I have decided it would be best to put this as an audio file, so I hope you guys enjoy it!! Sorry for the delay.
Here is the first Sol Bianca OVA review I did (and my official first review).
[audio https://www.aaapodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Anime-of-Yesteryear-Presents-Sol-Bianca-OVA-2-Review.mp3]
After having a quiet (yet secluded) Friday night full of countless hours of playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the occasional Panzer Dragoon Saga, it was time for me to take my binge drinking feat to the next level, watching yet another old school OVA from the day. After popping in the one of many random tapes I encounter on my near endless VHS shelf, I parked myself on the couch and the world began to spin around me. When I came too, I found myself face to face with quite a catch when it came to the female species. She had a lovely mane of pink 80’s metal hair, lushes lips and a half naked body to die for. This of course wasn’t all perfect, as she was fitted with motorcycle handlebars on her back as… an accessory? She gave me the most lustful of looks as her mouth began to slowly open up, which I know what your thinking guys, I was going to get some right? Well, I was going to get something, as I noticed a pink light began to grow the more her mouth opened. This freaked me out and I quickly kicked her away, which to my luck was a good thing or I would have been BLASTED BY A MOUTH LASER AT THAT MOMENT!!!! Scared out of my wits in the predicament I found myself in, a figure from behind her appeared and a silver rod stabbed her in the back. As I looked up at the shadowy figure, I saw a small red light lit up where the figures eyes would be, which made the sound of a bird cawing. He told me his name was Goku, an regular dick you could say (ie. Private Investigator) and he needed my assistance. Oh good, its another one of these Jack Daniels fueled adventures again I thought to myself, as I was now in the world of Goku: Midnight Eye.
Let me make this as perfectly clear as I can, I. Love. Yoshiaki. Kawajiri. Anime!!! And when it comes to everything this man makes, I have about all of them in my collection. There are somethings you can expect when watching a Yoshiaki Kawajiri anime, things like creatures (human or animals) having the ability of shooting lasers from there mouths, the main protagonist female companion dying or getting raped, women in the most awesome and ridiculous 80’s outfits, some women naked, a really cool weapon of choice that the main character uses, stuff blowing up like everywhere, an insanely crazy story plot, a “bad-ass” main character, some vampires, and more stuff that doesn’t make a lick of sense but you don’t care to analyze it further. This is all the key components that goes into a Kawajiri flick past 1986. It is because of these components that I will always add one or all of them if I was to make my own animation anything, or these are things I look at in any anime I want to watch period. Goku Midnight Eye is no exception to anything that I listed, because its is literally a tsunami of everything coming at you, which is why I chose to talk about it in this review.
Goku: Midnight Eye is a two part OVA that takes place in the future year of 2014 in Tokyo (and by God, everything that happens in these animes better come into view, especially the fashion sense of having girls with motorcycle handlebars on there backs, YEAH!!!). The first OVA starts out with a man on the run from our protagonist Goku, all because he has a key to the mob bosses mistress which he’s having an affair with (because he is their accountant). The man tries to fight back using a “mechanical robot Mazinger Z style” hand to fight Goku, which back fires on the guy. After Goku drops the key off to the mistress of the mob boss and turns her advances down, we see him give his intro about how bad Tokyo of the future has become corrupt by the the people who run the place and how they are destroying the city, one small earthquake at a time. We then cut to a night club where the main attraction is the only kind of girl I want to know (but no way in hell it would ever work out) who is grinding up the dance floor on all fours as her body moves rhythmically with the generic 80’s dance synth techno music blaring in the background. We see a man monitor another man in the corner of the night club who goes by the name of Genji Hakuryu. The man monitoring Genji is in a trance when he sees many eyes glow behind Genji, and pulls out his pistol and blows his brains out. This is met with Genji giving a toast to the dead man. Goku decides to see his old boss at the police station because of the recent suicides of Goku old partners through the police station and gets himself dragged in to the case, with the help of an old friend, Yoko.
