MOJ

Big robots and boobage, half of any good story. In that regard, you won't find Vandread lacking. It has plenty of jiggling delights as well as shiny robots going at each other. One thing i particularly liked about it was that they don't advertise the ecchi. If it happens, it happens but the producers don't go out of their way to make a girl fall into a questionable position just so we can get some eye candy. That makes the ecchiness all the more wonderful.

Story

As far as the plot for this anime goes, it is quite creative. Instead of the generic dark vs light scenario we usually get in mecha animes, this time we are faced with a somewhat delicate problem...males vs females. Almost everyone as a kid has thought along these lines, that the opposite sex was the "enemy" (until, of course, puberty hit). In addition to the basic premise, the story includes multiple layers. There are more factions at work than the two main military powers and that does give depth to the storyline. However, the story follows an episodic formula so sometimes it seems a part of the story is rushed while at others it feels like the episode would never end. Even so, the story is executed in a well paced manner.

Animation

For a 2000 anime, the animation isn't half bad. They mixed CGI with actual anime drawings which to me felt a bit cheap but it still managed to work out. Due to the CGI, which was mainly used during the fight scenes, the fight scenes themselves suffered quite a bit. Explosions were mere blobs of fluffy yellow clouds and lasers were a bright light with an outline and a few shades to give it depth. But those are facts that can be overlooked easily, the main problem arises when we move to the character designs. The hair style, as always, is anime-generic aka anigenric. You have the straight long hair for the females, the shoulder cut, the twisting forelocks and the well known double pony tails. For the protagonist male, it is the usual just-got-out-of-bed hair. Moving on, the character costumes are outrageous. Most of the crew on the ship "Vandread" wear uniform, but our main characters are exemt from this rule and wear fancy, colorful clothing. Something like what a bard would probably wear. Even the uniforms of the crew have extravagant designs, from maid outfits to radioactivity protection suits.

Sound

We have to go through 13 episodes of out-dated sounding techno music and beats. That mashed with some trumpet like sounds. There would be nothing note worthy about the music. It just serves as "filler" for boring parts in the story. Something to keep our minds occupied while characters go around doing as little as possible.

Characters

The only characters that have even a semblance of depth are the male protagonist and one of the female pilots. The male characters depth includes a 5 minute flash back (in pieces over the series) of his grandfather giving grandfatherly advice. The story behind the female pilot, however, was more to my liking as it was a whole story in itself with a background, conflict and result to go along. 

Even so, all the characters are pretty one dimensional. You have your airhead, over-passionate protagonist brat, the quiet doctor, the female engineer with the glasses (her whole crew has glasses), the tough supervisor and the bard type of character. Cliche Central

Overall

This anime does have the basic premise, a good story and decent pacing, but it fails to combine these elements to give us something decent. It does have some laughs here and there and is generally a light-hearted series. Watch to pass your time. It is basically  your typical mecha-ecchi anime