Sol Bianca

In the year 2395 an all-female crew of five make their appearance not with a bang, but with a crack. An electrical whip crack that is!

It’s not enough for them to wield these snaking lethal weapons, but their ship has to have an epic version too, slicing and dicing everything in its path. Their entrance is bold and assured, the direction patiently keeping our heroines' faces from us until the perfect moment, like Spielberg's reveal of Harrison Ford only after he's whipped a gun out of a rascal's hand at the beginning of his first Indy movie. Yes I just mentioned Sol ... Bianca and Spielberg's Raiders in the same sentence, sometimes you have to be compassionate in life, at least that’s the hokey message of the first episode of this OVA.

Ok, Sol Bianca has the same template as Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop and dozens of other sci-fi anime, and is crammed with every anime cliché you can think of, but at least it stars a fun group of characters squabbling and exchanging wisecracks you've heard a million times before but still grin at anyway.

The pirate crew of the Sol Bianca have multi-coloured bleached hair styles (you can tell because their eyebrows are still black!) and outfits resembling Power Rangers. This is the end of the 80's. A time when we weren't afraid of colours; when good guys could wear something lighter than grey and bad guys weren't cloaked in shadow all the time but confident enough to walk around looking like 80's pop band rejects.

A planet featured in the first episode is run by a generic despotic ruler, reminiscent of Street Fighter's M. Bison, and dressed a bit like Irresponsible Captain Tylor (minus the overcoat), though obviously lacking that guy's amiable attitude. Lacking in anything remarkable at all really which is a shame as we all love a scenery-chewing bad guy, but this guy isn't even peckish. People on this planet are oppressed and working in mines. Mining for what exactly? Who knows? When you want to oppress, you just chuck them in mines!

Despite the fact that the episode's shenanigans are kick-started by a boy stowaway on a ship populated by all females, there is no lousy harem atmosphere, no pace-stopping sexual hijinks. Instead the humour is breezy good fun with the occasional blood-letting violence sprinkled throughout. The first episode's story is a completely forgettable liberation-fest, although I did find the last few scenes accidentally resonating a bit, for both the concept behind the idea and also an idealistic speech about a time before planes hit skyscrapers coupled with an iconic 20th century image.

The second episode is much more fun. Thank God for Die Hard practically inventing the 'exciting stuff happening in a contained environment' template, and thank God for anime running with it. Ok, the generics still continue, but it’s just more enjoyable watching a thriller cliché than a war resistance one.

The pirates this time are attempting to steal something expensive on a luxury ship but confront resistance in the form of bullets and thugs. The story moves on, but continually keeps the action inside spaceship interiors keeping with the semi-claustrophobic theme of the episode. There's also development on the pirate crew's ship itself, a character in its own right. Definitely one of the best spaceships in anime, with cool design, mysterious interior and history, it’s like a mobile futuristic apartment that just happens to have destructive capabilities included.

So with the second episode everything is funnier, dramatic, more action packed and entertaining and we finally see the potential of Sol Bianca, a potential not yet reached but still attainable if the franchise continues with sequels. With a bit more passion infused into the production, this franchise could be something special and at least get within whipping distance of anime like Bebop, and with the all-female crew would have just enough to make it distinguish itself from its rivals.

As it stands, Sol Bianca is easily lost in that crowd, as is evident from MAL's low statistic for the show, although a high statistic obviously isn’t a marker for quality, so maybe one day another Sol Bianca will be released with a better script and director involved, and will become a cult hit.

The characters in the OVA are fun, although the eldest and one who appears to be the leader is so laid back it’s like someone spiked her drink. She wanders around in a daze and doesn't actually do much at all, which is a waste. The art is of course early 90's, but the animation is smooth as anything produced post millennium. The music is typical 80's synth rock/pop that dates it but also gives it charm that all 80's/90's anime have.

Sol Bianca ends on a baffling last scene that's begging for elaboration, leaving you unsatisfied but wanting a bit more, which represents the entire OVA very well.

“Sol Bianca” is a 2-episode sci-fi action OVA that has a cool aesthetic, interesting characters and a plot with a lot of potential, but it unfortunately ends up going nowhere.

The episodes feature separate stories that revolve around the all-female pirate crew of the Sol Bianca, a mysterious, massive and seemingly invincible spaceship. In the first episode, due to an unforeseen turn of events during a routine attack on a smuggling vessel, the ladies end up going to a dictator-led planet in search of a legendary treasure, while helping a young boy out in the process. The second episode has them sneak aboard another ship looking ... for an all-powerful mineral called pasha secretly stored somewhere within, but as one would expect, things don’t go that easily. Meanwhile, one of the pirates is revealed to have a strange connection to the Sol Bianca’s computer system, and there is a mysterious man going after them.

