Ariel Visual

To save the Earth from alien invaders and their giant monsters, Dr. Kishida does what any other red-blooded mad scientist would do: he builds a giant robot—the ultimate feminine fighting robot!

Unfortunately, his grand-daughters refuse to pilot it! Apparently, they've got more important things to do than becoming teenage super-heroes. Besides, how are you supposed to study for your college entrance exams while getting beaten-up in battle?

Fortunately for Dr. Kishida, things aren't too well for the invaders, either. According to their reports, the Earth was the perfect target: lush, peaceful, and relatively defenseless. Theoretically, the planet should've surrendered long ago. Now, the war is at a standstill, the dreaded Accounting Department is warning about the serious cost overruns, and the head of the home office has arrived from Galactic Headquarters to personally oversee operations. Has Headquarters decided to unleash, The Audit—or do they have something even more evil in mind?

The fate of the world rests upon two people: Aya Kishida, one of the doctor's granddaughters, who may have to give up prep school to pilot the mighty (and lovely) ARIEL; and a mysterious alien named Saber Starblast, who may have the power to defeat the invaders once and for all...

(Source: AnimeNfo)

Kishida, Kazumi Main

Hayashibara, Megumi Japanese

Dr. Kishida Main

Saka, Osamu Japanese

Kawai, Mia Main

Koyama, Mami Japanese

Kishida, Aya Main

Mizutani, Yuuko Japanese

Torefan, Simone Supporting

Hirano, Fumi Japanese

Ragnus Supporting

Suzuoki, Hirotaka Japanese

Houser, Albert Supporting

Shiozawa, Kaneto Japanese

Demonova Supporting

Yamadera, Kouichi Japanese

Watanabe, Junichi Director, Script

Matsuura, Noriyoshi Sound Director

Hayashibara, Megumi Theme Song Performance

Shounen Shoujo Gasshoudan Mizuumi Theme Song Performance

Reviews

Aug 24, 2011

ktulu007

Mixed Feelings

The story arc is pretty simple. Aliens have invaded for the sake of claiming Earth for the corporation they work for. Their efforts are being thwarted by a large mecha shaped like a woman, ARIEL, so an old friend of the invasion force's leader shows up to provide assistance. Things aren't going smoothly on Earth, however. ARIEL's pilots decided that they don't want the job and it's up to their Grandfather/Uncle, two of the girls are his granddaughters the other is his niece, to persuade them otherwise. The story itself is pretty standard and kind of weak, but the execution is great. It's very light-hearted ... and it's clear that the story is more of a subtle parody of these types of stories than a serious attempt at writing one. The biggest problem is that it suffers from massive exposition dumps. There's one at the beginning of each episode. I know that this is based on a light novel series but show, don't tell. There are better ways to get this information across. Even with the time constraints.

The characters are kind of under-developed. We get a few personality traits for the major characters, but they're pretty two-dimensional traits. Aya is an especially interesting character.

The art is pretty good for 1989. It's better than some later anime from the 90s or in some rare cases, anime from the 2000s. It's almost as good as the art of Gundam Wing which came out six years later.

The voice work is stellar. Mizutani Yuko, Koyama Mami and Hayashibara Megumi all give strong performances. The music flows well with the action and helps establish atmosphere.

There is no yuri in this. Which is good since the female characters who interact are closely related. The yuri factor is a 1/10.

My final rating for Ariel Visual is a 6.5/10. The story and characters have some issues, but the whimsical tone makes it a lot of fun to watch and the music and voice acting are both spectacular. If you enjoyed Gunbuster or All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, you'll probably enjoy this. If you can find a copy, go ahead and check it out.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Oct 12, 2015

dodongos_dango

Mixed Feelings

My biggest issue with Ariel Visual is that there’s no reason to care about the plot and most of the characters. The OVA starts out with an opening narration that summarizes that sets up the bare bones of the plot and character relations, but it never develops them beyond what’s presented in this narration. It never really goes into why the aliens even want to take over the Earth and by the end of the second episode all of the characters can still be summed up with the same two sentences that they were summed up with in the opening narration.

My other big issue is ... with Dr. Kishida, the grandfather of the three girls who pilot the titular giant robot, Ariel. It’s pretty clear that we are supposed to find his goofy mad scientist antics amusing, but I actually found them to be rather frustrating. Throughout the 2 episode Dr. Kishida repeatedly attempts to convince his reluctant granddaughters to pilot Ariel and fight off the alien invasion. Some of his attempts are actually a bit humorous, like when a video of him suddenly appears on the inside of one of his granddaughter’s (technically she’s his niece) motorcycle helmet while she’s driving through traffic. Mostly of the time though, his attempts just make him seem like a terrible grandfather.

Aside from these two issues there are some smaller ones. The animation is lackluster, they use a wide variety of tricks to avoid having to animate scenes that would otherwise have a lot of movement. The mech and monster designs have a very campy tokusatsu feel to them. The action scenes have poor choreography so the big climatic battle at the end ends up being rather boring.

In the shows favour, I will say that the art was generally pretty good and I actually quite liked the character designs, particularly those of the granddaughters. On the whole though, this is a mediocre series with bare bones plot and static, one dimensional characters.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Dec 29, 2018

matthigh

Not Recommended

There were loads of OVAs that came out in the eighties that have largely been forgotten; relegated to the dustbin of history. This is one of those. And, to be fair, it should stay there.

Starting watching this cold, and it started out with two solid minutes of dense exposition, explaining the whole plot and a brief history of about ten characters each. It reached a point where I put it on pause, backed out to check online to see if I was missing some prequel or earlier season I should be watching first. Nope! This ... was the starting point!

And, then I found out this 2-part OVA was billed as "Episode IV", sort of a throwback to Star Wars, as a way to jump into the middle of the story, I guess.

Unfortunately, that little trick didn't work out too well. You're left dropped in the middle of a story, without all of the careful setup, or the long act of character development that is necessary for the viewer to buy in to the story. So, it ends up being a jumble of scenes without purpose, me not caring about what the characters are doing.

It doesn't help that the overarching plot is fairly hackneyed, as invading aliens with giant monsters attack Earth, but there is a giant robot created by a scientist that is Earth's only defense against them. The "catch" of this OVA is that apparently this annoying scientist decides his three young female relatives are the best fit to pilot this craft, and ONLY they can do it, and acting in the most annoying manner possible will make these unwilling girls bend to his demands.

And the show makes you aware of that almost every minute, as Granddaughter #1 is so against it that she makes sure to make the viewer aware of this fact every time she opens her mouth. Ugh.

First episode is nothing but exposition and setup, cutting from one bland scene to another, from one set of characters to another, every minute. And me not caring the entire time. The second episode (starting with an annoying Star Wars IV screen-scroll, no less) is where the action happens, but remember at its heart this is a Giant Robot vs. Giant Monster show. And if you're not into that, then this was just a monumental boring fight scene.

Artwork is serviceable if not a little wonky in places. The animation is uneven, and when it's bad it's really bad. Maybe they were hoping to leverage this into a series (after all, it seems half the OVAs were testing the waters for that idea), but nothing really came of this. Thankfully. I file this one back into the dustbin of history, where it belongs.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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