Yoko explains that the business man is an arms dealer and known as the merchant of death, and the police are trying to get a case against him to put him behind bars. After two more officers decide to take there lives thanks to the naked women in peacock feathers (yes, a naked woman in peacock feathers is the cause of these suicides) Goku and Yoko decide to investigate the tower of Genji and figure out what is going on. Once inside, Goku meets the biker girl who is sleeping on the dance floor in the club (from earlier) and shows him she is more than what she appears, by SHOOTING LASERS AT HIM FROM HER MOUTH!! Almost getting roasted by the exotic woman, he gets knock out by a burly security officer and gets to meet Genji on his knees. After Genji explains his plans to Goku of how bad of a guy he is while petting the (PINK HAIR, CYBERNETIC, MOUTH SHOOTING LASER EXOTIC DANCER!! SPOILERS!!!!) exotic dancer like a domesticated pet cat, he lets Goku be stung by wasp who have been genetically altered to sting people with a sleeping toxin (not kidding) and leaves Goku on the side of the road in his awesome Chevy Corvette. Goku is then collected and drives along when the peacock woman decides to use her hypnotic powers while standing on a moving semi-truck tanker. The only way Goku can resist the powers is by stabbing out his left eye with a knife and drives off the bridge into the water.
We then cut to Goku on an operating table where a mysterious man inserts a cybernetic left eye into Goku, which grants Goku the ability to access ANY COMPUTER IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!! After waking up on a park bench and playing around with his eye to take out two street punks who are armed with machine guns, we find out Goku has a new weapon, an extended silver staff (like the one Goku uses in DBZ, just not silver). Goku then realizes that Yoko might be in danger and rushes to get to her place. Can Goku defeat Genji and put his reign of exotic laser shooting dancers to an end, and will he be able to save Yoko? You know what I am going to tell you, so go find this and watch the rest. You still got a scene where Genji half Mexican midget assistant rides on the dancer to attack Goku and, by God, just see the darn thing already! I haven’t even explained the second OVA to you guys, where its full of cybernetic flying robot Pterodactyls, a rapist/pedophile M. Bison clone and inter-dimensional rockets that come from a flying space car. I cannot ruin the rest of this for you, even though I went on a pretty long rant regardless.
The OVA’s is actually an adaptation of the manga done by Buichi Terasawa, who is more well known for doing the Space Adventure Cobra series and a few other things too (I have the Goku Midnight Eye manga that was released by Comics One, which I have not read the whole manga series as of yet, yea shame on me) to add to his long list of things Terasawa wants to do. The fact that these two entities of Japanese creative genius didn’t make the world explode when they shook hands is something I am grateful for, and Kawajiri decided to put his own spin of things on the adaptation of the manga when he took on the project. Kawajiri also did the character designs for this (as most of his stuff) which the faces seem very unique and almost non traditional anime/comic book looking way you could say. Terasawa style is to have hot, half naked chicks everywhere, who either fight against or side with the macho main protagonist. You may call it mind numbing 80’s anime trash, but I see it as pure great, macho-ish, anime story telling nostalgia. It’s content like this is my answer to why I just cant get into current anime, because it has none of these things in it. And if it does, its very few and far between. If Kawajiri decides to adapt the rest of the manga (trust me, there is SOOO MUCH more to cover), I will be on board, waiting to see the day of the next OVA. Bottom line, why are you still reading this!
If you enjoyed this review, head on over to my personal blog over at Anime of Yesteryear. See you next time!!
Final Remarks:
Well Happy (LAAAAAAAAAAATE) New Years to you guys as I am going to kick off the 2012 year with even more drinking and losing track of time in front of my TV. So, after a few shots of strong whiskey and experiencing another lonely New Years Eve, only to watch Dick Clark “old as dirt” face on the tube, it was time to pop in another random anime tape. By the time I used my last bit of conscious to hit the “Play” button before being overtaken by the devils liquor, I soon found myself in the middle of the desert, with nothing in sight but some old piece of technology that has been rotting on this desolate place for centuries it seems. After investigating the wreckage, behold, a large white mechanical suit popped out from the sand, that looks like it was a defect Metal Gear unit that Kojima didn’t see a purpose to add in his Metal Gear series. The machine spoke to me, saying he has been buried in the sand for something of a thousand years, and waiting for a life form to become his new pilot. He told me his name was Shaian, and opened the cockpit like hatch on his right side of his mech chest unit. “Oh…great, this again…” as I told myself, because I already knew what was going to happen. So, let’s get this booze dream over and done with in this review of Dragon’s Heaven.
I am actually going to do this review a bit different. So, instead of me explaining half the story and saying “hey, screw you and go out there and find it yourself” (like I enjoy doing), I will do a brief review this time to make it easy on you guys, and on myself also. So, let’s dive into this world of robot loving women, 80’s mecha designs, and all around short (and enjoyable) OVA of Dragon’s Heaven.
