Nurse Angel Ririka SOS stars, a ten-year-old girl who finds out she has the ability to transform into the legendary nurse angel and fight evil. She runs into trouble with villains, she makes new allies and friends, and she has to live her normal life in the meantime. In other words, the series has the most utterly normal magical girl plot possible. If you’ve watched Sailor Moon or any of the myriad of series that it inspired, you know what’s going to happen in Nurse Angel Rirka SOS. Even the surprising mood change near the end, while effective, is not uncommon the genre. Granted, if you’re a magical girl fan that may be what you want, but keep in mind that nothing in the plot will surprise or impress you unless you’re utterly unfamiliar with magical girls.
The production values of the show are solid but forgettable. First off is the music: it’s nice. Really, that’s all that can be said. The opening and closing songs are cute and easy on the ears, but won’t be going on your mp3 player anytime soon. The background music generally goes well with whatever scene it’s playing in, but that’s about it. If music is an important component to your enjoyment of an anime, Nurse Angel Ririka SOS is not necessarily a series you’ll want to seek out.
The art is significantly better, but still fails to reach any real notability. Quite frankly, this series looks exactly like a 90s shoujo anime should through and through. Character designs are generally sweet and pleasant to look at and reflect the character’s personalities fairly well. At the same time, though, they’re rather bland. The series’ animation is nice, however; it’s easy to see that the animators had a decent budget to work with. Another factor in the series’ favor is the full use of cel animation – it has the typical warm, friendly feel that classic anime tend to have.
Characterization is about as interesting as character design, which is not very. You have the sweet little magical girl, her close male friend who drives her nuts, the fluffy little pet, the villain who turns out to have a heart of gold, the mysterious older guy, and the mystical princess who must be saved. While they serve their purposes to further the plot, no character in Nurse Angel Ririka SOS truly stand out as memorable.
While it embodies many of the traditions of 90s magical girls, Nurse Angel Ririka SOS simply doesn’t do enough things differently from other 90s magical girls. If you do enjoy the many troupes of the genre, the series is still one that you’ll enjoy, if only as a way to revisit some classic plotlines and character archetypes. If, however, fighting evil by moonlight is not your thing, Nurse Angel Rirka SOS simply does not have much to offer for you.
Note: Nurse Angel Rirka SOS was fully released on VHS fansubs a while ago, but only episodes 1-21 are currently available as digital fasubs. This reviewer watched 22-35 raw with the assistance of episode summaries.
