DVD Review: UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie OVA
Shigeru Ueda Directs FUNimation, Media Factory Anime
Aug 6, 2009
In 2002, Media Factory snatched up Kaishaku's comedy/mahou shoujo manga UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie and turned it into an anime. The story of a boy who falls in love with a beautiful alien who mostly appears as an 8-year-old girl, it has had a near-continuous run in print, but a rougher ride in the crowded world of television cartoons.
FUNimation's UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie: The OVA Collection assembles the six episodes of Season 3 and the two episodes of Season 4. Despite the show's frenetic pace and helium voice cast, it offers some surprising laughs that send up the magical girl/catgirl genres.
Shigeru Ueda Directs Media Factory/FUNimation Entertainment's UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie: The OVA Collection
When the beautiful alien princess Valkyrie crashes her spaceship into the roof of Kazuto Tokino's bathhouse, she ends up mortally wounding the teenager. However, Valkyrie's attempt to save Kazuto with a kiss has a surprising consequence: she transfers part of her soul into him, resulting in her becoming an 8-year-old child. It's only when the two kiss that Valkyrie's sundered soul reunites, temporarily returning her to her adult self. This doesn't however, stop Kazuto and Valkyrie from falling in love.
Hijinks, alien princesses, bathhouse nudity and catgirls ensue.
Epileptics, and those who enjoy more leisurely-paced films should avoid this anime like the plague. It's faster than a squirrel mainlining Jolt Cola, and the female characters all speak in a high-pitched "girly" voices (and squeeze their ta-tas together at every available opportunity. Funny that). The female helium voices appear to be par for the course in anime – especially comedy – but it does get annoying after a while. The animation gets the job done; no more no less.
The surprising part of UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie is some of the jokes that zip past the viewer. Someone at Media Factory has a pretty sophisticated sense of humour as the series takes several opportunities to send up the catgirl genre (one memorable sequence features a battle between catgirls and a horde of bookish females wearing glasses).
The central catgirl character – a maid named Miss Sanada – has a bumbling costumed crusader alter ego called The Caped Catgirl that gets into various scrapes, including trying to find a phone booth to change costumes. The show breaks the 4th Wall at this point to mention the history of why costumed heroes change in phone booths (despite the fact that everyone on the street can see Sanada in her unmentionables).
However, the biggest criticism of this set is the fact that there are six episodes on 1 DVD, while there are only two on the second. Given the paucity of extra features in this collection (more on that below), couldn't they have crammed everything onto one disc?
DVD Extras
FUNimation isn't exactly loading on the extras for this set. There are the standard trailers and textless opening and closing tunes. Aaaaand that's it.
The Final Analysis
UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie isn't the sexy romp the ad copy on the back of the DVD purports it to be. There's plenty of anime-style female nudity (what's with anime and all the tighty whities?), plus some violence and bad language. Despite the near-constant shrieking and insane pacing, there are more than a few surprising laughs in this DVD.
UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie: The OVA Collection gets a 5/10.
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