Red Garden: Dead Girls

Title: Dead Girls

Anime: Gonzo did the production on this again (known for their work on Saikano and Gankutsuou) and Kou Matsuo directed as well (known for his work on all seasons of Rozen Maiden and the OVA). Dead Girls is a 45-minute OVA that was released on August 8th, 2007. As far as I'm aware, Dead Girls has not been licensed, either by ADV, or Funimation (who currently holds the original series' license).

Dead Girls picks up about 300 years in the future in NYC, where Rachel, Rose, Kate and Claire are pretending to be high school girls as cover for bounty hunting, because ... hey, why not? They apparently don't have any memories of the original series, as they were warned previously in the original series. But the new transfer students look quite familiar and may mean trouble for them...

Okay, so, first off, it's interesting to see what 300 years of having a seventeen year-old's body has done to the girls. There are some pretty obvious 180s in peoples' personalities, but there are pretty decent reasons given for it, which is really appreciated here. It's more fun seeing what the girls are like now than it is watching the actual plot of the thing, which isn't the greatest or most interesting and gets resolved in a pretty lame way. Again, though, director of Rozen Maiden, so this shouldn't come as much of a surprise in terms of lack of resolution and plot quality.

As for art, it's the same style as the series, but with some added caveats. There are a lot of reused character designs from the original series, either for continuity or because the designers were lazy, take your pick. Also, there's the typical Gonzo mech added, and it's quite nicely done and doesn't seen all that out of place.

Music is pretty much what was used in the series, with a song being sung in horribly out of tune voices (yay for realism?) to the main theme. Ehhh, this kind of loses points with me. But otherwise, pretty solid.

Seiyuu are same as in the series, with seiyuu reprising their roles for similar looking characters from the original series; again, continuity or budget saving, who knows.

Length here is pretty solid. 45 minutes, which was more than I expected. Just about right, actually, though it did drag at the end.

Overall, this is a pretty solid OVA. There's a few issues of laziness versus continuity, but otherwise, a solid follow-up that's worth a watch.

Story: 7/10
Art: 9/10
Music: 7/10
Seiyuu: 7/10
Length: 8/10

Overall: 38/50; 76% (C)

I really like this OVA. I watched it right after finishing red garden and after the immediate shock I quickly grew to enjoy everything about the OVA. It's quite radically different from the show and might turn people off. I would like to encourage others to try looking at the OVA without comparing it to the series but I know that would be quite difficult. It was because I did such that I was able to enjoy the OVA so much. That's why I would first recommend the OVA to someone who's never seen the series rather than someone who has.

The first thing that may ... annoy a Red Garden series viewer are the personality changes in the characters. If you can't deal with that I'd recommend not watching this OVA. What would next annoy a Red Garden Series viewer is that after having the contact information of their friends and family on their person at the end of the series they claim to know nothing about their past in the OVA. My mind kept drifting away due to this plot hole in that even if they lost the information their still living friends and relatives would have found them somehow. Lastly, perhaps to keep Red Garden series viewers comfortable or out of necessity, many characters from the series appear as different people in the OVA. I say it's a little bit of both.

I guess I mostly fell in love with the OVA due to its strange familiarity. I liked seeing the characters I knew as completely different people and in a strange yet familiar setting. In that way people who just jump into the OVA without having seen the series wont get that affect. Then for those who have seen the series the strangeness may be a complete turn off and the familiarity seen as tarnishing their image of the series.