The OVA starts out with a brief history lesson of a war long forgotten, back in the (or should I say way ahead in the future) year of 3195, where we got robots fighting other robots on the planet Earth (there is a Brazil in this anime, so I will have to use my gut instinct and say Earth). We then hear of the robot back story of Shaian, who cannot return to his home world due to his pilot dying on him in battle and decides to go into robot sleep till whenever. We cut to the current (WAY FUTURE) time and see a rider on some weird looking ostrich animal going through the barren desert, when they go to a wreckage site and see a relic of the past that catches the riders attention. Soon after checking out the wreckage, we see a computer screen appear on screen with the text “Life Form” written, and we see our robot protagonist appear, Shaian. Shaian states that he has been in “robot sleep” for around a millennium when he awakens, and we find out who our mysterious rider is, our human female protagonist Ikaru. From then on, the story takes them into Shaian past and to fight his old robot rival, El Madine.
This is a very short OVA, so your looking at 30 minutes of the actual show, then credits, then about 10 minutes of a documentary at the end. How the actual OVA starts out is there is a 5 minute live action scene at the beginning between animatronic robots that are featured in the anime itself, who look like they are about to throw down right when the anime starts. I have to give the people behind the live action opening some credit, seeing how this was 1988, and if not most of the money went to the animation production than making the animatronic robots, they used what they had to make garage kits of the mechs themselves to try something different. In its own way, it does look really cool. And we get to see the title of the anime that seemed to be made out of a block of steel, rather cool looking. Then ending is just more of a “behind the scenes” look at what they did to make the robots move in the opening, which was recorded at a garage somewhere in Japan. I would have to say the opening sequence and the robots themselves were probably done by the director of this anime, Makoto Kobayashi.
This anime also has its amuzing moments where Shaian is embaressed by Ikaru being nude, and where Ikaru has the hots for Shaian rival when Shaian shows her the picture of the robot. Its like there is this underline theme of “chicks dig robots” in a minor way, for a comical effect that is amusing. The animation and mechanical designs are very unique for its time, which gives this OVA that genuine feel of 80’s nostalgia when you see this. Also to add is Ikaru body armor design when she goes against El Madine with its crazy design of clay looking spike high top boots, spiky knee guards and circular shoulders makes it more unique when it comes to the design work of this anime. There is much more to say when it comes to locations and what not, so keep your eyes peeled. The soundtrack has that 80’s synth pop to it also that kinda stays with you when you watch this.
I would say if you care to check this out, I will be worth your time. Its short, sweet and very too the point. It is available over at Anime Classic Reviews if you care to check it out. Well, I told you this would be shorter, so hope you enjoyed it.
If you enjoyed this, check out my personal blog at Anime of Yesteryear.
So, here I am chilling out on a typical Friday night with no worries, no cares and above all, no date, as I happen to see how far down the whiskey bottle goes when it comes to pulling yet another boxy anime tape off the shelf. After some time in the darkness of “over exceeding” a bit to much, I came to in a world of a desolate Japanese city, filled with heavy smog of radiation and abandonment, as I happen to see far into the distance. I then hear a flute tune pierce my ears, with such beauty and sorrow as the tune danced in my eardrum. I look over to see a younger man in a camouflage poncho with a green leaf up to his mouth as he plays the peaceful tune and then looks up at me. He then begins to tell me his tale of how destiny seems to bring him from one Hell to another. This is the tale of Riki-Oh Saiga…
Ok, so for those of you who know what Riki-Oh’s about, you think I’m going to talk about the (overly) awesome live action movie based on the manga by Masahiko Takajo. Well, you would be half right. I am going to talk about Riki-Oh, but only the anime that is a condensed version of the movie, but you get the same story (only the movie is SO MUCH BETTER). Throughout this review, I’m going to use some captions in words to emphasize how crazy some of this stuff happens, and to use some pop/video game culture punching references, so try and keep up kids. So lets Hebrew Fist our way into the wild and crazy world of Riki-Oh: The Wall of Hell OVA.
