Innocent Venus

Information of Anime

It's 2010 AD & a number of Hyper Hurricanes have plagued the planet.  Many human lives have been lost, decreasing the population to three billion people.  Mankind faces a terrible tragedy.  Those who live in poverty are called Revenus & surround the economic areas & slums.  Logos, a ruling class of the planet, maintains their position with military force.  Jin Tsurasawa & Jo Katsuragi are former Phantom members, an organization that watches over Revenus & suppress any criminal activities in Logos.  The two escape Phantom during a mission to capture Sana Noto , a girl that seems to catch a lot of people's attention, & take her away for themselves.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The show starts off with Jin & Jo protecting Sana from Logos & Phantom.  With them is Gora who comes along for the ride.  During their escape, they come across many people that are interested in Sana.  For what reason is unknown.  Jin makes a promise to Sana's father that he will protect her if something happens to him, which actually did.  Along the way, they go to several destinations to gather some information in regards to Sana.  Phantom makes a number of appearances in hunting down the two traitors & bring Sana back alive.  Along the way, they receive help from others like ex-Phantom members.  Deeper in the show, we learn that Sana is one of seven children use to create the robot Gladiators in mass production by taking there nerve system & putting them into the mechas.  Sana is special, which is why she is hunt down.  Later on, Jin shows his true colours as he betrayed Jo & Sana by bring Sana to Phantom.  As a result, Jo ends up protecting Sana.  But Sana wants to see Jin again to learn the truth about her & Jo obeys.

When Jin reveals the truth of how the six other children's nerve cells are placed inside the Gladiators, things pick up as Sana gets kidnapped & the final piece in the Gladiator project picks up.  In an attempt to save her, Jo's limiter in his Gladiator gets removed & see the six children's pain.  Because of the limiter removed, it destroys the minds of the pilots including Jin when he battles Jo in part of collecting data.  The limiter issue becomes critical in the war against Phantom.  It's stopped by Sana's special ability to calm the children from destroying the city.

The story ends with Phantom defeated.  Jo parts from Sana & the group & plans to travel alone to see the world.

My Personal Review

Innocent Venus is quite mysterious in terms of figuring out the secret of Sana.  Everyone wants her, but for what?  It's action packed & has its share of mecha battles.  Also to note is the amount of graphic violence it has.  Lot of blood & exploding body parts here.  If you like some action with a good amount of blood & some mystery behind it, I recommend watching this.

Animation

The character designs varies quite a bit.  The main characters are drawn quite nice & fits their personality.  The comedic ones like Gora is really something.  They are quite goofy looking & seem out of place with the main characters.  Strangely enough, they blend in quite nicely.  As for fashion clothing, it's quite plain & nothing exciting to say the least.

There are mechas here & the animators use 3D CGs.  The mechas are really fake looking as they stand out too boldly against the backgrounds.  Also, the movements are quite bad.  The way they walk seems funny  & isn't too smooth.  But the attacks such as knife thrusting & gun shooting is ok.  As for the humans, sometimes it has those silly movements.  But those come mostly from characters like Gora.  The way they move & position themselves isn't normal.  But for the other characters, it's pretty well done.  One area that was heavily focused on is the playing piano scenes.  The hands & fingers move in sync with the sounds & the way it's should to be.  It's not some random animation where the hands touch the piano keys in the wrong areas & timing.

The backgrounds are pretty blurry.  The reason is because the show takes place in dark & night areas a lot.  So, there isn't a lot of detail work here.  But, they establish the mood of the show well.  Not enough to draw you in there though.

The colours are quite dull & dark.  Hardly any bright colour tones used here.  Interesting to note that there is hardly any colour toning or shading here.  It's as if the colours are solid such as the skin flesh.

Sound

The sound effect are mainly on the realistic side.  There's hardly any silly sounds found in the show.  Not all the sounds are crisp though.  There is some amount of fuzzes in the loud booms.  As for the piano sounds, as mentioned, they tie nicely with the piano playing animations.  They are on cue as all of the other sounds.

The seiyuus for this show is ok.  Nothing too great; pretty average.  I get the impression that they don't fit their character much & there's a number of them.  They either are voiced funny or they don't give the impact of the characters the seiyuus are role playing.

The music is ok, but not memorable.  I didn't like the soundtrack much.  It didn't set the mood well & they seem to be overpowered by the voices.

Story

Everything evolves around Sana as everyone seems to have eyes on her.  Her father's background is quite impressive in Logos, but what she holds is the key question that moves the show.  Also, it seems to have some relationship with Jin as he seems to be seeking revenge on something.  Also, the question on why he & Jo left Phantom raises another which is later revealed around three or four episodes before the end.  Aside from them, there are some other people that left Phantom as well.  The reason for this is revealed later as well.  With all these questions, it keeps the show fresh & interesting as each of these situations pop up over time.  But the actions that Jin takes later in the plot is question as to why he did it from the start & for what purpose as it seems to be a time waster for the show.

Because of the number of questions involved, one would expect some character development from the show.  It's almost very slim as Sana seems to be the only one developing when she learns the truth about herself.  All the characters seem to be the same after the halfway point of the show.  Even with Jin's revenge mentioned, there isn't a lot of development from him & when he switches sides.  The last episode reveals Jin's past, but it's doesn't cover a lot.  The worse part is the ending of the show.  It felt rushed & could have been better in terms of telling the story more.  It was incomplete in a way.

Overall Conclusion

Innocent Venus is an interesting show that seldom shows up in today's anime shows.  It's got a lot of questions that draws the viewers' attention & wanting more.  Plus, it's got some exciting bloody action to keep the interest up.  I recommend putting this on your anime to watch list if you like mechas & action.

Innocent Venus scores an eight out of ten from me.   The story is fill with a lot of questions & mystery surrounding Sana.  As the show progresses, we get more from other characters such as Jin.  Although it has a lot of great mysteries, the ending was a bit of a disappointment.  It was rushed & it really explain much about the characters.  It was exciting to watch, but poor in the storytelling side.