Project Otaku Powerlevelling: Part 4
Three more of these (including this), and I'll be all caught up. Here we go!
Another of the 80's anime series I chose. My first thought upon seeing the description for this series is... Who thought THIS up, and how come no one told me?? A single episode OVA, Gakuen Tokusou Hikaruon is pretty much..the anime Metal Hero. Seriously. The kid does a henshin into an outfit that looks exactly like Juspion, his bike has super-powers (Super. Bike. The villains don't stand a chance.), and the battles take place in alternate realities (a part of many of the first Metal Heroes).
Within a mere thirty minutes, Hikaruon managed to give me everything. Introduced the main character, his sidekick (a hot teacher...apparently), a conflict with the villains, a highly creative fight scene, and a resolution. I almost thought it would cop out and go cliffhanger on me a la Eien no Aseria, when both the rescue fodder *and* the female sidekick had been kidnapped and there was only five minutes left, but they pulled it off.
Hikaruon is a visual explanation of why an animated Henshin Hero would be awesome. The visual budget is, on the basis of being animated, much higher. More creative settings can be used, more fantastical fight scenes, and the mood can be manufactured easier.
Its not a perfect OVA; there's no explanation for how the kid got his power, why the sidekick is working with him, or where the series' villains come from. But with only a single episode, they leaped right into things rather than beat us over the head with exposition--it worked rather well. A great way to spend thirty minutes if you're waiting for a short period of time and have a laptop, and a must-see if you're a Henshin Hero/Toku fan.
I picked this to be another nineties series, and because I saw it on the previews when I used to buy ADV tapes, and I was always curious about it. When I finally got to see it, though...
What...the heck. I wasn't expecting high art from this series, but...uhm, seriously??Debutante Detective Corps watches like...not even a pilot. More like, a test pilot (joke not intended). Its like, the creators WANTED this to be a show, so they threw together as much bad-ass shit as possible into a half-hour and shopped it around to broadcast networks going, "See? Look how AWESOME this could be!"
As a result, we're shown a school and given no reason to care about it until these random girls (the stars of the show) pop up out of nowhere making the most flashy entrances possible--each one growing successively more ridiculous.
Directly after this, the girls meet up in a club house somewhere, and suddenly learn there's a terrorist group after the five girls for...some flimsy bullshit terrorist reason. (In all honesty...that's pretty realistic.) This is apparently, bad, because the girls' combined worth is Japan's National Budget. (No, wait! Its Japan's GNP! ...This is actually a correction they made in the show.)
Around this point, as the cops are carefully guarding the girls to make certain no one kills them, we begin to wonder WTF this series is going to be about. Its rare that an OVA becomes a series, but...they're still BUILT like they could be, so...I mean, one can't build a series around five rich broads being in danger every episode, can one?
...And then, about the halfway mark...we learn these girls are all apparently, superheroes. I don't remember names, but check the picture and you'll know who I'm talking about:
1.) The Meganekko (a term referring to girls wearing glasses), apparently is a *master* of disguise. And I don't mean, she can wear loose clothes and fool people that have bad vision into thinking she's a guy. No, I mean she can look exactly like other characters in the show, and perfectly alter her voice to sound like other people. This, is how they escape the cops to go screw around.
2.) The tough, spunky girl (IE, the only one with short hair, naturally) is one of those super hackers you tend to see in mid-90's series back when people had no idea how computers work. In all fairness, this one's more believable--they get attacked upon leaving and are forced into another building, where a bomb is waiting for them hacker girl gets to disarm. (But, she can't *quite* get it.)
3.) The blonde girl was a mystery. She had no obvious stereotype, so I had no idea who she was until our heroes tried to escape the booby-trapped building and were attacked by snipers...and she suddenly, out of her tight/skimpy outfit, puts together a *large*, high-powered fucking hunting rifle. She's the Weapons Nut. Right. So she takes out the sniper, and off they go to escape, with only one minute left on the clock.
4.) The loli in the cosplay outfit becomes important next. As it turns out, she's (of course) an impressive martial artist. That helps when the protagonists are attacked by a giant (literally) named the general. Whom she proceeds to embarass by smacking him around, before he...uhm...grows even taller like this is Super Sentai and she solo'd the Monster of the Week. (Make my Monster...GROW!) He proceeds to beat the hell out of her, before the loli reveals she's from the Yu Yu Hakusho school of martial arts, ditching the weights on her arms and stealing Genkai's Spirit Wave to defeat him.
5.) The last girl, the ojou-sama in the front of the picture with the long hair turns out to be a "paranormal expert" and a quack. ...So we think, at least. Until she suddenly fires the Kamehameha wave at a fighter jet(!!) attacking her. She misses, but pulls out a tuning fork that "controls" the fighter jet, making it crash...right into the building with the bomb.
...And I'll stop there. I realize I may've spoiled most of the plot for this one, but...let's be honest. This is a PWP (Plot? What Plot?) story at its best, and even from the descriptions its obvious you're better off seeing it for yourself.
Personally? Its like they shoved everything I've ever thought was awesome into one series with cute girls as the focus to keep my attention. This, like Hikaruon, should have been a series--has very little chance at being a GOOD series, but entertaining? DEFINITELY.
I'm certain the plotting would have been...somewhat better given more than thirty minutes, and the ability to leap from genre to genre (from hardcore shonen fighting to serious military ops) might have been a breathe of fresh air during the nineties, which as I recall was rather obsessed with fantasy stories.