The OVA starts us off in the year 199x in Yokohama (and it would not surprise me if this was the same 199x as Fist of the North Star series timeline) as the world in this “year” is full of “high radioactivity rain” and “magnetic field warnings” on a daily basis (these are in the OVA I kid you not) where we get to a man in a camo poncho on a stoop blowing into a leaf to make music that most people can play from any toy recorder flute (its all in the tongue kids) as we seem him suddenly stop playing and stands in the middle of the road. While this “mysterious” man does this, we cut to a Cadillac driving down the streets of Yokohama with a fat old guy in the back trying to score some boob action from two honeys on his lap, when the driver notices the man in the street. Before the car can come to a screeching halt, we see the stranger raise his fist to his face with the Star of David etched into his backhand and proceeds to PUNCH INTO THE FRONT OF THE CAR!! This “Falcon” of a punch is able to turn the caddy into an accordion with the driver halfway out the front of the car in a bloody and disfigured mess. The old guy and some bodyguard of his get out to take on this stranger where we see the man in camo punches the bodyguard hard enough in the jaw to RIP IT OFF!! The old guy tries to shoot the man but is stopped by a flying high kick to shatter one of the legs and gets another “Busta Wolf” to the skull to leave a fist impression, killing the old man. We then know who this mysterious man is, which he goes by the one and only name of Riki-Oh Saiga.
For Riki crimes of being a total bad mofo, he gets the hammer of the Japanese judicial system and gets sent to Koboku prison for 9 years. After some shots of prison life with the prisoners making shelves and having a sentence of continuous woodshop class, we cut to the washroom of Wakamatsu being harassed by another inmate Iwata due to Waka getting out on parole. Iwata throws Waka into a shelf for no reason other than to be (one of) the alpha male of the prison. Waka looses his cool and attacks Iwata with a wood scraper, only to be tripped by one of Iwata goons and Iwata using the scraper to leave a nasty scar on Waka face. The guards come in, Iwata says “oh its an accident” and carry off the injured Waka. With Iwata talking up his victory to his running crew, we then see him trip and fall on a plank of nails facing straight up and Iwata gets his hand and eye into swiss cheese. It was Riki who set this up for Iwata and tells him to watch his step, and walks off blowing on his leaf. Iwata, having his eye, hand and pride poked “full of holes”, gets one of the guards to set up an ambush for Riki by using the fattest man there, Bandoh. During this Riki decides to pay his respects to Waka, by breaking out of his cell the only way he wants to, BY PUNCHING THE CELL WALL TO GET OUTSIDE! Once out, he meets the guards who are carrying the corpse of Waka off the grounds handcuffed. Riki states that his freedom is granted when he died and breaks the cuffs off, then Riki gives Waka the wooden train he made for his son and walks off.
Next day in the showers, Riki is confronted by Bandoh who states he is promised all the food in the world for his fat self to eat if he defeats Riki. Riki gets a backhand from Bandoh, only to laugh it off and punches Bandoh once for the deathblow. Iwata decides to jump in with a nail being used as a weapon to stab Riki. Riki counters this by using his hand to catch the fist, which then the nail impales into his hand while he crushes Iwata stabbing hand and sends another Jew Death Fist to Iwata body with enough force to have his entrails BLOW OUT OF HIS BODY FROM THE OTHER SIDE! With Riki actions in check from the corrupt prison guards, he gets sent to isolation for 30 days. We then see a dream or flashback of Riki at a grave site for someone by the name of Bi-Rei with the image of the Swastika inside the Star of David. Yes, in the year 199x, the Jews and Germans have put aside there differences of what happened in WWII and join there two beliefs into one, for the purpose of making the martial “of-all” arts of this dreaded decade. With Riki about to take his life, an old man approaches Riki and tells him about his destiny, and to stop him from killing himself and the dream ends. So what will become of Riki? Can Riki get out of this “Hell” alive? Find out… for yourself.
I am going to stop here in my review, because in this 45 minute OVA, I only talked about maybe 15 minutes of what happened. And boy, does it get crazier from there. Riki-Oh is about one of the many great things you will ever get to witness in your lifetime, and to me, it has one of the best stories you will ever get to know about (through the manga of course). I didn’t even get into the fights with the bosses of the “wings” in the prison Riki is at, or who the warden is, and the more ridiculous stuff that happens from there. Truth be told, the live action movie is actually better represented in the manga because the live action movie is SO MUCH MORE AWESOME than the OVA. I mean shoot, the Daily Show had a clip of the movie in their intros back in the day!!!!
