rudeboy308

Those Who Hunt Elves (herein abbr. TWHE) is another lost classic of sheer lunacy mixed in with some tender moments.  The plot is dog simple, allowing many self-contained slice of life episodes to entertain us until they have to wrap it up and put a bow on it in the last couple of episodes for the season.  An interesting swerve characterizes the ending.  The main characters are quite funny, doubly so in the English dub which soon parts ways with the subtitle script about halfway into the first season.  Unfortunately, TWHE is a joke that is funny only once--too bad the series doubles down for a second season with the same jokes and set-ups as the first season.

TWHE follows in the footsteps of El Hazard--a group of random people from contemporary Japan transported to a fantasy neverwhere (El Hazard goes for an Arabian world, TWHE a D&D world).  We get a Hollywood actress in Airi, a martial arts strongman in Junpei, and a hot-tempered, gun-happy schoolgirl in Ritsuko.  Ritsuko owns, maintains, and drives her very own Soviet T-74 tank. (Don't ask, just roll with it!  This IS anime, you know.)  The elf priestess Celcia tries to send our group and their tank back to their world, but not only does it fail, the fragments of the spell scatter in several directions.  In order to get back to their world, our team must collect all the fragments onto Celcia's body.  In order to get all the fragments, which have attached themselves to various female elves in the land, our team must strip the female elves naked so that Celcia can transfer the fragment onto her.

Since this is anime, and we have 12 episodes to cover, things get complicated.  The beautiful blonde elf Celcia accidentally turns herself into a goofy-looking dog.  The whole elf-stripping thing doesn't take long to sour on the whole elf populace, and practically the entire land wants to lynch our team, despite Celcia's pleading.  (One exception is the elf warrior maiden who wants our group to strip the magic armor off of her that refuses to be taken off, with our gang trying anything and everything in their power to do so, with successful but hilarious results.)  It also doesn't help that the other elf elders send a hit squad after our team.  The bigger joke involved with their mission is that the fragments are all visible without our gang having to rip an elf's clothes off.  As our gang collect the spell fragments onto Celcia, she ultimately looks like the Pringles potato chips mascot with the marks making glasses and a handlebar mustache, a development that absolutely mortifies Celcia even more so than being turned into a dog.  After one episode, the tank gets possessed by the spirit of a cat named Mike (pron. "Mee-kay").  Plus, the main characters get along like cats in a sack.  Junpei is rash, impulsive (he's the most gung-ho about stripping elves in order to get back home), and deeply homesick for a good plate of curry and rice.  Ritsuko is put off by Junpei's brawn-over-brains approach.  Celcia and Junpei are frequently crapping at each other.  Junpei complains about how she blew the big spell in the beginning and loves to tease her about being a yellow dog with a mustache.  Celcia gives as good as she gets from Junpei as she craps at him for his gusto in stripping elves.  Airi is the only sane person in the group, the one who has to think of ways to find the spell fragment without causing any more embarrassment to them or to Celcia.

Eventually, the spell fragments are collected, and Celcia gets another try at the spell to send them home.  By this time, our group has learned to get along together after all their (mis)adventures.  Hell, Junpei and Celcia come close to a love-hate relationship.  Too bad something goes wrong AGAIN, with the spell fragments going everywhere like before, and the team back at square one when the first season ends.  A joke of an ending on you, dear viewer!  At this point, the makers of the anime should have stopped right there, because what they have is a good 12 episode season.

Too bad for us they didn't stop there.  Another season starts in a second-verse-same-as-the-first approach, an approach that should be restricted to early classic songs by the Ramones.  Our characters remain the same, except Celcia gets turned into a panda instead of a dog.  The mission to collect all the spell fragments onto Celcia remains the same.  We get different slice of life episodes, but they play like the second-best ones from the original manga, the ones that are left over after all the good ones had been used in the first season.  Our team still has a bounty on their heads after all the complaints about the elf stripping, stripping which remains wholly unnecessary (the fragments are still accessible without taking off clothing).  Most damning of all, the same joke that ends the first season ends the second season.  It's like the makers of TWHE had spent most of their production budget on a lavish party, and the next morning decided to keep all the presets from the first season and spend as little time and money as possible coming up with new material.

