


There’s some hugging, light boob touching, and French kissing in Drive cutscenes but that’s about it.

The up-shot of this is that for a game about lesbians needing to fondle and finger each other, Valkyrie Drive – Bhikkhuni – (that’s the name of the island, not someone sneezing), features almost no intimacy between characters. Which is in part why popular PC eroge (rated by a third ratings board) has its sex scenes removed when making the transition to consoles. In addition to CERO treating nudity to similar degrees of unacceptability, there is also resistance from console manufacturers to allow sexual content on their systems. Where the brutal graphic violence and implied sexual acts in the Attack on Titan films are considered acceptable for children 12 and up, similarly brutal violence is often deemed unacceptable by CERO (the board that primarily rates console releases in Japan) even with its “adult’s only” Z rating. In addition to that, far more violent and sexual content is deemed acceptable for younger age ranges. Although a ratings body (Eirin) exists for films and similar content, ratings are rarely used for home releases. This is in part due to a disparity between the rating systems in Japan. For one thing, the expected nudity and sexual fan service in the anime could never make it to either of the games. Thus releasing the anime before the Vita and smart device games likely did the franchise a bit of a disservice. While this may sound great in theory, titillating fan service (and full on naked bouncy breasts aside), there was little of merit to be found in Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid. The anime established in full (at least in the DVD and Blu-ray releases) sexy fan service glory, that these girls need to become sexually aroused in order to awaken their powers (to “Drive”) in other words, like Soul Eater but with short bursts of sexy fun time. The gist is that a virus can affect young women in their teens and early twenties, granting them either the ability to turn into a weapon, or to wield such weapons (and in rare cases, to be able to do both).

Valkyrie Drive quickly established itself as a franchise about lesbian weapons, following its debut with the Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid anime.