So yes, I recommend EVERYONE ON THIS PLANET gets to witness Riki-Oh for the first and many times after the first time seeing this. Ill say watch the live action movie first, then the OVA. There is one more OVA after this that I have not seen, so I don’t know how insane that will get. If you have enjoyed this review and reading everything about Riki-Oh I care to mention, then feel free to comment, or bake me a cake, or a phone number for you ladies out there what want a Riki-Oh in there lives, its cool.
Thanks again for reading, and check my blog over at Anime of Yesteryear. See yea next time…
Final Thoughts:
So, another Friday night, another shot of Jack, and another hit of japanimation to watch. If you know the story by now, in which you should, this is the part where I start to pass out and into a world of what is on my VHS tape. As I awoke, I found myself surrounded by a heated battle taking place, where its covered by missile fire weaving through jungle brush. I look to my right and see a full size transport with something that looks like a military style mech in the bed, with a ear piercing shrieking voice of a woman in red and black spandex yelling at me to keep my head down and hop in. Once in, she floored the gas through enemy fire from bipedal robots as they gave us some hostile bullet debris as a welcome gift, where she began to tell her story of what kinda world I am at currently. Oh boy, I can just tell this is gonna be fun, as we gun it into Power DoLLS.
Power DoLLS is, I’m going to go ahead and say it, not that great. Its not terrible in any means, but it just seems it needs some work to be a bit better to most viewers. So I know in my reviews I give you guys about half of what the OVA is so you can go out and see it for yourself, but I am going to spoil what happens, because its pretty short and just really kinda…bland I guess. If I had to compare it to something, you can look at it as a girls version of Gundam Wing, since there is 2 guys in this entire OVA, and none of them are Zechs. Well, let me start this off.
PowerDoLLS takes us to the future year of 2540 AD, where there is a, I guess, civil war between the Terran Government and the colony world of Omni, which is full of machine gun fire and jungle life as to Vietnam. We get introduced to our two main female protagonist Yao and Fahn, where Yao picks up some war orphans as they hightail it out of there location back to base with one of there mechs in the bed of there transport. After Fahn does some female whining to Yao that the Omni military transport isn’t a short bus to the local grade school, they get attacked by the Terran mechs and gun it to the nearest bridge that Yao states is on there way. When the team is on the bridge, it gets blown up by missile fire which Fahn says “screw it” and gives the gas pedal hell as she jumps the gap to head to base. Once there, Fahn and Yao have it out again regarding regulations and Fahn calling out Yao for being to soft since she didn’t want to leave the kids behind.
We then get introduced to the DoLLS commander Hardy Newland as she and the first guy we see in the show are talking about her specialized team. After some shots of Yao moping because of being hassled by Fahn (and a fan service shower scene…yea its like 2 seconds of boobs, like you guys never seen cartoon boobies before) they have some breakfast only to go straight to another mission. In the briefing room there ordered to take out a city that the Terran forces are pushing to take back, and Fahn has the idea of destroying the dam to the river that the city is bordered too, as the easiest alternative to avoid fighting the Terran forces in the city and getting owned (I’m sorry, pwned). Yao then states she disagrees with this plan due to local villages being affected by the attack on the dam, but Hardy states the villagers have been evacuated so its cool.
While on the transport plan to the dam, we get a flashback of Yao past and how she became an orphan, which is why she sides with kids in the first place. Fahn then gives her some crap, but not after the group reaches there drop zone and into a fire fight with the forces of Terran. We find that Fahn is hung up on the plane, where we also find out that Yao has the best shooting on the team since she can pick off the leaver hatches at some 50 yards WITHOUT SHOOTING DOWN HER OWN PLANE!!! But this becomes the part where the show makes Yao look like Rambo since she can shoot anything and take some missile shrapnel for her team, which she saves Fahn ONCE AGAIN and causes her to crash land in the village. With Yao’s mech screwed up from taking the missile for Fahn, she decides to hold off the Terran forces while the team goes to destroy the bridge all “Force 10 from Navarone” style, and tells her team that the village they are at is her old hometown before coming an orphan.
With some ammo and plot armor in place, Yao is able to hold her own against the Terran forces by going all Rambo 2 on them before she herself is outta bullets, and ejects to cockpit while the mech is being trashed, only for her to come back to the mech to activate the self destruct mode on the outside. This begs the question, why would someone design a self destruct sequence on the outside of a mech that you have to run back too once you eject in order to activate it? Maybe there is an internal self destruct mode and was trashed before she ejected, I really don’t know. But her mech goes boom and takes out the forces. So with Yao running back to meet her rendezvous, Fahn and the gang are setting up the charges on the dam and getting it ready to blow. Yao then goes to her old house and talks to her stuffed bear she had as a kid stating that she feels bad about destroying the dam her dad built. Yea, the same dam that is being blown up is the same one her dad built when she was a kid, but yet shes not the one doing it, but her team is.
