intergalactic war between two super powerful nations
That was a very poor list, but they were not discouraged. They started to think how to make this more presentable.
'Hey, how about we add Lelouche wannabe?' asked person A 'Everyone loved Lelouche, right?' And thus L-Elf was added to the list.
'I know, let's kill the tsundere friend, and make our hero go berserk with grief! Tragedy is always good, and at least we will have a glimpse of coherence in main protagonist's actions!,' said person B and thus another idea was added to the list.
It was still weak. And cliche. And boring. So they sat in that bar/strip club/some other establishment they occupied at that moment, and they thought very hard. Very, very hard. So hard they almost came up with a plot for Evangelion. And then one person asked:
"How about we make him a vampire?"
The applause was overhelming. That was it. The selling point they were looking for. A mecha-pilot, who is a whiny teenager AND a vampire. Brilliant. Splendid. Superb. Money would flow their way like a school of sharks smelling blood. They written it all down, called it episode 1 of Valvrave the Liberator, congratulated themselves for a job well done, and fell into a deep slumber.
If that was the end to their adventures they would make an anime that's average, but not that bad. Unfortunately, once they finished writing the first episode of this amazing saga of love and hate, they sobered up. And once the alcohol was out of their systems, the world seemed less shiny, the plot was less brilliant, and they couldn't be bothered to tie up everything they tossed into the mix. So instead they started to cut things up.
"Hey guys, you know what?” said person X “Tragedy is not fan-service friendly, let's skip the tragedy!" And thus episode 2 was born.
"Hey guys' said person Y, "the intergalaactic war is boring. How about we pretend we're waging war and go for high school comedy instead?" And thus episode 3 was born.
"Um you know what?" asked Mr. Sensible, the only sensible person in the office, the one who was never invited to their drinking parties, "the plot is beginning to fall apart. It seems very... I don't know, implausible? Stupid? Incoherent?"
And they looked at him, considering his wise words. Indeed, it didn't look as hot as it seemed at episode 1, when everything was shiny and epic, and viewers needed to be baited into watching. They wrecked their brains trying to come up with a solution, until one of them stood up and said:
"Coherent plots are overrated!" The round of applause was given, and thus they were liberated from their conundrum! They no longer needed to bother with the pretence of logic, they could go crazy with all the completely retarded scenarios that would still appeal to their teenage fan-base, since “pure teenagers vs lying adults” theme always sells. And thus the horrible episode 4 clawed its way up into existence, from the deepest realms of stupidity.
The saga is not over yet. Only 4 episodes were aired so far. What horrible episodes awaits us on the horizon? Only Sunrise knows.