The writing and production staff may have been slackers, but the voice actors in both versions make it work despite the long odds against them.  Kotono Mitsuishi is hilarious as Celcia, in all her wounded dignity and her lashing out at Junpei.  Tomokazu Seki makes fun of his own action hero typecasting by making Junpei a vainglorious, impulsive loudmouth who takes pleasure in teasing Celcia.  Ritsuko is played by Yuko Miyamura, who is no stranger to playing temperamental characters (Asuka in EVA, Aisha in Outlaw Star, etc.).  Michie Tomizawa's Airi adds a touch of class and manners to the group, but she's not above asserting herself to Junpei or Ritsuko.  

ADV released both seasons of TWHE (and the original manga), and they do a bang-up job in the dub for both seasons.  Andrew Klimko makes a funny Junpei, playing him like an even more abrasive version of his role as Gateau Mocha, the martial arts strongman in Sorcerer Hunters.  Rozanne Curtis makes a bratty, trigger-happy Ritsuko.  Kelly Manison as Airi brings humor that is subtle yet biting (for something less subtle from her, check her out as Nahga in the Slayers OVAs).  But the show-stealer is Jessica Calvello as Celcia in the first season.  Shelley Calene-Black takes over the Celcia role in the second season, and she's good in that role, but Jessica Calvello is funnier and more insane.  On being forced to work construction as a dog:  "I'm covered in sweat.  I'm covered in dirt.  Hell, I'm covered in FUR!"  Or her response to Junpei's insults:  "Am I wearing a saddle?  Then quit riding my ass!"  The dub script, especially so in the first season, parts company with the sense of the subtitle script.  If you played the dub soundtrack and put the subtitle script with it, you'll see how far apart they grow from each other as we get into the second half of the first season.  The humor is often pretty rude, crude, and sometimes R-rated for adult humor, especially when Junpei and Celcia sink their fangs into each other (After Junpei mutters "Damn" under his breath after Celcia narrowly survives getting crushed by a falling tree:  "I heard that, you son of a bitch!!").  The crazy dub script, in one episode, even subverts the happily-ever-after story of a poor elf girl getting together with the prince of her kingdom with plenty of profanity and a fair bit of sexual humor.

I recommend the first season--the second season, not so much.  At any rate, rudeboy sez:  check it out.

Midori Days sounds like a normal story about a schoolgirl who has a crush on a boy and is too shy to declare her love to him, and the boy, in turn, has a bad reputation and isn't used to such female attention.  Eventually, they clear the air and confess to each other, and they live happily ever after.  What saves Midori Days from terminal normalcy and boredom is the device--worthy of a Kafka story like "The Metamorphosis" or The Trial--of the girl shrinking down and becoming the guy's right hand, thereby allowing both of them to get to know each other in ways they never thought possible.  (Don't get ahead of me with the obvious off-color jokes about girls and your right hand!)

Midori is a painfully shy schoolgirl whose family is loaded, and who goes to an exclusive prep school.  She is in love with Seiji, a loud-mouthed, vulgar punk from a decidedly less exclusive school.  She watches him at the train station, but is too afraid to speak to him.  Seiji has a reputation as the baddest brawler in his school, and he believes it is due to his demon right hand (in the past, his big sister Rin hypnotized him into such a belief in order to keep him from getting bullied).  Unfortunately, the other girls in his school are so afraid of his rep that they reject his requests for a date.  Seiji is 0 for 20 in getting dates, a record comparable to that of the NFL's Detroit Lions a couple of years back.  Seiji is particularly sensitive to all the lovey-dovey couples around him seeming to taunt his girlfriend-less condition.  Seiji is left wondering, like The Buzzcocks' song title goes, "What Do I Get?" www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lP-5F… .

What Seiji gets one morning is the shock of his life when he wakes up and finds a shrunken, naked Midori in place of his right hand.  After both of them fly off the handle in hilarious fashion and soon calm down, both are surprised at how readily this version of Midori admits her true feelings to Seiji.  She even makes a couple of t-shirts declaring her love for him, which are sweet but oddly paired with having her head wrapped in bandages.  The cover story is that Seiji's right hand is broken, a story that gets a little difficult to keep up as the series chugs along.  A broken hand story and Midori's safety really put a crimp in Seiji's ability to fight off the toughs he had beat up previously and rescue the class president Ayase.