So after the team gets done, they don’t see her at the chopper, which we meet the second guy in this show who is saying “screw you girls, your all crazy, I am getting the fudge out.” But before the copter pilot can get ready to go back to base, he gets hijacked at gun point, from the COMMANDER OF THE GROUP, NEWLAND, who I am pretty sure has rank and jurisdiction over the pilot. So I guess the copter pilots on Omni are mercenaries, like in Rambo 2 where Trautman couldn’t order the copter pilot to land to pick up Rambo and the POW. I guess for a resistance group of female mech pilots, you get what you pay for. The group then somehow finds Yao at her house and tells her to “Get To Da Chopper!!” as Yao Jordan jumps to the copter moments before the waters take out her old house. Fahn gets teary eyed and gets poked fun of, and that’s this OVA.
So that is Power DoLLS everyone. Again, the only good parts were the parts that were pretty stupid and crazy, but its so so so little compared to the rest. This OVA is something you can forget most of what happens after a couple of days, or hours depending on your memory. Like I said, its kinda bland and thrown together it seems, but it is short since its only a half an hour long. I found the tape to this over 3 years ago, and seeing it today, I forgot A LOT of what happened, because there is not that much to remember really. This is an OVA that came out in the mid 1990’s, so this is taking me off my track of 80’s OVA I have been touching on for the past couple of reviews. And I found the DVD collection to this sometime after finding the VHS when I worked (the little time there) at Play N Trade when I lived in Raleigh which had… another Power DoLLS OVA to it. Yes, there are two of these that exist, and they are quite different.
Also to point out, this seems like this was an Evangelion VA reunion since about half of the people who worked on this were in Eva. With Fahn being dubbed by Tiffany Grant, Yao being dubbed by Allison Keith, and with Laura Chapman and Sue Ulu in it as well. What I found to be enjoyable in the dub was Grant making Marine Corps jokes by saying “Semper Fi” and giving a funny crapped out version of “Halls of Montezuma” while driving through enemy territory. I am not sure if they dubbed this before Evangelion or after, but its a bit of a treat to listen to if your ADV dub fans or Eva dub fans.
So, I will one day get around to doing a PowerDoLLS 2 review in due time, but now I am going to take a break from the PowerDoLLS universe for now. But hey, If you wanna check this out, be my guest. Its available through BakaBT so you wont have to spend anything for it, and I am sure the VHS copy of this is on the cheap if you do decide to own it. But see you guys next time.
You can also check out my blog over at Anime of Yesteryear.
Yep, another Friday night, another mixed drink of booze and carbonated soda, and another long lost anime on VHS to jump into before the liquor hits me. When I came too, like many times before hand, I found myself on a hot item of interstellar travel, with radical fans of cyborg baseball hot on the trail as I look out the hatch window. I then notice off in the distance, rapidly approaching at near light speed, a intergalactic war ahead of me. The pilot, no more than a young teenage girl, was gunning through space like she jacked this interplanetary ride (which… she did). During the chaos that seemed to be going on around us, she started to tell me about her quest for a long lost love she would travel to the starts to get back. This is the galactic tale of Cosmos Pink Shock.
Cosmos Pink Shock is a short 35 minute OVA that is just really easy to watch and follow, no need to put a lot of brain power for it to make sense. The story is laid out before us, girl jacks space ship, flies through space and happens to causes chaos along the way, gets captured, all in the name of love. And like this short OVA, this is gonna be a short review, so sit back and enjoy. Well… maybe.
Cosmos Pink Shock starts off in the year 2206 with a red looking spaceship taking off that has apparently been stolen off a launch site as we see it go full force into space. The space patrol around the planet (I think its Earth actually) is telling the pilot of the “Hyper Rocket” to stop the ship, only to hear on the comm unit a female voice stating a good ol’ way of saying piss off as she knocks her rocket into overdrive into “supra lightspeed” mode.
