Project Otaku Powerlevelling: Part 7
For part seven, Traveler and I took out another set of OVAs, though sadly...well...click the jump.
Initially, our next series' were planned to be Gravion and Gravion Zwei. But, we ran into a roadblock:
...Gravion is a terrible series. We REALLY hated the opening song's lyrics, the creator of the Gravion creeped us out, and the animation was terrible. Worse yet, the story was incredibly repetitive. Monster appears, use a weapon. Next episode, new monster appears, weapon from the last ep doesn't work, but its okay there's a NEW weapon and THAT works. Rinse, repeat. The fifth episode had a bad encode, and we took it as the opportunity it was to replace both series with...something not crappy. (Current choices are Melty Lancer and Sora no Kakeru Shoujo.)
Anyways, after realizing we wasted two days on Gravion (long story), we had to make it up somehow: Our answer was to get two OVAs and wrap them up quick to see if we could make a bit of time.
Another 80's anime we picked, trying to dig a bit deeper into history. Before anyone insults our taste, our OVA picks were primarily because we knew we didn't have the time (or the ability to avoid being sidetracked) to finish more than a few 40-50 episode series and the best old ones are long. (Armored Trooper VOTOMS, for instance.) Dirty Pair is also rather legendary to older fans, so we figured, why not?
In all fairness, I WILL say this: Affair of Nolandia is beautifully drawn. For me, its personally hard for me to go back very far with anime. Past about 1981 and the art becomes such a crucial problem that my eyes glaze over upon a mere mention of series made then. Affair of Nolandia does not have to worry about this.
...Too bad it has to worry about everything ELSE. Nolandia has a decent start, with the Twin Angels given the assignment to rescue a little girl named Missnie. They travel to a planet in search of her, then get sent to a forest area known as (of course) Nolandia. What follows is a trip to LSD land, where the girls get trapped in numerous illusions, dreams within dreams (I'd punch whoever caused that when I found them), some weird H-stuff involving tentacles, and some amusing bits where the girls enjoy fun mirages. All to go through 20 minutes the film's runtime apparently did not need, before they find the girl, who created their illusions.
Just as they find her, she gets taken into police custody and its revealed that Missnie killed her own mother. However, something seems wrong to the Dirty Pair, so they follow some leads, do a bit of detective work, and surprise! Kei and Yuri learn the true identity of the villain; a rich guy with Nietzche-esque beliefs (which makes him, much like everyone else who follows the guy, a blithering idiot), who intended to use Missnie (and other kids with her powers) to control the universe.
After this, Affair of Nolandia hits its high point: A dual fight/chase scene, with Yuri chasing after the CEO bad guy, and Kei battling his bodyguard (who turns out to be a cyborg). This is the longest chase scene I've seen in any comic book, movie, or anime, as Yuri cycles through a car, rocket skates, a motorbike AND a bicycle, and finally on FOOT, before the final scene of the movie where the jerk is leaving on an airplane, and she takes it out with one shot from a high-powered rifle. (Yeah, guess she got it on the fuel tank or something.)
Had the movie ended with Kei watching the plane explode, the movie might have been a decent film. But, there's a twist. The stupid psychic brat wakes up from her suspended animation and decides she's REALLY not happy about someone killing the douchebag that was just going to use her, and unites the other psychic beings together, causing massive destruction and eventually destroying the entire island and everyone on it aside from the movie's protagonists, who escape "just in time".
The movie ends with Kei and Yuri wondering if its their fault, lamenting they could not save Missnie, and then saying "at least no one can bother her anymore" before Yuri cheerily tells Kei that she can do the report to their boss this time, and Kei chases her, laughing.
...I'm sorry, what the fuck? Am I the only one here that realizes an entire island FULL of people are fucking DEAD?! We're talking hundreds of thousands, if NOT millions! And they're ALL DEAD. I think the writers, maybe, didn't realize WTF they were doing.
My theory is that they believed they wrote a "cool", sci-fi noir story. It had a lot of classic noir characters, and was your typical "nobody's got clean hands" noir story. And at the end all the characters besides the protagonists die, and we have the protagonists lamenting the most tragic death before attempting to clear their head and move on.
....BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT YOU WROTE. Me and Traveler instead got to witness an island full of people die and the protagonists say, "...Oh well. Would've fallen apart eventually anyway, right?"
I sincerely hope Dirty Pair: TV is better.
One episode OVA that sets up the Mega Man X timeline...I think?
I, have no idea what to say to this except that it attempts to do far too much within the thirty minute timeframe. Its villain seems to have no true purpose behind his actions other than "Look, bad guys blow crap up!", and we're never given a reason to believe he's a bad-ass capable of taking down X anyway.
I'm guessing this was for people who play Mega Man X...but I think X fans might have liked to see the WHOLE first game adapted at least, right?