That's right, Seiji goes from zero girlfriend prospects to TWO now.  Ayase starts out disdaining Seiji for his slacker attitude in class and his brawling ways.  Seiji rescues her from the punks by letting himself get beat up by them in exchange for letting her go.  Ayase goes from zero to gaga over Seiji within an episode's time.  From then on, she fantasizes about their definitive romantic moment in some of the craziest scenarios that I like to call "Ayase's Wild Imagination Theater."  These A.W.I.T. scenes run the gamut from shojo ai (lots of big eyes, soft focus, and sparkles) to DBZ (blast lines, fiery eyeballs, and lots of yelling) to the consciously theatrical (complete with stage sets and props).  She engineers a big date with Seiji to attract him, only to find her plan falling apart in grand, hilarious style (as all such plans must in rom/com anime).  Much funny is had watching Ayase act normal around Seiji, but go completely gooey over his small attentions to her when he's out of the scene.

Midori Days spends the bulk of its 13 episodes with nutty comedy tinged with tender moments between Seiji and Midori.  Doing simple things around the house isn't so simple after all, but they soon work something out.  Seiji has to stop Midori from trying to help him use the urinal (there are no explicit masturbation gags in the anime until after Midori stops being his right hand; I'm told that the manga is much more ecchi than the anime, so look for the fapping gags there).  
Seiji's big sister Rin (a hot meganekko--awesome!) accidentally stumbles upon their secret, and when Rin isn't beating up Seiji (she's the only one in the series who can kick his ass), she's giving us fan service at the hot springs and Midori insight into how Seiji really was as a kid (q.v.).  
Seiji's cute lolita neighbor Shiori, several years his junior, has designs on making Seiji her boyfriend, with Seiji always saying that he isn't THAT desperate for a girlfriend.  When she runs away from her new stepmother (compare to Tsubaki in Kare Kano) to Seiji's house, Rin makes matters even worse by encouraging Shiori to try a cosplay love attack to attract Seiji.  Thankfully, Seiji helps Shiori and her stepmother reconcile their differences.  By the way, Rin and Ayase, in separate instances, get the wrong impression from meeting Shiori that Seiji's a pedobear, an impression that is thankfully corrected.  
( says, "You make it sound like that's a bad thing!")
Shuichi the doll otaku is a harmless but persistent nuisance to the secret about Midori.  He thinks Midori is an advanced, animatronic puppet, and pegs Seiji as a doll otaku like him.  Seiji gives him a German suplex, and the blow to the head temporarily erases his memory of Midori, but he soon gets it back.  Episode 9 has Seiji reluctantly going along with Midori's new fame (thanks to Shuichi's blogging) in exchange for half of the proceeds from the sale of Midori dolls.  Midori is ecstatic over the attention, doubly so when Shuichi refuses to let the lead doll otaku buy the real Midori.  (Gotta love Seiji's mortified look as he poses for the picture of all those doll otaku).
We even get an episode in which Seiji becomes Midori's right hand, in a dream sequence episode whose purpose is to make Seiji have empathy for Midori's situation.
Kouta, Midori's school friend, may be annoyingly naive and fearful of Seiji's old rep, but he actually helps Midori in her decision to stop being Seiji's right hand.

While Midori is larking about as Seiji's right hand, her body is in a comatose state, and nobody--Seiji, Midori, or any number of quack doctors or faith healers hired by the family--can wake her up.  A Navajo medicine man susses out the problem--she refuses to wake up.  Like the joke goes about how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb--only one, but the bulb has to want to change!  She can't spend her life wishing for what she wants--she has to make like Cheap Trick and reach out and take it www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s1Jsz… .  She decides to wake herself up and confess her love.  Seiji, after some soul-searching of his own after she disappears from his hand (with time out for porn magazine funny, as he can finally use his right hand for fapping), realizes that he loves her too.  The ending has Seiji and Midori joining the other lovely-dovey couples in public.

The Japanese track is quite good, but the English track also has its moments.  Drew Aaron as Seiji is particularly funny, especially if you're familiar with him as the lucky little wuss Keiichi Morisato in the Oh My Goddess! TV series.  In addition, the Midori Days DVD put out by AnimeWorks also has a funny outtakes reel.  Drew Aaron proves that he's quite a funny guy, and there are at least two confirmed jokes about Seiji's pecker from Midori's English voice actress.

Midori Days is a love story marvelously skewed by nutty humor, by some ecchi content (but not nearly as much as the manga), and by its unique way for our couple to get to know each other.  rudeboy sez:  check it out!