We then cut to a intergalactic cyborg baseball game (I am guessing?) when the rocket, known as the “Pink Shock”, rips through the sky costing the game for the Tigers. The Tigers fans then hop on there space ships to go after the Pink Shock for continuing the losing streak for the Tigers team and chase after her. No more than 5 seconds later and probably a few planets a way, we get to some galactic war between a low budget Captain Avatar and some all female crew when the Pink Shock races through to tear more crap up. We then get to know who this reckless teen girl is, who goes by the name of Micchi, a 17 year old love stricken girl, dressed in her white hairband, black space spandex and can do spirit. She comes packed with her special catchphrase of “Pink Shock, No Stop, Power Up!” Up to this point shes been able to elude patrols in space, including the “Highway Patrol” (I didn’t see any highways in space, unless all highways in space are dark, or space is just one big highway). After getting the attention of space patrol, we get introduced to Captain Gatsby, a man who takes up the task of catching the Pink Shock once and for all.
The Pink Shock then crash lands on the planet Jupiter due to not ever filling up the tank, to put it simply (way to go Micchi), and pretty much lands in Gatsby backyard. She then gets captured and detained, but despite her situation, wants to get something to eat since she hasn’t put much thought into eating while zipping around through space. She has dinner (or lunch… whatever) with Gatsby and asks about his relationship status, which we see Gatsby other self, that he hates women. He explains to her why he hates women which to sum up, is things that women do that guys will never understand and what guys can’t stand either. He pretty much boils it down to as his mother cheated on his dad for another man and has scorned all women since then due to his mothers actions (well, this is something all human beings are guilty of regardless). Micchi explains her reasons of why shes been causing such a ruckes throughout the galaxy, and that’s for her “darling” childhood lover Hiro-chan. She tells him that during a festival when they were kids, aliens decided to randomly show up to abduct Hiro and only him out of AN ENTIRE CROWED OF PEOPLE, which has vowed Micchi to find him since that dreadful day.
It is then decided what will become of Micchi and her actions. Will Micchi get away from her captors and find Hiro-chan? Will Gatsby get over his hate for women? You’ll just have to find that out for yourself now.
I do wanna ad one little tidbit if I may: In Gatsby defense,I am pretty sure he’s not gay. Gatsby is just very particular of what kind of girl he wants, which to simply put, he doesn’t want one ditching out on him and ending up with a broken heart. You can simply state that the man has some pretty high standards, and maybe you could put it, to quote the 40 Year Old Virgin, that he is “putting the pussy on a pedestal.” Gatsby over the years, the way I see it, has put his hatred as a defense around his heart to avoid falling for someone who could turn around and break his heart later, since the girls he happens to see that fall for him, he believes that is exactly what they will do to him. And even though this is a short OVA with really no deeper story than what were seeing, I just happen to find Gatsby character interesting, and to an extent I have been in his position at one point in time.
But to sum up this is a really entertaining half hour OVA that is just there to sit back and enjoy. There are some parody moments in this if you happen to catch it, or if you happen to notice these things with a 1980’s anime fan mindset, or if your from that period with good memory. This can found at the Anime Classic Reviews site since it is fansubbed and easy to get to, so come on by and check it out.
So yea, another blog post for the books. And all you readers are welcome to check out my blog over at Anime of Yesteryear. Well, see you guys next time!!!
As I awoke from my friday night binge of anime OVA tapes and booze, I happen to see a smoking wrecked robot on its knees as a dark red liquid was leaking out of the main hatch, with a lone figure standing outside the wreckage, holding something in one hand that could be described as a BFG (for you non-Doom fans, look it up). He wore a dark green cloak, ruffled hair in a ponytail and enough firepower to lay waste an entire platoon of Scopedog units. He then turned around and had 4 lines across the lower part of his face, something that could be described as warrior paint, a marking he made before his kill as he showed the eyes of sorrow and vengeance to me in a dead stare. He then walked over to me and began to tell his story, a quest to avenge the comrades he lost in battle, as he begun to prepare for his next hunt.
