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Dirty Pair: Project Eden
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Title Info
- type: movie
- grade: watchable
- genre: dumb_fun
- made: 1987
- Review created: Fri Dec 1 00:29:51 EST 2000
- mod: none
I'd heard this was one of the most popular Dirty Pair outings. So while I knew it would be an older tape I still had some expectations of a pleasant ride. However...Well, lets begin by saying that the Dirty Pair series is primarily based around one single decision. That is to extend the well known anime foundation of well proportioned, minimally dressed, somewhat ditzy women by giving them `attitude'. This attitude primarily expressed in macho posturing and hair trigger violence. This means that while you are watching the women you can also be entertained by them blowing things up, thus merging sex appeal and action in one package. And because they have attitude there's no suggestion that it is in any way demeaning, despite their constant clothing problems. Oh, by the way, this is part of the `classic' dirty pair series, not the `flash' re-incarnation.
In this installment the two women, acting as agents of the WWWA who are galactic troubleshooters, get called to a remote planet to mediate a dispute. The nations, one a bastion of freedom and the other a totalitarian state, both mine a vital rare mineral. But `monsters' have been attacking some of the plants on the totalitarian side, and they're getting just a little testy about it. Sounds like a great plot doesn't it? Well forget it, because that is just to set the scene. Actually there's an insane villain in a playhouse full of high tech toys at the root of things. This provides a good opportunity for action, dodgy science to underpin the plot and lots of things that explode.
That said, if you do your best to ignore the story, try not to pay too much attention to the dialog and are in the mood for some action you might quite enjoy this. Thus it gets entry into the `dumb fun' genre and should be reserved for when you feel like winding back the brain and watching the action. And there is quite a lot of action, in some quite varied environments, to keep you entertained. Sadly I couldn't manage this, and the shallow story and camp dialogue irritated rather than amused.
This is not helped by the production. As mentioned this is an older tape, which reduces from both the visual effect of the action and from the visual appeal of the two leads. And given that these are vital components of the shows appeal that's a fairly heavy blow. On top of that it has a bad case of style, trying to do clever animation, over the top action scenes and loud dialogue to make itself look better than it is. Even more than the animation this desperate attempt to look cool and stylish dates the anime. This is made even more painful with a fairly dodgy english dub and some truly atrocious `early 70's soft porn music'. An occassionally pleasant but painfully lightweight pure-action piece I will not be in a hurry to revisit.
The Anime Critic has a good selection of Dirty Pair reviews, including a review for this one. But despite being an avowed DP fan he didn't enjoy the experience that much and rated the movie below average. The ever reliable Lord Carnage has a review seems to have had a similar experience and can only call it `fairly recommended'. His Offsider Herself the Elf is even less impressed, and has a valid point in the girls being somewhat outshone by the `way too cool' romantic interest. The folks at are having none of this, giving it a glowing review, stating "This is Dirty Pair at its very best, and it's a lot of fun to watch!".
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:17 WST 2009