BONUS:  Midori Days amv done to ABBA's "Waterloo" www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQMUZd…

Also check out this wonderful piece from about the series:  fav.me/d4tiexm

Steel Angel Kurumi (herein abbr. SAK) is a weird compromise between a steampunk setting (Japan during the Taisho era in the early 20th century) and a harem rom/com.  Sure, there's a plot, and there's some heavy duty narrative about a player from the future trying to solve a problem in the past.  Mostly, though, it's a harem rom/com with a young boy gaining three cute female androids (angels, in the story's parlance) who compete for his favors.

Fans of Saber Marionette J (like me) will get the shock of the familiar with the set-up of SAK.  Like SMJ, SAK's Japan has something old and something new.  SMJ has the latest computers and weapons of the future, but retains the trappings of feudal Japan in buildings, government (run by a shogun), and clothes.  SAK chooses the Taisho era (about 1910--33 thereabouts) for a steampunk setting--today's technology translated into Industrial Revolution terms.  After ending its 250+ year old isolation, Japan embarked on a crash course in industrialization, taking only a few decades to get to an industrial base when it took the West about a hundred or so years to do so.  Like Otaru in SMJ, our lucky male Nakahito is a young boy who suddenly is entrusted with three inscrutably female androids and a mission to save society with them.  The three angels are roughly analogous to the three marionettes:  Kurumi (pink hair) as the hyperactive child-like one, in like manner as Lime; Saki (brown hair), the refined maiden, in like manner as Cherry; and Karinka (blonde hair), the loud, potty-mouthed one, in like manner as Bloodberry.  Love is the key to the hearts of these girls--there's really not much difference, thematically, between the angel hearts in SAK and the maiden circuits in SMJ, both of which are the source of emotion.  Nakahito even stumbles upon Kurumi the same way Otaru does for Lime--poking around in a mysterious basement.

SAK has 24 episodes of 15 minutes each for the benefit of short attention spans.  Nakahito and his three angels must find the inventor of the angel heart and Kurumi, a certain Dr. Ayanokouji, and rescue him from the people from the future who want the secret to said hearts.  Dr. Amagi, the hot meganekko scientist who was Ayanokouji's assistant, is the responsible adult figure on their journey.  They are further assisted in many cases by the Imperial Army, thanks to Dr. Amagi.  Kurumi's heart is powered by her kissing Nakahito, and the other two angels are convinced that they can gain the kind of power Kurumi has if they follow suit.  They don't get such power, but their attempts fuel the rom/com nuttiness that makes up at least half of the action of SAK.  As they close in on the future collective, known as the Academy, it turns out that Kurumi is not the only one who can get powered up by Nakahito's kiss.  A white-haired bishounen angel named Mikhail kisses him (shades of Shinji and Kaworu in Evangelion) and gets powered up to a more female form.  Throughout the action, the bubbly Kurumi shows signs of a dark side, indicated by the appearance of black wings.  Nakahito must stop Kurumi from getting swallowed up by the darkness in a way less drastic than Mikhail's trying to kill her.  Thanks to his love, and to his onmyou mystic magic (he's a child prodigy in that regard like Sasshi in Abenobashi), Nakahito succeeds in that, as well as rescuing Ayanokouji.

Lest we forget after all that plot, SAK is a harem rom/com.  Each of Nakahito's angels is dressed in a "moe" outfit.  Kurumi favors the French maid look, Saki a more conservative maid look, and Karinka looks like the stewardess from hell, especially with the hat and her hairstyle.  When she doesn't have her game face on, Kurumi is an excessively perky ditz who jealously guards Nakahito from other women, angel or human (Dr. Amagi excepted).  Her particular "moe" affectation in speech is her "gyuuin" (it's even in the opening song) whenever she hugs her master.  The English equivalent would probably be "Squee!," but the English dub from ADV (more on that later) goes for a high-pitched squeal for the otherwise untranslatable "gyuuin."  Saki is somehow awoken by Nakahito through Kurumi, and Saki develops a serious (but still refined) lesbian crush on Kurumi.  She's faithful to Nakahito only because Kurumi is faithful to Nakahito, if you really get down to it.  Karinka starts out as an enemy sent by the Academy, and with her two angel hearts, she beats the hell out of Saki and roughs up Kurumi until Kurumi gets another kiss from Nakahito and turns the tide.  Karinka spends her time in the series mostly pissed off--at being ordered around by the Academy, at losing to Kurumi, and especially at not being able to get Kurumi's power because she gets cock-blocked by Kurumi when Karinka tries to kiss him.  She eventually does kiss Nakahito, but she gains no new power, which determines quite forcefully that Kurumi is the number one choice for Nakahito.  There are also plenty of other steel angels, a result of the manga writer Kaishaku soliciting character designs from his manga readers and featuring the winners' choices in the manga and in the anime.  (Nine volumes of the manga were translated by ADV's manga imprint before it folded.)  Also following our group are the female government spies Kichijoji, the level-headed one, and Koganei, who is attached to Nakahito in ways decidedly not professional (the term is shouta complex, an older woman's attraction to young boys, the opposite of a lolita complex).  Karinka has an admirer in the old General (no name, just General) who seems to run the army only for the purpose of getting some sort of memento of Karinka.   