This is the story of Armor Hunter Mellow(Yellow)link, ok just Mellowlink. Sorry, couldn’t help to throw that in there. In all seriousness, Mellowlink is one mans quest to avenge his fallen comrades, a single order that got his whole squad wiped out, by going after his former commanders and avenging them one kill at a time. This takes place in the Armored Trooper Votoms universe, but happens a few months before the time line in the TV series. This OVA is one part Rambo, one part Platoon and with a hint of Apocalypse Now mixed in. Ok, its actually like 98 percent Rambo in japanese action cartoon reality. From the first 3 episodes I have seen, I can describe it as this: Mellowlink is if Rambo (First Blood: Part 2) was betrayed by Col. Trautman and Charles Napier character together and the movie had Rambo go after every person in the US Army chain of command for issuing the order to leave Rambo behind in the jungle when trying to rescue that one POW guy. Even though the order was done by Napier character (ok he does have a name in the movie, its Murdock) in the movie, “Rambo” Mellowlink would lay waste to Murdock with a hi-power “out-of-date” anti-A.T. rifle to blast him to liquid goo at point blank range. I wanted a review for my sins, and they (AAA Podcast, scratch that, it was me) gave me one. So grab your gun and your balls boys, because were taking a one way trip to the battle torn hellish world of Armor Hunter Mellowlink.
We start Mellowlink off on the planet of Astraglus in the year 7213, where we find Ality Mellowlink on a desert scorched wasteland of a planet with wreckage of fallen mechs and instruments of war, as he takes sights with his large weapon to take out a military truck. Upon destroying the vehicle, he finds the soldier who survived the ambush and hands him a dog tag, telling him the simple message of “Tell Capt. Dogman… I’ve come to see him from hell” It then goes to our man of interest Dogman playing cards with two guest of his, a woman with blue hair and one to challenge Dogman’s bet on the table by the name Lulucy, and Mr. “Tall, Blonde and Handsome” Lt. Cardine, who’s just chilling out watching the game. Dogman is interrupted by the soldier who was given the tag by Mellow and Dogman issues “all-hands-on-deck” because he knows whats coming. By this time Mellow is making the stage for his battle between him and Dogman in the desert and sees a transport coming. He is able to take out the transport and use it to get in the base. Once inside, he wreaks havoc to the base and meets up with Lulucy and Cardine, who all the more want to help him out since they seem to be investigating the scandal behind Mellowlink past known as the Planpando Scandal. Mellowlink is then able to face Dogman outside in a “man vs machine” battle by using the traps he put in place to disable Dogman’s assault, then Mellow is able to take one final charge and stab the cockpit of Dogman Scopedog to seize victory.
Episode 2 takes us to the port city of Tabbing, where Mellow happens to run into Lulucy at a local bar and finds his next target being “shown for display” as a poster ad for the towns “battling” champion “The Silver Fox of Melka” Lt. Fox. Mellow decides to go into the battle arena the same way he took out Dogman, with a big gun and balls of Goliath because this is how he rolls. He gets Lulucy to make her self as the “number one biggest fan ever” and give Fox some roses, before he realizes hes been given dog tags, in which he knows whats about to go down. He knows this because our favorite intelligence officer Lt. Cardine has explained what happened to Dogman in which Fox just shrugs off regardless. There in the colosseum its man vs. machine in a no holds barge to the death. Fox is able to grab Mellow with the Scopedog’s hands and claim victory, only that Mellow has a plan B and is able to thwart Fox plans of crushing him like a bug and jamming a spike in the cockpit, killing Fox and putting another mark in front of the list of names, Kill Bill style.
I think after describing the first 2 episodes you get the gist of what this show is about. This is a 12 episode OVA, so the trail of corpses and the stench of revenge is far from over. To give some back story to Mellowlink, this takes place in the war torn galactic universe of Ryouske Takahashi “Armored Trooper Votoms.” To sum up, Votoms centers around the world of Chirico Cuvie, a former ex- Special Forces soldier who was framed for a mission he knew nothing about. After escaping from his own military, he is on the hunt from his former allies, while meeting new ones along the way, and searching for a certain someone that he encountered on his last mission. That in a nutshell is Votoms. Of course during the review I mentioned things like “Scopedog” a few times. Well for those of you who don’t know, its one of the main mechs in the Votoms universe that pilots like Chirico and Mellowlink pilot. They are not just personalized robots, but as standard military weapons, which is one of the main aspects that makes the Votoms universe so unique.
But if this is something you readers wanna check out, than this is right up your ally. If your like me who lays around on Memorial Day weekend and watches war movies (well they used to do that on TV, I miss those days. I haven’t done that in a long while since Animazement is that same weekend every year) than watching this OVA back to back or in segments is completely up to you. Well readers, until next time, lock and load.
You are welcome to check out my blog over at http://animeofyesteryear.blogspot.com/