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Feb 7, 2021
There is just something fascinating and absolutely special about Dirty Pair and it really is a shame it never became a long running anime like some other shows of the time. The relatively limited episode count may be linked to the sheer quality of the animation however, I do not think there are many Tv anime that can match Dirty Pair in fluidity, consistency and the art direction. Every episode is OVA quality!
But of course pretty animation isn't always enough to make an anime special. Dirty Pair at first glance just looks like a shallow, sci fi romp but there is something that belies the
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sheer eye candy of the show. Dirty Pair supposedly depicts all of these utopian looking societies that are not far off from being an expy of economic boom Japan of the time; and the spectacular formula of the show is to have their entire fabric and institutions destroyed by one surgical mishap, courtesy of the iconic protaganist duo Kei and Yuri. Of course it is to be noted that their antics are all in the course of tackling the crime and intrigue that sharply contrasts with the supposedly perfect looking high tech settings.
I think Dirty Pair represents the fragility of the Japanese Miracle as built upon the fleeting shifts in western economies towards neo liberal financial practices. It can be watched as a top tier pulpy sci fi adventure show on par with Crusher Joe and Space Adventure Cobra, but it is also a window into the issues of our real world that remain relevant to this day. It is like Star Trek in this regard though whilst Star Trek is more about solving external problems, Dirty Pair brings our attention within to our own internal problems. Facing an intense economic recession at the time of writing of this review, Dirty Pair reminds us that the illusion of prosperity should not be taken for granted when it is propped up by such fragile economic institutions, political systems and social dysfunction. It could all come crashing down at any moment just like anything Kei and Yuri gets involved in!
This show will leave a lasting impression on you despite the ludicrous and seemingly dumb amounts of chaos and destruction in it. This powerful but subtle message, is the reason why. Highly recommended for sci fi and 80s anime fans.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Oct 17, 2020
Tokyo Vice is an astonishingly mediocre OVA and forgettable to the point where surrounding literature and synopsis fails to even point out that its a mech anime. Yes, its a mech anime of the 'real robot' variety, featuring a bipedal non-humanoid military walker design that undoubtedly was influenced by Kojima's original Metal Gear mech on the Famicom.
The mech is clearly the best part of the show; leading to a man with big gun vs robot setup not unlike Armor Hunter Mellowlink. Of course, Mellowlink is a must watch anime while Tokyo Vice isn't. Honestly, this whole OVA just lacks that visceral energy of contemporary 80s
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OVAs.
Pacing and direction issues plagued the vast majority of old school OVAs but they worked because they imbued schlocky direct to video awesomeness with superior quality (for the time) animation intensity that you generally wouldn't see in tv shows of the time (and certainly not in many modern seasonals). Tokyo Vice just lacks all of that: throwaway goons don't explode into showers of red goo, 70% of the budget isn't spent on 10 seconds of hyper realistic mechanical designs, the main character isn't a dude or chick wisecracking about asses and bubblegum and the main villain isn't a digitized consciousness Stalin trying to abolish everyone's Amazon subscriptions to become the ultimate proletarian cyber pirate. (admittedly that last one hasn't happened in anime yet).
It's just too grounded and unambitious with its premise! At least the music really rocks.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Apr 24, 2020
Forewarnings first, this review will be quite racuous owing to the nature of this show.
Ishuzoku Reviewers is a badass totally unabashed anime of culture that sticks to its surprisingly well thought out sex centric fantasy world to explore a highly taboo subject with conviction. Its also pretty damn well drawn and looks better than most hentai/ecchi I've seen.
Every fetish, both fantasy eroge and irl such as toys, group play, pornos, lesbian, roleplay, even snuff and my personal favorite: tomboys is covered. Thankfully there is no NTR, bless the absolutely cultured creators of this anime. The fantasy ones get pretty hilariously creative with a literal skeleton
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worker, fairies having 'size' restrictions, a nod to bad porn acting, elves being considered ugly grannies, the true anime classic that is genderbender shennigans, succubi turning every month into destroy dick December, titty barbecues on a fire girl and birds being very lewd! Meidri has my respect for being the tsukkomi and being unlewded (sorta) to the very end though.
Not only that, some very relevant discourse is explored with regards to sexuality. Some of these are:
-buildable golems as an analogue of our own impending revolution of realistic sex androids and further implications for the abuse of others likenesses
-the total buzzkill that is stds and pregnancy irl and how convenient it is to fantasize away these very real stoppances to fornicating all day long
-Crim our lovable hermaphodite is the token lgbt character and explores this with far more tact than any reactionary sjw project from the west
-a mage making disposable magical clones you can do absolutely ANYTHING to. Some people have sick fetishes.
This well thought out execution permeates the anime in small details too with its attention to its fantasy setting, building up things like an entire egg laying culture, cyclops fetishes for eyes, demon contracts, monopolising the titular reviewers brand into a franchise and last but not least, communism!