The journey from Tokyo to the Academy affords lots of down-time opportunities for rom/com mayhem.  Since the alternative is being cooped up in a military base, Kurumi wants to go out on dates with her master.  The amusement park date is quite funny as Karinka dons various disguises to try to get the secret of Kurumi's power from her.  Karinka's frustration results in some hilarious temper tantrums.  It's second verse, same as the first for the episode in which Kurumi, Karinka, and Nakahito work at the Ebisu milk hall/cafe while Saki gets much-needed repairs from her battle with Karinka.  (First, there's me, that is Nakahito, and my angels Kurumi and Karinka.  And we worked at the Ebisu milk hall trying not to go out of our razudocks with boredom; apologies to Anthony Burgess, Stanley Kubrick, and Malcolm McDowell for this parody of A Clockwork Orange's intro.)  On the train ride, Karinka breaks the fourth wall on rom/com conventions for stealing a kiss from a boy, only to have them all go wrong until the end, when such a kiss doesn't yield her any more new power.  Karinka gets blocked not only by Kurumi and Saki, but also by Koganei unhinged at the thought of Karinka stealing a kiss from her darling Nakahito.  Kichijoji just looks at her like "WTF?" as she tries to get our shouta woman back on task.      

The Japanese cast has some stand-out voice talent.  Houko Kuwashima, famous for voicing mousey little girls, voices Nakahito.  Rie Tanaka voices Saki years before she started voicing wiseacres or dangerous women.  The lovely veteran Ai Orikasa voices Dr. Amagi, but unfortunately doesn't get to sing (she has a beautiful voice, as Tenchi Muyo testifies).  Michiko Neya and Tomoko Kawakami (R.I.P.) voice the two female spies; they actually swap roles about midway through the series.  Cool guest voices include:  Kikuko Inoue as Nadeshiko; Yumi Touma as Mikhail; and veteran hero player Yasunori Matsumoto playing second fiddle as Kamihito, the elder brother who doesn't have as much onmyou mystic power as his little brother Nakahito (nor, apparently, the babe magnetism).  As good as the Japanese track is, the English dub track is funnier.  The main three girls are awesome:  Kelli Cousins as Kurumi (taking a radical break from playing serious women), Monica Rial as Saki (in the extras, Ms. Rial said she was intrigued by playing the lesbian), and especially Hilary Haag as Karinka.  The Japanese Karinka is edgy but still restrained somewhat.  Not so with the English dub, as Haag gets to curse like a sailor: "Look, you stupid bitch, quit f***ing with me!" (to Kurumi, as Kurumi professes not to know the secret of her power); "What the f*** is your problem, you stupid bitch . . . er, I mean, why'd you do that, Sis?  Kinda hurt."  (to Saki as she cuffs Karinka trying to swat a mosquito on her cheek); "And believe you me, I can't wait to pay you back, you stupid dyke!" (to herself about Saki after the mosquito incident, in which Karinka tells Saki she owes her one).  Emily Carter is hilarious with Koganei's shouta attraction to Nakahito.  Actress Claudia Black guest stars as the next episode preview narrator, and does the onmyou mystic chant in the prologue to each episode.  Ms. Black was part of an ADV cross-promotion, since the seasons of her live-action series Andromeda (starring Kevin Sorbo as the captian of the titular ship) were released by ADV as well.

