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Voogies Angel
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Title Info
- alias: Dennou sentai Voogies Angel
- seen: 1-3 of 3
- type: OAV
- grade: flawed
- made: unknown
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
This was labelled as being the `movie series' but I have no idea what that means. Anyway, the story is set in a future earth where the terrible alien `space emigrants' have routed good old humanity and exiled us to aquatic cities on the ocean depths. Here the last defenders of humanity await the final alien onslaught, although it is hardly neccessary as humanity will die out in three years anyway. Given this it is time for mankind to unleash their final weapons against the SE in a desperate bid for survival. So what are these weapons? well, how about five incompetent, psychotic, cybernetic airheads in revealing clothing? truly humanities future has never looked more grim.
I should mention immediately that I saw a dub and it does no favors to this anime. The over-the-top voices accentuate the corniness of the lines and are bad enough to cause spasms in the sensitive. It may be that hearing the lines in your own language really allows you to realise the full corn value, but that still isn't enough to explain it. It is possible to guess what the creators were aiming at, attractive women, action, humor and a tragic conclusion, but the writing is so sudden and stilted that it simply doesn't work. This is probably partly due to the tight time constraints of three episodes, but the weak writing has to cop a lot of blame for the final result. The characters are rarely above the level of charicature, the action is extremely unimpressive and the tragedy elements way over the top. They also miss the fact that tragedy works best when you care about the characters, and given that they are so unformed, unbelievable and one dimensional it is far to easy to not care. This show simply mixes too many elements, too fast, and with too little subtlety to be anything other than a mess.
Most anime fans have a high tolerance for super-powered females but the only moments of cool here are on the opening credits. There are all the elements that could work, attractive girls, tragic pasts, desperate present and self discovery but it is simply delivered too fast and with too little substance. The production, once the voices are ignored, is quite reasonable with crisp, bright and clean animation. The action has weird pacing and feels very staged but is acceptable, although the mass battles are fairly abstracted. Had the writing been tighter and the pace more relaxed perhaps this could have been cool, but as it is it is a painfull experience.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:27 WST 2009