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Title Info
- type: movie
- grade: watchable
- genre: dumb_fun
- made: unknown
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
My first review of this movie was pretty negative. On giving it another try, especially with someone else watching, I felt a revision was in order. The addition of the dumb fun category also fits this movie pretty well. The story begins on a pretty serious note, with a rogue comet hitting earth. 16 years later and the immense crater forms the city in which the action takes place, and also leads into the background plot. However the foreground plot is more entertaining with the super strong and energetic A-ko becoming involved in competition with the intelligent, devious, mech designing B-ko. The object of the conflict is the hyper annoying C-ko. As the conflict reaches its peak it turns out that another force has interests in the outcome...but getting involved in a fight between A-ko and B-ko is surely unwise. For that matter living in the same geographical region is unwise.
That's because the action is pretty fast and furious in this one. The action reaches quite climactic proportions and is actually pretty entertaining. On the other hand it is fairly lightweight, and well suited to the dumb fun category. Some people treasure the sub-thread of parody and humor, and there is a very warped sense of humor behind this, but while I didn't mind I couldn't find this rich enough in itself. It does add to the air of weirdness however. The main problem is that the dialog, character work and story are really all backdrops to the action. So it makes sense to check your mood before you consider watching this. On the other hand if the idea of super powered fights between school girls turns you on you can't go too far wrong.
The animation is older, but has actually aged pretty well. This is enhanced by the weird sense of design, interesting staging and some very inventive action. Unlike most fighting films there is a lot of character, movement and even humor in how the combatants move. This includes how they interact with the environment, including any other battles in the way which simply become `fodder' for them to throw at each other. The voice acting, actually the whole soundtrack, is strange (not in an entirely positive way) in how it represents things and what it focuses on (hard to describe). I should also mention that this action is at the super-hero level. The sight of a school girl throwing tanks at her opponent is something not seen that often in anime. In essence this is a fun, but very simple, action flick with animation that is still very watchable. If you've got a bunch of anime tolerant people in the mood for a laugh it probably works even better.
This Review from Akemi's AnimeWorld lauds it as a brilliant parody, what tolerant folk. Another Review from the Anime Critic rates it as poor. THEM seem to agree . While the people at Animejin find it to be very funny.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:23 WST 2009