The story lines in the two episodes are confusing and sloppily put together. The direction is all over the place, so it’s difficult to tell what’s going on at times or even where the characters are. Many key plot elements are left unexplained (i.e., why is X there, why is Y doing that, etc.). In the first episode, the antagonists aren't given any motivations besides that they want to work people to the bone in mines (what are they mining?) and are anti-freedom. The second episode is filled with foreshadowing, a cliffhanger and the introduction of a main antagonist, but there’s no payoff for these since this is the last episode, and there is no original source material. There’s another OVA that came out a few years later, but it’s a prequel. They had planned a sequel to this, apparently, but due to various reasons, it never got made. So we will likely never know what the deal with the bad guy is, or the secrets of the ship and its crew.

The five main characters themselves are unique and surprisingly memorable for a 2-episode show. Named after months of the year (which I’m sure is related to some plot point that never got visited), they each have distinct personalities and appearances. Frustratingly, however, they often act like they don’t care about the various life-threatening situations they’re in. Some of them treat the fact that they’re about to get executed as a matter of mild inconvenience, for instance. I guess when you have a super powerful spaceship, there’s never anything to worry about…

Which brings me to the spaceship, which has a complex design and an interior that stimulates the imagination. The ladies often hang out in a spacious lounge with large, round, white sofas, trees and even a pool. There’s also a scene where they’re shown lazing around in the wilderness next to a waterfall. The bedroom of one of the characters is also huge, with wide windows. All of these are somehow within the spaceship. We learn a few more interesting facts about the spaceship during the show that contribute to its intrigue, as well. Suffice it to say, I really liked the spaceship and wanted to see more of it.

As for other technical aspects, the animation is not bad, although it is a little rough and could use more detail. Character designs are great. Voice acting is okay, but the gray-haired pirate sounds too much like Conan (same voice actor). Some scenes had no background music and really needed it because they felt too quiet in the first episode, but overall the music was acceptable. Similarly, both ending themes were okay, but they didn’t fit the series well and weren’t all that memorable.

Regarding objectionable content, there is a lot of violence and killing in both episodes, and some nudity in the second episode. The nudity feels extremely forced to the point of ridiculousness. The reason for the nudity doesn’t make any sense, and it seems like it was just an excuse to get one of the characters topless for a few scenes.

Overall, I wanted to like “Sol Bianca” more, because of the great character designs, the fun interactions between the characters and the cool ship. But the story is too messy and incomplete for me to give this a higher rating. I still recommend watching this for the aesthetic atmosphere it exudes, but don’t go in expecting a coherent or conclusive story.

This is another one of those sci-fi b-movie OVAs with an all-girl squad, meaning it basically doubles as a choose-your-waifu simulator (I'm not revealing which one I picked ^_~), seeing as this is the kind of show with an almost all-male audience. Isn't it funny how all-girl shows are usually marketed to females in the west and probably everywhere else, but in Japan, all-girl anime are usually for men? I actually once thought K-On was mostly for girls... silly me...

Sol Bianca is following the same kind of episodic formula found in other bad all-girl shows like the similarly mediocre Silent Mobius. I always thought ... the all-girl squad was a silly trope, seeing as these girls would probably be too busy catfighting or gossiping to lead such an allegedly successful venture. I can buy it when we're talking magical girls, as I'm usually light-headed from all the nosebleeds I get during the transformation sequences, but I'm not as convinced by the more "realistic" series like Sol Bianca and its femdom bloodshed (I'm positive the only people who actively seek out girls with guns and all-girl b-movie shows are men with a femdom fetish who like to have women step on them with high heels). Has anyone ever heard of an all-girl pirate crew? Like how does this kind of thing even form? No boys-allowed girls club leads to highly successful pirate operation, I guess. Of course, their ship is so big, it would probably take a much larger crew to woman it.

The character art is nice, the mechanical design is second priority, and the backdrops aren't very noteworthy. There's plenty of decent character acting and effects animation, but nothing particularly exceptional. There's not much to find here other than boring action scenes lacking in tension and thick with plot armor. The music isn't noticeable, and these are some of the most stripped-down bargain bin plots you'll find. No time for character development or anything to generate investment in the world or characters.

The story for the first episode is a generic stowaway event after a raid on a ship by our pirate crew, then they help some brat topple an empire. There's a resistance, but they don't do anything. It's a terrible episode that offers nothing of worth after the opening sequence. I will say that this might be the first time I've seen a sci-fi where a sniper on an orbiting space ship is picking people off on the planet below. Far-fetched but cool, I guess.

The second one is more entertaining and less predictable, but still pretty standard action/adventure. The focus is on some kind of energy device, and the baddies here can phase through walls with flying suits like you'd see in some crappy Saturday morning cartoon. An overarching plot begins in the second half, but there isn't enough time for it to amount to anything, and the series was left unfinished, thankfully so.

This is too generic to bother with when there are so many better shows out there. It's unlikely the later OVA is worth checking out either, and I believe it's an alternate take on the same source material rather than a sequel. This is another canned dog food entry.