"Virgin Fleet" (Anime)

[pkristen]

3 Episode OVA. Analysis written April 23, 2001

Summary
In 1930s “post war” Japan, the harnessing of “virgin energy” in the form of a special combat unit has been the country’s secret weapon since the unit saved the country 15 years before. This story follows the tale of Shiozake Umino as she tries to attend the naval training school even though she’s engaged to be married upon graduation. Of course, the catch is that she’s got an incredible amount of “virgin energy” that does not go unnoticed by key military figures

Review
Well, in watching this anime, I came to the conclusion that you have to not be a native speaker of English to be able to say “Virgin Fleet” or “Virgin Energy” and be taken seriously. (Pretty much in the same way someone screaming "Gentle Uterus" in battle would defeat the enemy out of fear rather than laughter.)

And for the record, this is most definitely NOT a hentai/ecchi piece! So if you bought the anime with those expectations, you’re going to be severely disappointed!

I personally enjoyed it, given that it had a sweetness and charm to the story and characters. However there are a couple of brutal moments because this is a war story after all, and the anime chooses to remind you in case you forget. Although it’s got a rather wholesome tale, I wouldn’t recommend watching it with children unless you’re quite comfortable trying to accurately explain what virginity is.

Ironically, I felt a little turned off by the “battle of the sexes” arguments that constantly cropped up by the more one dimensional characters. But given the subject matter of the anime, I suppose that can’t be helped. Otherwise, good and fun viewing.

Lesbian Analysis
Okay, this one is a little complicated to say the least but I’m taking my best stab at coming up with some solid commentary.

The whole premise of the storyline is recruiting and training women for the military who have a special access to “virgin energy”. The trick is that not all virgins have it, and some have more than others.

So the question for this site is “what does it mean to be a virgin?” The anime addresses the obvious point of how one loses her virginity upon sexual consummation with a man. But romantic love with a man is okay, otherwise lead heroine Shiokaze wouldn’t be allowed to hang around her fiancé Mau as much as she does (even though their relationship is considered a threat by the other girls.)

However, this also brings up a point that as far as the series is concerned: do the sexual relations between women pose that kind of threat to the loss of “virgin energy”? Since this anime is somewhat wholesome in spirit despite its title (see my review), I think that if the creators had even thought of that dynamic, they wisely chose to ignore it. (Which also leads to the whole angle of “lesbian invisibility” which requires more discussion than I’m willing to give in this website.)

So as a result, you have at 35 women running around Yokohama who are part of this Virgin Fleet and who are not depicted in romantic/sexual relations with anyone. And I’m trying to be fair to one of my own rules on lesbians basics that you can’t judge an orientation by the uniform or gender behaviors, even though there are some incredibly butch (and not so butch) women who make up the naval unit.

At the least, I would have to label the entire fleet as questionably inconclusive. The obvious exceptions are the ones like Shiozake, who’s in an active romance with a man. (Subtext seekers could just run rampant with this one since there are a bunch of attractive women in uniform running around in this series.)

Of course, there is a chance that the women have no romantic/sexual interests whatsoever, but I personally think you’d have greater accuracy with assuming that most if not all are lesbians.