by Seijurou on December 11th, 2011, 10:55pm

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User rating of this review - N/A out of 5
Story/Plot - 3 out of 5
Characters - 4 out of 5
Drawing Style - 4 out of 5
Enjoyment - 3 out of 5
Overall - 3 out of 5

Click here for series information

This is the story of a boy meeting a girl wearing strawberry panties then having to protect her academy. Ignoring the Ichigo 100% one-time reference, the Qwaser feel is quite dominant in this series.

In fact, when I first looked at the cover in the first chapter, I had to ask myself: 'What the heck is Oribe Mafuyu doing here?' Of course, it did not take long for me to realize that this manga is actually done by the same person that drew Seikon no Qwaser. As expected, art- and story-wise, the two are very similar, meaning you could put Sasha here and you would not know the difference, except that VITA (Variable Installed Tactical Attachment) Sexualis's Mikagami Shirou is pretty spineless in comparison.

Despite the fact that most VITA (chapters) are ~35 pages long, with the exception of VITA/7, 'Their Visits,' which is ~10 pages long, the story progresses pretty fast, making for unrealistic development between characters. Add to that having 4 heroines (then 5), each of whom needing her own space, and you get yourself a rushed, predictable, boring, half-assed setup. The first four chapters were so bad and stand-alone that I thought about putting the manga on hold. I mean, this series takes only the bad parts about Seikon no Qwaser, like showing a complicated story that has its own unexplained terms along with vague, short action scenes and just dragging you along with it.

I digress, however. From VITA/5, 'She Has a Split Personality,' and on, the series displayed vast improvement when it comes to drama, ecchi, plot, and comedy. The beginning is actually misleading, because you would think that you are in for a manga with a lot of gore and little fan-service, but the former stops after VITA/1 whereas the latter increases during the aforementioned VITA/5.

I think I am getting ahead of myself. Let me lay out the story for you (note: It took me a while to figure out all of this, since, like I said, you are just thrown into the mix as you start reading):

Mikagami Shirou is an ALICE operator who is on an important to mission that could save humanity from genetically-mutated class A threats which have reappeared in Tokyo after 14 years, known as ERRORS. Saint Liddell Academy is a rich all-girls school whose students usually have never seen a man. It is in that academy, however, that girls are trained to become ALICE, which means that the weapon, VITA, can react to some of them. The operator, in this case Shirou, fuses with ALICE using the VITA, and are both then able to fight together in the girl's (revealing) body. Mikagami, on his way to deliver the weapon to a man with the military called Ota Ichisa, meets a weird girl, called Amane Mao, who is going to go to Saint Liddell Academy. Deeming Shirou a 'citizen' of her so-called 'Mao Empire,' of which she is supposedly the 'empress,' Mao drags him along with her, delaying his imperative mission. Due to a strange series of events, Shirou ends up stuck in her academy, forced to choose an ALICE by the end of the semester, and fuse with whoever is qualified and available in order to protect the school from attacking ERRORS.

The story, again, can get dull. Think of it like a mahou-shoujo series for adults, with (sexy) transformations and all. However, the pieces start falling in place after the main characters are draggingly introduced, which would have been better if it were part of the plot, although there was not one in the beginning. At the end of day, if you can get past the 'monster-of-the-week' format, VITA Sexualis is actually quite worth the read.

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