A four episode OVA entitled Encore followed the first series.  Saki becomes a silent film star, Karinka goes on a blind date with big brother Kamihito (and get shadowed by Kurumi and Nakahito in drag), Kurumi tries (and fails) to emulate Nadeshiko in manners and poise for Nakahito's sake, and all the angels (plus Koganei) compete for the right to kiss Nakahito, with Kurumi winning, naturally.  A second season puts the angels in contemporary Japan, with a nerd girl as their new mistress, and new designs for the angels.  SAK Zero never was released in America, and thank goodness, since the new angel designs are uninspiring, the future world uses the acid rain cliche, and there's too much angst for a title that made its mark by being so perky most of the time. (Kudos to for the lowdown on Zero.)  I'd stick with the first series and the OVA episodes.

rudeboy sez:  check it out!

Now here's a title that I wish didn't fall into the "forgotten" category:  Geobreeders.  Created by Akihiro Ito and directed by Yuji Moriyama (Project A-Ko, Macross Plus, and The Wings of Honneamise are some of his credits as a director or animation director), Geobreeders has a lot of the stuff people looked for in anime.  Cute girls, fan service, gripping action scenes, and nutty humor--what's not to like?  Imagine a cross between Scooby Doo (a team of nosey young people in the supernatural business who travel around in a van, though not one as groovy as the Mystery Machine) and The X-Files (they had to drop the "File X" from the original Japanese titles so as to avoid lawyers), and you've got the gist of it.

Kagura Total Security is in the business of busting phantom cats who take the form of humans in order to take over the world.  They use a combination of high tech and sheer craziness to snare these phantom cats:  they surround the phantom in four directions with little devices reminiscent of the ghost traps in Ghostbusters, hit the switch, and the phantom is captured.  The placement of the traps, and getting the phantom in the right place, usually entails a lot of property destruction in the manner of The Dirty Pair.  In addition, there is an actual government agency dedicated to eradicating the phantoms.  The government team of Yajima (Akio Otsuka, in the kind of role he's famous for--see his Batou in Ghost In the Shell and Kalinin in Full Metal Panic, as just two examples), the alpha male type leader, and Ayumi Narusawa (Miki Nagasawa, who usually plays the nutty ones--Izumi in Nadesico, and Greenback Jane in Black Lagoon), the statuesque action heroine, look upon the Kagura firm as well-meaning nuisances in it for the money who nonetheless can be used to get to the big enemy.  Yet both those government agents and the Kagura firm are in danger of being steamrolled by the military's ham-fisted method of eradicating the phantom cats.  The conclusion reached in both OVAs (Geobreeders and Geobreeders: Breakthrough) is that the destruction resulting from Kagura's methods of ghost-busting is considerable (and hilarious in its execution, as seen in the grenade-as-soccer-ball scene, among many others), but nowhere near the destruction that the military is capable of inflicting.

Yoichi Taba is an ordinary Tokyo salaryman looking for a new job, and he gets more than he bargained for in Kagura Total Security.  What sounds like a plum job of drawing a paycheck in an office staffed solely by hot women soon becomes one filled with too much danger, too little pay, and oodles of undeserved abuse from the girls.  The girls are a cross-section of bat-shit crazy with their own jobs and methods of attack out in the field.  Kagura roll call:

--Yuka Kikushima (Satomi Koorogi), the munchkin, lolita-looking manager of the firm, and a sure-fire candidate for the title of Boss From Hell--snarky, penny-pinching, and a real slave driver.

--Maki Umezaki (Aya Hisakawa), the cute but abrasive blonde who always dresses in a man's white suit, slacks, shoes and hat ensemble, who is the firm's resident gun nut with a penchant (especially in the manga) for making obscure references to yakuza movies from the 1950's and 1960's.  She uses two guns (twin Mausers) years before Revy "Two Hand" in Black Lagoon.

--Eiko Rando (Yuka Imai), the stern, statuesque money manager who favors unarmed combat with her martial arts and twin brass knuckles.