There is no damn way a show would be able to pack this nuanced human and emotional touch like this in any form other than the anime medium; with such a topic otherwise being relegated to clinical, science focused sex docus for the sanctity of the publics moral code and sense of what's in good taste. Truly a perfect anime to embrace all our sexuality with and have a good laugh over it. And besides, as a retro anime guy, I damn approve of seeing bare titties in a sorta mainstream anime release again, after seeing the trend of actual nudity being imprisoned behind ecchi and hentai shows for so long.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Apr 22, 2020
Its clear cut this sequel to the first Midnight Eye is not as good. It has many of the elements, if not almost all of them that makes Yoshiaki Kawajiri's ovas so brilliant. It has the gorgeous, sharp character designs that lend themselves to the witty yet steadfast heroes and the badass femme fatales we love to root for. It pits them against an unscrupulous, calculating asshole of a villain with a dash of high level crime/government corruption that adds a menancing edge and dispells petty cartooniness they may have. Finally theres the awe inspiring mechanical or body horror artwork that lends themselves to unforgettable,
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kickass death encounters between the heroes and a bizzare melange of ruthless mooks. Except Midnight Eye II does not have that last element; arguably the most essential one that drives the entire momentum and pacing of these action ovas.
The action in Midnight Eye II is good but merely standard and not strategically spaced out throughout the runtime for maximum impact. To add insult to injury, the villains are split between the evil military officer and his bioengineered psychic weapon experiment, who is not clear cut evil. These Yoshiaki Kawajiri ovas do not work so well against a sympathetic enemy like this and as mirrored by the characters deliberation on whether to kill the psychic bioweapon, leads to a less focused plot overall.
What lets the action down is the incompatibility of the main character's powers and abilities (or at least the underutilization of his hacking abilities) against the militaristic nature of the villain whilst still sticking to the solely action focused formula of the first ova. We dont see mech suits or gunships being deployed against the hero, only soldier goons. It would have been far more satisfying to see Gokuu overcome more insane odds with use of his hacking powers. The final encounter with the psychic enemies is more up to par but the damage is already done, the ova has already suffered from a lack of exciting enemy encounters that keeps these ovas engaging from start to end.
The finale however is great, with a nice plot twist and the use of a novel weapon whose blueprints was stolen from the pentagon by Gokuus hacking abilities. A very nice piece of cold war contextualising for some subtle sociopolitical commentary and worldbuilding. If only there was more of this exciting action throughout more of this ova!
And no, the origin of the Midnight Eye is still not explained, though that would probably be opening another can of worms.
This psychic military experiment premise was done better in another Yoshiaki Kawajiri work, the second ova of Cyber City Oedo which is much more focused thanks to its mindless cyborg enemy and greater focus on bureaucratic intrigue and has far more spectacular setpieces. Midnight Eye II is worth a watch as a high production retro ova with gorgeous art but is ultimately an average action sci fi anime of the time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Apr 22, 2020
Midnight Eye, despite its unassuming appearance (for a Yoshiaki Kawajiri feature at least), is a true cyberpunk anime through and through. Still, it perplexes me how subtle and restrained this cyberpunk world feels despite featuring laser firing quadruped android redheads complete with kinky motorbike handles attached and the nature of the titular midnight eye. It seems that once you take away the relentless in your face dose of the far out occult or gorgeous mechanical art that Yoshiaki Kawajiri is so well known for, his equally distinctive atmospheric metropolises bite very close to home; to our own bustling yet uncaring and distant cities.
I would dig
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deeper into this subtlety but it does not seem intentional as the plot is about as standard and ass kicking as Cyber City Oedo or Wicked City are.
My only complaints are its lack of resolution, especially when the two aforementioned ovas are such tight, well crafted packages. Neither the Midnight Eye's benefactors nor the fate of the heroine is made clear, as if these threads were inconsequential, which is frustrating. Even the heroic deaths that female characters often get in Yoshiaki Kawajiri's other works would have given so much closure.
The lesser emphasis on standout bizzare/aweing sci fi or supernatural imagery means Midnight Eye does not quite attain the legendary status of other Yoshiaki Kawajiri works but because of this, presents us with the purest form of his badass wisecracking hero prevails over insanely bizzare death encounters formula; and its absolutely top notch entertainment. A must watch classic ova that reaffirms everything great about the awesome style of anime fans dub MANime!
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Apr 21, 2020
Bounty Dog dives right into the deep end with surreal, near psychological drama imagery and is guaranteed to confuse the sh*t out of you within its first 5 minutes; but what a beautiful 5 minutes it is. The anime starts with an absolutely beautiful montage of its moon city setting set to some slick city pop music and sets such a powerful tone of a false utopia beset by impending doom that will permeate the rest of the ova. It will take your mind off the plot confusion until the anime finally explains its premise; our main characters are secret agents and the mysterious girl
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is some clone of a moon goddess.