FOUR bad anime in a row?! What happened to my impeccable anime taste?! Ah well...part 8 coming up soon. Am I doing any better now?
Initially, our next series' were planned to be Gravion and Gravion Zwei. But, we ran into a roadblock:
...Gravion is a terrible series. We REALLY hated the opening song's lyrics, the creator of the Gravion creeped us out, and the animation was terrible. Worse yet, the story was incredibly repetitive. Monster appears, use a weapon. Next episode, new monster appears, weapon from the last ep doesn't work, but its okay there's a NEW weapon and THAT works. Rinse, repeat. The fifth episode had a bad encode, and we took it as the opportunity it was to replace both series with...something not crappy. (Current choices are Melty Lancer and Sora no Kakeru Shoujo.)
Anyways, after realizing we wasted two days on Gravion (long story), we had to make it up somehow: Our answer was to get two OVAs and wrap them up quick to see if we could make a bit of time.
Another 80's anime we picked, trying to dig a bit deeper into history. Before anyone insults our taste, our OVA picks were primarily because we knew we didn't have the time (or the ability to avoid being sidetracked) to finish more than a few 40-50 episode series and the best old ones are long. (Armored Trooper VOTOMS, for instance.) Dirty Pair is also rather legendary to older fans, so we figured, why not?
In all fairness, I WILL say this: Affair of Nolandia is beautifully drawn. For me, its personally hard for me to go back very far with anime. Past about 1981 and the art becomes such a crucial problem that my eyes glaze over upon a mere mention of series made then. Affair of Nolandia does not have to worry about this.
...Too bad it has to worry about everything ELSE. Nolandia has a decent start, with the Twin Angels given the assignment to rescue a little girl named Missnie. They travel to a planet in search of her, then get sent to a forest area known as (of course) Nolandia. What follows is a trip to LSD land, where the girls get trapped in numerous illusions, dreams within dreams (I'd punch whoever caused that when I found them), some weird H-stuff involving tentacles, and some amusing bits where the girls enjoy fun mirages. All to go through 20 minutes the film's runtime apparently did not need, before they find the girl, who created their illusions.
Just as they find her, she gets taken into police custody and its revealed that Missnie killed her own mother. However, something seems wrong to the Dirty Pair, so they follow some leads, do a bit of detective work, and surprise! Kei and Yuri learn the true identity of the villain; a rich guy with Nietzche-esque beliefs (which makes him, much like everyone else who follows the guy, a blithering idiot), who intended to use Missnie (and other kids with her powers) to control the universe.
After this, Affair of Nolandia hits its high point: A dual fight/chase scene, with Yuri chasing after the CEO bad guy, and Kei battling his bodyguard (who turns out to be a cyborg). This is the longest chase scene I've seen in any comic book, movie, or anime, as Yuri cycles through a car, rocket skates, a motorbike AND a bicycle, and finally on FOOT, before the final scene of the movie where the jerk is leaving on an airplane, and she takes it out with one shot from a high-powered rifle. (Yeah, guess she got it on the fuel tank or something.)
Had the movie ended with Kei watching the plane explode, the movie might have been a decent film. But, there's a twist. The stupid psychic brat wakes up from her suspended animation and decides she's REALLY not happy about someone killing the douchebag that was just going to use her, and unites the other psychic beings together, causing massive destruction and eventually destroying the entire island and everyone on it aside from the movie's protagonists, who escape "just in time".
The movie ends with Kei and Yuri wondering if its their fault, lamenting they could not save Missnie, and then saying "at least no one can bother her anymore" before Yuri cheerily tells Kei that she can do the report to their boss this time, and Kei chases her, laughing.
...I'm sorry, what the fuck? Am I the only one here that realizes an entire island FULL of people are fucking DEAD?! We're talking hundreds of thousands, if NOT millions! And they're ALL DEAD. I think the writers, maybe, didn't realize WTF they were doing.
My theory is that they believed they wrote a "cool", sci-fi noir story. It had a lot of classic noir characters, and was your typical "nobody's got clean hands" noir story. And at the end all the characters besides the protagonists die, and we have the protagonists lamenting the most tragic death before attempting to clear their head and move on.
....BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT YOU WROTE. Me and Traveler instead got to witness an island full of people die and the protagonists say, "...Oh well. Would've fallen apart eventually anyway, right?"
I sincerely hope Dirty Pair: TV is better.
One episode OVA that sets up the Mega Man X timeline...I think?
I, have no idea what to say to this except that it attempts to do far too much within the thirty minute timeframe. Its villain seems to have no true purpose behind his actions other than "Look, bad guys blow crap up!", and we're never given a reason to believe he's a bad-ass capable of taking down X anyway.
I'm guessing this was for people who play Mega Man X...but I think X fans might have liked to see the WHOLE first game adapted at least, right?
FOUR bad anime in a row?! What happened to my impeccable anime taste?! Ah well...part 8 coming up soon. Am I doing any better now?
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