In all this fever over the anime adapatation of Persona 4, this one slipped by a lot of folks' radar, including my own, until I saw it.
This is probably relevant to your interests, those of you who have been fans of the series. If you didn't already know, Valkyria Chronicles 3 will not be exported to the US. I believe the excuse Sega used was low sales of VC2 and the PSP in general in the States. Rather than release it on a fucking console (*cough* OR XBOX 360 *cough*) either at retail or online instead of only on a handheld system, they've decided not to challenge their self-fulfilling prophecy. I played VC1 a few times back when my former roommate owned a PS3, and I loved that game. If I ever get the time and/or money to purchase a PS3, it'll be at the top of my list. Aaron Webber has mentioned that he really wants to bring the series to US shores again, and while I believe him, it isn't his call. He's just the poor shmuck Sega sends out to soothe nerd-raging fanboys in America.
Having said that, there was a single episode released on bluray featuring a snippet of plot from VC3 that has been subtitled by fans by the time you finish reading this. In this story we are introduced to the Nameless, a group of renegade Gallian prisoners/soldiers who sill believe in fighting for Truth, Justice and the Gallia Way despite the fact that said people treat them like shit and will even shoot them on sight (according to the first 7 minutes of this episode). They even designed an emblem featuring a muzzled doberman.
I have not played nor read anything about the plot of VC3 outside of this wiki entry, so I guess for that purpose it succeeded in showing me what this thing is about: A Gallian suicide squad given the bare minimum of supplies and ammunition, pointed at the enemy, and then told that maybe they would get freedom if they survived (I assume that last part, because otherwise arming a large group of prisoners like that with no oversight is pretty damned stupid). Though from the descriptions I'm reading on the wiki here, it seems like none of these prisoners committed murder, rape, arson, larceny, or anything else that would get them thrown in the klink. They were all harshly sentenced due to pissing off a superior officer for different reasons, noble savages one and all.
So I'm hoping that this means we'll see a plot like Kelly's Heroes or The Dirty Dozen, right? Or maybe something like the story mode of the first Bad Company? After all, you've got a whole unit of folks whose names have been scrubbed from the record books, so Gallia obviously plans to use them for a very dangerous mission. If they succeed, you get the glory, but if they fail then they were never a part of your army in the first place. Sadly, it seems that's expecting just a little too much cleverness from this franchise.
Instead, the plot just seems like someone's fanfiction: You have a leader with a mysterious past who wants to save the civilians in the area because the regular Gallian army are total dicks about that sort of thing for some reason. Yes, including Welkin. But even without the backing of the official army, they soldier on against the unforgiving elements to save the people, who award them with food and other things. But the episode ends with another challenge: An evil Imperial unit led by a self-hating Darcsen, and only the leader guy can save the heroes of the other story (namely, VC1) from the evil guy's plan.
The leader happens to have two girls who want to jump his bones but is too concerned with the mission to notice them: one with reddish hair who...I dunno, she fills a roster spot I guess, and another with a BFG twice her size who seems unencumbered by swinging it around. The rest of the group is brought together for reasons that are apparently unexplainable in the 30 minutes (including opening and ending themes) that the episode gives us. There's "girl with a riding crop," "fat man," "little boy," "old granny who somehow wields a giant AT lance," "guy with shield" and other people who probably had roles in the show but fuck if I can remember them.
The action sequences were pretty well done, and there were some interesting ways the Nameless dealt with fighting the enemy while having low ammo, from stealth killing Solid Snake-style to "oh look I just happened to have this one rocket left when I said I didn't!" And because there's only supposed to be 2 episodes worth of material released on blu-ray, the animation was pretty good. I just hope that the plot of the game is better than the plot found in this episode, because in the end it really does sound like they just wrote fanfiction of their own story from VC1. If you're going to have an anime version of The Dirty Dozen, then make them into something more than just "Squad 7 with more hearts o' gold."
As for the chances of this show arriving on US shores, probably the same amount of luck as the series of the first game. By which I mean slim-to-nil. The original series that mirrored the plot of the first game premiered in the Fall of 2009, ran for 26 episodes, and then disappeared. You can probably find fan-subbed versions of the series if you know where to look, but as for a US retail release, even Funimation so far has not announced any plans to license the series.
Here, have a few more screenshots, and if you do happen to find a copy of this episode, see for yourself if it gets you more hyped for the series than it did for me.
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