--Takami Sakuragi (Akiko Yajima), the mini-skirted, roller skate-wearing meganekko of the group who favors throwing knives, and who also has a tendency to freeze up and zone out into her own world when the danger gets too great for her.  In the manga, as she and Yoichi are trapped on a ferris wheel with phantom cat destruction all around them, she zones out and starts quoting from Orson Welles' ferris wheel scene in his 1949 film The Third Man ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i47-Q… ; specifically, about 4:55--5:15, near the end of the clip)

--Yu Himehagi (Narumi Hidaka, not that she gets very many lines), the busty, sleepy, chain-smoking driver with hardly any modesty in behavior (watch her come on rather casually to Yoichi, offending Yuka's sense of decorum--or maybe Yuka is playing the tsundere to him?) or dress (Daisy Dukes and button-down shirt that shows off her cleavage).  In the manga and in the Breakthrough OVA, we get to meet her siblings with only one syllable in their given names, just like Yu.

In addition, there is a good phantom cat, Maya (Mayumi Iizuka), a meek, mostly silent little girl who is like a little sister to Yoichi.  Yoichi found her as an abandoned kitten and took care of her.  Often, she is the only female in the main cast who does not abuse Yoichi.  Many of the phantom cats the team meets in battle are either trying to get Maya back into their fold, or are trying to kill her for betraying her own kind by working with Kagura and being friends with a human.

Geobreeders has a lot of intense action that is often lightened up with comedy.  There is a good deal of fan service eye candy from the Kagura females and, in Breakthrough, from the female phantom cat leader.  The series also has a great rock track, with a ukulele number in the closing credits of one part of Breakthrough to change things up.  Sung by an old Japanese comedian, this ukulele number is written from the POV of Yoichi and how hard it is to work as a salaryman in general and as the only male in an office full of abusive women in particular.  The song is titled "Aa, Yanachatta!  Aa! Odoroita!" (very roughly, "It's so hard!  Oh, poor me!"), and it even features backing vocals near the end from the Kagura females' voice actresses.  I wish I could share it with you, but YouTube doesn't have it in particular, or much for Geobreeders in general.  (See what I mean about "Forgotten Freshness?!")  In addition, it was released by US Manga's video division, but the whole company seems to have gone the way of the dodo, so you'll have to look in the used anime sites for it.  Clements and McCarthy's Anime Encyclopedia (2nd ed.) rates Geobreeders as better than they were expecting for such a crazy title.  They also give you one more reason to like Geobreeders, as dubbed by US Manga:  "Considering the output of their sister-brand Anime 18 [their hentai label, also gone the way of the dodo], it must be a refreshing change for a voice actress to shout 'Get on your knees, pussies' to an audience that genuinely does consist of cats." [p. 225]  There is another installment, the four part Geobreeders 02, but it hasn't been released here in the USA.

rudeboy sez:  check it out!

A mostly female free-lance S.W.A.T. team made up of some of the biggest nutjobs in the police department--how quintessentially anime!  Yet that's Burn Up Xcess (12 episode TV series) in a nutshell.  Burn Up is a long-lived franchise that has gone from a gritty crime story with some funny moments (the first installments, Burn Up and Burn Up W; all are OVAs) to a comedy with some gritty crime moments (this series, plus the follow-up Burn Up Scramble).  Above all else, fans of jiggling boobies will not only love to watch this title, they can even keep score at home about how much jiggling is going on (more on that in a bit).

Team Warrior is the team of last resort in a Tokyo besieged by crime, but the Team usually doesn't want to wait for things to get that bad, since they get that extra pay based on job completion.  Team Warrior roll call:

--Rio (Yuka Imai), the bubbly, busty blonde who is the door-kicker of the team (and ass-kicker) and proficient in unarmed combat as well as when she's armed   with her tonfa (night stick).  She provides most of the fan service jiggling as well as the running gag of her being up to her heaving chesticles in debt due to her spendthrift ways. (Favorite line about that, from the English dub:  "Yeah, yeah, I get it.  I owe money to everybody and their dog!")

--Yuji (Ryutaro Okiayu), the lone male of the Team and a considerable pervert when it comes to the team in general and Rio in particular.  He is madly in one-sided love with Rio, and when she's in danger, Yuji takes leave of his senses and charges in like the knight in shining armor he thinks he is.

--Maya (Maya Okamoto), the busty, trigger-happy, foul-mouthed sniper of the team.  When she doesn't get to shoot her gun on a mission, she gets hilariously frustrated, and much of the time, it looks like sexual frustration.  She joins a distinguished list of trigger-happy female nutters in anime:  Arisa in Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, Maki Umezaki in Geobreeders, Barnette Orangello in Vandread, Gloria in Daphne In the Brilliant Blue, and Revy in Black Lagoon, among others.

