Idol Bouei-tai Hummingbird

Sick of all those modern anime that try and shoehorn in idol singers into genres that have nothing to do with them, I decided to go back to the good old days of anime to watch this show about a group of fighter pilots that are also… idols.

Oh.

This ova is strange, a group of idol singers who are also also sisters and an elite fighter squadron defending Japan from… someone. Seriously, I don’t actually know who they’re fighting against, especially in episode 1 where a dogfight breaks out and we never learn who the other side is at all.

Also, why Japan decided that idols were ... a good replacement for a military in this alternate future is beyond me, but this is also a show where the main idols base has a secret runway that raises out of the ocean… for their VTOL capable fighters. (for those who don’t know, that means they can take off straight up like a helicopter so they don’t need uh… a runway…)

most of the show is a slice of life affair about these girls worrying about their idol careers and taking being Japan’s defensive line very casually, the tone is similar to other works around this time, like Aozora Shoujo Tai, except that was about stunt show pilots not actual military units fighting in battles.

there’s various stories such as playing vollyball in some sort of idol contest, to defusing bombs using the powers of an Ouija board.

Visually, it’s pretty standard for a 90s OVA series, both in animation quality and artstyle. Which isn’t to say that it’s bad, it holds up quite well in my opinion. The action scenes while not plentiful were nicely directed, and the animation was very smooth, especially when their idol rival duo show off their impressive ‘volume.’

Voice acting is as expected of an early 90s series, background music is largely non existent in favor of a quieter tone, but what’s there is fine I guess I didn’t really notice it. The idol singing, obviously 90s jpop rather than modern styled jpop is far more to my liking, and you don’t get that much of it even in the 90s really.

Now I get real annoyed that other reviews never mention sound design outside of music and voice acting, so I’ll do so right now! The plane sounds, while unremarkable, sound quite clear and realistic next to some other plane sounds in older anime, and are leaps above the likes of sci fi series macross’ and it’s weird sounding planes. The rest is as expected really.

Overall, it’s a weird little show. Very under the radar despite not really having any noticeable problems besides being old and obscure. Which is, of course, a massive problem on MAL, where old shows basically don’t exist and nobody watches them but weirdos like me.

B+/10