Vivid Strike has a rather unique distinction in that its one of the only anime Im aware of that is explicitly about womens MMA. Theres only a couple of anime/manga to my knowledge that are about womens mixed martial arts or feature it in any real capacity and I can count them on one hand. By all means feel free to correct me on this as I would be more than happy to be wrong Theres Nanoha Vivid that is the show this is spun off from Teppu and AllRounder Meguru. Stories about female martial artists are nothing new and searching for just that on Anilist or any other site like this would probably increase the results a good amount but womens MMA in particular is a niche among niches. Vivid Strike also has another much worse distinction: It fucking sucks. Its important to note before I get into this that like Nanoha Strikers I think Nanoha Vivid is a bad show. The big difference between it and StrikerS however is that its bad in an entirely different way. StrikerS has many faults but it could never be accused of lacking in ideas. It was always trying something even if it fell short of the lofty ambitions it set for itself. Vivid on the other hand is bad in the worst kind of way: Its boring. Its a show almost completely divorced from the entries prior to it that if it werent for having Nanoha in the title and it being ostensibly about her adopted daughter youd be forgiven for thinking that they have nothing to do with each other. Vivid is the kind of show Ill fully admit I expected Nanoha to be. Lowbrow weirdly horny for little girls and lacking in sincerity. Im not going to say that Nanoha itself is any kind of high art but it didnt have any moments when it winked at the audience about how silly all this is. Its played very straight and its that sincerity in just about everything that made it appealing and made me invested in a lot of what it was doing. Vivid meanwhile is a show full of unlikable uninteresting characters who are completely devoid of conflict and manage to somehow become less interesting as the show goes on. The anime ends in a read the manga way that honestly made me feel cheated out of my time. Ive not read it and I have zero intention of doing so because Im genuinely not interested in checking out any more of it. Vivio is boring Einhart is even more boring and I couldnt care less about reading about their inevitable face off. And thats my review of Vivid. I bring all this up because Vivid Strike comes roaring out of the gate with what feels like a mission statement in the form of its opening minutes thanks to its lead character Fuuka Reventon. The manga for Vivid isnt written directly by Tsuzuki its written by him in much the same way Nasu signs off on lore bible stuff in Fate whereas this is. Its a blistering opening sequence with Fuuka just going to town on a bunch of delinquents who are stopping her from working her part time job. The intent is clear: this isnt going to be like Vivid. Within the first ten minutes the show manages to make Fuuka a more interesting and compelling character than anyone in the show before it. Shes an orphan thats down on her luck she hates rich people and she is mad. Then the cast from Vivid shows up and all the interesting conflict ends up being sucked out of the show as if theyre some kind of vampires. Vivid Strike is not a really bad show only because the cast from Vivid make appearances but immediately following their appearance the show becomes significantly less interesting. I became convinced after they reappeared that theyre incapable of having any kind of conflict written around them and I dont know why that is. What I do know is that I spent the next few episodes very nearly zoning out every time the characters spoke because I just couldnt bring myself to care. When I say that Vivid is boring I mean that its boring to the point that it becomes genuinely hard to talk about as so much of it goes in one ear and out the other. I had a hard time remembering what happened in these episodes until the show brought me back with a scene that was so funny that I later discovered it became something of a small meme. The other main character besides Fuuka is her rival Rinne. Rival feels like a term that should be used very loosely here as the way the show handles their rivalry is incompetent and they spend so little time together that I had to wonder by the time the last couple of episodes came about if it had just forgotten about it. Rinne is uh... well shes also boring but shes got what is without a doubt the funniest moment of the show. After an episode in which shes bullied beyond belief by her comically evil classmates to the point that it causes her to miss her adopted grandfathers death Rinne comes in and practically murders them. Its so funny in fact that Im going to link to this handy YouTube video to demonstrate it: https://www..com/watch?v=vIeixRJTjI4 Look Im tired and I dont really like talking about this show. Ive already reached the point that Im running out of things to say about it. Its incompetently written incompetently directed. Incompetent is the best word to describe it because thats what it is. The rivalry between Fuuka and Rinne is practically nonexistent for the vast majority of the show and when it does end up rearing its head again well the fight between the two of them is bad but its clear that theres something there. Vivid Strike is a story that can ultimately be boiled down to being about two friends whose paths in life took them in very different directions and its through mixed martial arts that they ended up reconnecting. Its a straightforward enough idea that it should have been easy to write a compelling narrative around it with all the trials and tribulations that come with these sorts of underdog sports stories. When theyre actually talking to each other during the fight about where their lives have led them its clear that there was a story there with potential but for some reason thats not the story Vivid Strike is interested in telling. But to call Vivid Strike a series about womens MMA is honestly insulting to the sport itself. It cant even really be called a sports story because its abundantly clear that it doesnt care about sports. The actual fights themselves may as well not involve MMA at all for how little that actually factors into them. One thing I thought was really funny about Vivid was the lengths it went to in order to justify how it can get away with having literal 10 year olds beating the crap out of each other. No ones actually meant to be getting hurt in Vivid. Theyre all using some kind of technology that emulates the pain of the injuries without actually hurting them. Vivid Strike throws that out of the window and instead decides that these kids are in fact just beating the crap out of each other. Im not sure what it adds honestly I just think its funny that the show decided to do that. This show managed to achieve its mission statement it was not like Vivid. It was worse in fact. If you want to experience a good story thats actually about womens MMA then please read Teppu. If you want to experience the good parts of Nanoha then watch the first two seasons of the show. Watch StrikerS if you feel you have to but leave it there if you do. Just please dont watch this anything else but this.