Show not tell is great except when it is used before viewer has even been given any story details to begin with! A 2 episode short ova generally does not have any business attempting a complex plot anyhow.
Even with the premise established, I still couldn't make sense of the themes and full story of this ova. It is another one of those ambitious sci fi ovas like Big Wars, Megazone 23 and Dallos and indeed borrows many sci fi elements and tropes from them. On a more superficial level, the moon setting recalls Dallos while there is a great hovercraft vs military chase sequence ala Megazone that is easily one of the ova's highlights.
Big Wars shares far more than a passing similarity to Bounty Dog. Both use a plot about cosmic deities monitoring and then suppressing humanity to explore themes of human civilisation developing too far. Both also share a very murky, saturated colour palette and have rather poor, overambitious execution of their stories.
The murky palette may have saved up on production costs but its oppressive, clinical look lends heavily to the surrealist and ominous atmosphere that I earlier mentioned. The execution of the story on the other hand is unsalvagable, it really is too much concepts and not enough time to linger on any details.
Ultimately Bounty Dog is forgettable if not for the absolutely rich mix of sci fi concepts and tropes it represents, resplendent with gorgeous futuristic art oozing with the passionate vision that dominated retro sci fi anime. Its not as high production as something like Venus Wars, Dragons Heaven, Five Star Stories or Bubblegum Crisis but if you like beautiful anime sci fi art, watch this one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 14, 2020
Watching anime girls emulate their favorite tank aces has been taken to the next level. Girls und Panzer the movie is absolutely gratuitous 40+ minutes of tank porn that turns venerable (and also rickety) WW2 AFVs into Initial D memes and Russian T90 flying tank videos.
I can see how a lot of these extreme antics would annoy more serious military nerds but this is an anime where we have T28s with jetissoning their outer pair of quad tracks for tight urban combat, possibly the only appearance of a Karl Gerat heavy mortar system we will ever see in anime and Japanese pea shooter tanks
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waging ambush tactics against Pershings that would make South African Elands proud. It's all too fun to not watch!
Definitely the one of the holy meccas of military anime. Now we just need to bring Senshado into real life.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 14, 2020
In between the uneven pacing, exposition dumps and wtf deus ex machina moment at the end, its pretty clear this ova is more a vehicle for Urushihara's legendary boob - I mean character designs! All things considered, for a boob slideshow, this is a pretty decent ova.
Aside from Oppai, the main thing I found entertaining was how the colony's big bad military are SO backwater their gear is overshadowed and outmatched by the civilian equipment of one space whaling ship. It's no wonder this colony is going to such lengths to develop a superweapon!
Of course most people aren't going to over analyze
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the world building of fictional universes like I do. What you will get here is a beautifully animated and drawn celebration of Urushihara's gorgeous character designs tightly packaged into that iconic sci fi aesthetic of 80s/90s anime. A must watch if you love golden era Ovas.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 10, 2020
Good anime at its peak potential is all about being utterly unabashed, wacky and having a rowdy fun time. Girls und Panzer shows that even with the ever encompassing singularity of high school moe that seasonal anime has been converging into, anime can still be all three.
Girls und Panzer has an insane premise about turning tank fetishization into a female only combat sports, about time something followed up Dominion Tank Police with nutty tank centric antics I say! What really makes this premise work is just how straight and fleshed they were willing to play and take it.
Tanks are reinforced by retrofitted, high tech
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armour to prevent deaths amongst the competitors? Insurance companies for property damaged by tank battles? Hints at political schemes to introduce novel sports in the name of big business? This is far more thought put into what could of easily been hand waved as "cute girl in tank!' than any typical braindead isekai.
The pay off with this (somewhat) fleshed out world is all the novel tank related character development, with the cast's family members regularly sharing the audiences bemusement or even skepticism at all the tanktastic action on offer here. And just like them, by the end of the show, you will become a believer of "cute girl in tank!"tm and be chanting Panzer Vor!
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jan 12, 2020
This OVA brilliantly carries across one of Araki's earlier works into animated form and proves that he always had the talent for creating truly memorable battle encounters. Much of the escaped bioweapon falling into a teenagers hands premise reminds me of Guyver but BAOH is so much more concise in its pacing and spectacular in its action. (Not to put Guyver down or anything, also some awesome anime there).
Baoh's action sequences have this sheer intensity punctuated by flamboyant and merciless special moves, with a single well calculated strike decisively winning an encounter in an instant. Exactly like a certain other BIZARRE anime.
The art is
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quite pretty and character designs even better; a strange thing to say about an anime where people's faces get melted or cleanly bisected but it truly is. I'd put it in the same grade as Windaria (obviously far more greenery there though) and Venus wars.
Great pre-Jojo wackiness with production values on the upper spectrum of anime OVAs. Must watch for all JoBros and MANime lovers.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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