Ange Vierge is an twelve-episode anime adaptation of a Japanese trading card game of the same name. The director for the anime was Masafumi Tamura, it was written by Katsuhiko Takayama and the studio that produced it was Silver Link.
The series is available to watch on Crunchyroll.
In Ange Vierge, girls known as Progress work together with ɑ-Drivers in order to fight against foes called Ouroboros. The Progress have abilities called Exceed, which are strengthened by the bond they share with their ɑ-Driver.
This particular series focuses on the ɑ-Driver Amane Ayashiro, and her group of Progress. She has five of them under her command: Almaria, Elel, Code Ω77 Stella, Nya Lapucea and Saya Sougetsu. In fact, it is the last of them, Saya, who plays the role of main character: events transpire to take Amane out of the picture for the majority of the series.
There are five different worlds in Ange Vierge’s universe, each one protected by its own crystal: the black world Darkness Embrace, the red world Terra Rubiri Aurora, the white world System White Eguma, the green world Grunewald Silt and the blue world Earth.
Each world’s crystal is targeted by the Ouroboros, and it is the duty of the Progress and ɑ-Drivers to defend the worlds from the enemy.
However, that is not the conflict that plays out during the events of the series. Instead, the Progress end up fighting amongst themselves.
Due to this, Ange Vierge ends up falling into a rather formulaic approach after the introductory episode. Saya and her fellow Progress end up travelling to the different worlds. Each one of the five main Progress is from the different worlds – Saya from the blue world, Almaria from the black world, Elel from the red world, Stella from the white world and Nya from the green world.
The formula results in whichever Progress from the appropriate world facing another one – usually someone who’s had a strong influence on them – and they also receive some character development. This generally involves the power of friendship, for better or worse.
Due to the formulaic nature of the show, it’s all too easy to predict how each conflict will go. However, there are still some pretty good moments that occur between the Progress – for the most part, the show has some really enjoyable action scenes. The Progress are able to utilise different abilities, which makes for some interesting battles.
There’s a lot of fanservice in Ange Vierge. Many scenes feature the girls bathing, and as such there is egregious use of light to censor them – this is very likely something that won’t be present in Blu-ray releases, but that’s not the case for the stream on Crunchyroll. Also compounding that is the fact that defeated Progress suffer clothing damage; that is, all of their clothes completely disintegrate.
Ange Vierge‘s soundtrack is pretty good, with one particular theme bearing more than a passing resemblance to Touhou‘s Septette for the Dead Princess. The music tends to match the scenes, and that’s all is really needed for a passable soundtrack.
Ange Vierge isn’t all serious all the time. At least once an episode, we get to see two green world Progress play the role of comic relief, often with… intimate results. Though the two of them are sisters, they clearly have a lot of affection for each other.
On that note, this show could easily be interpreted as a yuri harem; it is the Progress’ affection for Amane that drives them, and there’s definitely some affection between the five girls – most notably towards Saya from Almaria.
Other characters join in on the yuri fun, too – the Progress from the same worlds definitely have stuff that counts as shipping material.
Score: 7/10
Though Ange Vierge falls into a formula, some rather enjoyable action scenes and the yuri makes for a half-decent watch – nothing more than that, though.
Rory Muses 