--Lilica (Sakura Tange), the pink-haired lolita-looking computer expert who is rarely seen without snacks.

--Nanvel (Yuri Amano), the busty flake of a weapons inventor who comes up with some of the craziest inventions that amazingly save the team's bacon during a mission.  She was introduced in Burn Up W, but she gets more to do in this series.

--Maki (Mami Kingetsu), the level-headed, busty meganekko boss of Team Warrior (pushing all the right "moe" buttons for me with her!).

The comedy episodes have Team Warrior taking down the most unusual of villains.  One of my favorites is "Undies, Go!," which features a gang of transvestite diamond thieves who end up capturing Rio.  Rio and Yuji crack the case with the help of a neighborhood pervert stealing Rio's underwear from her clothesline, and whose help is rewarded with the underwear Rio is wearing at that very moment.  Maya comes from an old-school Yakuza family in Osaka about to be wiped out by a rival gang with insanely overpowered weapons.  A bunny-suited Maya and her goofball pervert of a father (he keeps feeling her up during her visit to her family home) take down a black market weapons auction on board a zeppelin.  Watch and laugh as Maya finally gets to shoot her guns, and her orgasmic joy at doing so.  Practically every anime comedy has to have a pop idol episode, and Burn Up Xcess obliges us with Rio trying to protect a snotty one.  We get funny back stories on Maki and Rio.  The transvestite jewel thieves kidnap Nanvel to get her expertise on their side by having her build a machine that makes one invisible.  Yet Nanvel's expensive tastes in food and her otherwise insane demands drive the thieves around the bend long enough for the Team to rescue her.  A two part episode has Rio guarding an A.I. tank from being stolen by a power-hungry despot in a foreign country.  The tank and Rio bond during their trip, and Rio is genuinely sad when the tank sacrifices itself to protect her.  Xcess also has bonus parts at the end of certain episodes showing the lengths Yuji will go to in getting some loving (or at least an eyeful of her nude charms) from Rio.  These things never end well for Yuji as Rio kicks his ass for his perversion.

Yet Burn Up Xcess is not all jiggles and giggles--there's an ominous threat to the city and Team Warrior.  The police department is trending toward near-total automation, with the much-ballyhooed introduction of an all-robot police at the expense of human cops.  Team Warrior is not only wary of such an encroachment on their bottom line, they soon figure out that there's a criminal power behind each step toward the automation process.  The white-haired, busty, and cunning villain Ruby is behind the scenes of every one of the crimes Team Warrior tackles.  Ruby, in the hire of someone even bigger, enlists the smaller criminals to get the raw materials she needs, and leaves them hanging as Team Warrior arrests the small fry.  This happens for the first several episodes, and in many of them, Ruby is intrigued by Rio's tenacity in much the same way Maki was in the past when she hired Rio.  Ruby is able to make the mecha cops into criminals, and though Team Warrior stops the mecha cops and foils Ruby's plan, Ruby still gets away, and her boss is still elusive.  In a development that was probably made for a continuation that never came to Xcess, Ruby's boss is one of the higher-ups in the police department's administration.

The Japanese track is very good, with special props to the voice actresses for Rio, Maya, Nanvel, and Maki.  The opening theme is flashy and sassy, the closing theme is annoying and grating as hell.  The English dub from ADV is insanely funny, and often outshines the original during the comedy parts.  Credit goes in particular to Amanda Winn Lee's improv lines as Rio (especially in "Undies Go"), Jason Lee as Yuji, and Allison Keith Shipp as Nanvel.  ADV swung for a home run, however, with their patented (yes, really!) Jiggle Counter for this title.  ADV first used the counter for their releases of Plastic Little (a Satoshi Urushihara production heavy on naked women and light on plot and story) and for the previous Burn Up W title.  When you select that option, a counter on-screen counts all the boob jiggles in the program.  Burn Up Xcess adds a new wrinkle by having individual counters for Rio, Maya, Lilica, and Nanvel.  At the end, Rio is the clear winner at nearly 100, followed respectably by Maya, then Nanvel, with the modestly endowed Lilica in last place.  (Sorry, meganekko fans, there is no counter for Maki!).

rudeboy sez:  You've seen the motivators here, now check it out.  (Try Anime Network on satellite or internet)