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Burn Up! X

       
                 
                 
 

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Title Info

  • seen: 1-3
  • type: OAV
  • grade: watchable
  • Series state: Can't find any more to watch.
  • made: unknown
  • Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
  • mod: none

If you've seen Burn Up! W then you know exactly what you're getting. However, for the innocent, I'll tell you what you get. High tech, near future action plus a full D-cup of `humorous' fan-service. The story follows a secret police team called Team Warrior which gets called on for the really tough jobs. This team includes the perenially in-debt, action before thought melee expert, the semi-crazed gun lover, the technical genius with a cute fetish, the cool tough commander and a tag-along male lecher/driver. Although this isn't too unusual because most males in this series seem to be lechers. The story centers around the teams defeat of various criminal types, although in the background a larger story begins to develop.

In fact the plot has really strong similarities to Burn up W in many ways. Perhaps this is an attempt to prove that the formula could be made to work? Since burn up W only ran for 2 episodes in Japan, plus 2 eps to finish it for the western market. There have been some changes, the stories are a bit more complex, the technical design is much better and the characters perhaps a touch more realistic. Indeed the fan-service, while still ever present, seems to have been toned down a tiny notch, or perhaps just more cleverly integrated into the story. The element of parody humor seems to have largely disappeared, and some effort is made to expand on the background of the characters. Getting to see another side to Rio in Ep.3 did a lot to give me hope, as did the general competence of the characters. Perhaps they realized that you have to have a decent story in addition to the fan service and raw mindless energy? However, at the end of the day, you really have to like simple humor and fan service to enjoy this anime. If you don't you'll probably find it disrupts the rest of the anime and reduces the appeal of the whole thing.

On the other hand if you don't mind a bit of light-hearted fun and a good slab of action then feel free to check it out. The animation is bright and fairly good, some of the action is nice and as mentioned the technical design has seen vast improvements. Indeed some of the `cyber-navigation' scenes in episode 1 and helicopter gunship scenes in episode 3 are really impressive. In addition the action, while over the top, is moderately believable which combines well with the characters competence at what they do. The voices and sound seemed fine, although you've got to be able to cope with Rio's high energy over-acting.

       
                 
                 
       

Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:16 WST 2009