Anyway, just two more series to catch up on, now. Almost there! (The next one, however...*growls*...)
Another of the 80's anime series I chose. My first thought upon seeing the description for this series is... Who thought THIS up, and how come no one told me?? A single episode OVA, Gakuen Tokusou Hikaruon is pretty much..the anime Metal Hero. Seriously. The kid does a henshin into an outfit that looks exactly like Juspion, his bike has super-powers (Super. Bike. The villains don't stand a chance.), and the battles take place in alternate realities (a part of many of the first Metal Heroes).
Within a mere thirty minutes, Hikaruon managed to give me everything. Introduced the main character, his sidekick (a hot teacher...apparently), a conflict with the villains, a highly creative fight scene, and a resolution. I almost thought it would cop out and go cliffhanger on me a la Eien no Aseria, when both the rescue fodder *and* the female sidekick had been kidnapped and there was only five minutes left, but they pulled it off.
Hikaruon is a visual explanation of why an animated Henshin Hero would be awesome. The visual budget is, on the basis of being animated, much higher. More creative settings can be used, more fantastical fight scenes, and the mood can be manufactured easier.
Its not a perfect OVA; there's no explanation for how the kid got his power, why the sidekick is working with him, or where the series' villains come from. But with only a single episode, they leaped right into things rather than beat us over the head with exposition--it worked rather well. A great way to spend thirty minutes if you're waiting for a short period of time and have a laptop, and a must-see if you're a Henshin Hero/Toku fan.
I picked this to be another nineties series, and because I saw it on the previews when I used to buy ADV tapes, and I was always curious about it. When I finally got to see it, though...
What...the heck. I wasn't expecting high art from this series, but...uhm, seriously??Debutante Detective Corps watches like...not even a pilot. More like, a test pilot (joke not intended). Its like, the creators WANTED this to be a show, so they threw together as much bad-ass shit as possible into a half-hour and shopped it around to broadcast networks going, "See? Look how AWESOME this could be!"
As a result, we're shown a school and given no reason to care about it until these random girls (the stars of the show) pop up out of nowhere making the most flashy entrances possible--each one growing successively more ridiculous.
Directly after this, the girls meet up in a club house somewhere, and suddenly learn there's a terrorist group after the five girls for...some flimsy bullshit terrorist reason. (In all honesty...that's pretty realistic.) This is apparently, bad, because the girls' combined worth is Japan's National Budget. (No, wait! Its Japan's GNP! ...This is actually a correction they made in the show.)
Around this point, as the cops are carefully guarding the girls to make certain no one kills them, we begin to wonder WTF this series is going to be about. Its rare that an OVA becomes a series, but...they're still BUILT like they could be, so...I mean, one can't build a series around five rich broads being in danger every episode, can one?
...And then, about the halfway mark...we learn these girls are all apparently, superheroes. I don't remember names, but check the picture and you'll know who I'm talking about:
1.) The Meganekko (a term referring to girls wearing glasses), apparently is a *master* of disguise. And I don't mean, she can wear loose clothes and fool people that have bad vision into thinking she's a guy. No, I mean she can look exactly like other characters in the show, and perfectly alter her voice to sound like other people. This, is how they escape the cops to go screw around.
2.) The tough, spunky girl (IE, the only one with short hair, naturally) is one of those super hackers you tend to see in mid-90's series back when people had no idea how computers work. In all fairness, this one's more believable--they get attacked upon leaving and are forced into another building, where a bomb is waiting for them hacker girl gets to disarm. (But, she can't *quite* get it.)
3.) The blonde girl was a mystery. She had no obvious stereotype, so I had no idea who she was until our heroes tried to escape the booby-trapped building and were attacked by snipers...and she suddenly, out of her tight/skimpy outfit, puts together a *large*, high-powered fucking hunting rifle. She's the Weapons Nut. Right. So she takes out the sniper, and off they go to escape, with only one minute left on the clock.
4.) The loli in the cosplay outfit becomes important next. As it turns out, she's (of course) an impressive martial artist. That helps when the protagonists are attacked by a giant (literally) named the general. Whom she proceeds to embarass by smacking him around, before he...uhm...grows even taller like this is Super Sentai and she solo'd the Monster of the Week. (Make my Monster...GROW!) He proceeds to beat the hell out of her, before the loli reveals she's from the Yu Yu Hakusho school of martial arts, ditching the weights on her arms and stealing Genkai's Spirit Wave to defeat him.
5.) The last girl, the ojou-sama in the front of the picture with the long hair turns out to be a "paranormal expert" and a quack. ...So we think, at least. Until she suddenly fires the Kamehameha wave at a fighter jet(!!) attacking her. She misses, but pulls out a tuning fork that "controls" the fighter jet, making it crash...right into the building with the bomb.
...And I'll stop there. I realize I may've spoiled most of the plot for this one, but...let's be honest. This is a PWP (Plot? What Plot?) story at its best, and even from the descriptions its obvious you're better off seeing it for yourself.
Personally? Its like they shoved everything I've ever thought was awesome into one series with cute girls as the focus to keep my attention. This, like Hikaruon, should have been a series--has very little chance at being a GOOD series, but entertaining? DEFINITELY.
I'm certain the plotting would have been...somewhat better given more than thirty minutes, and the ability to leap from genre to genre (from hardcore shonen fighting to serious military ops) might have been a breathe of fresh air during the nineties, which as I recall was rather obsessed with fantasy stories.
Anyway, just two more series to catch up on, now. Almost there! (The next one, however...*growls*...)
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