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Title Info
- seen: 1 of 1
- type: OAV
- grade: watchable
- made: unknown
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
It seems Japan must have gone through a female wrestling phase at some time. Or perhaps some anime producers simply don't need much of an excuse to draw attractive girls fighting. Regardless, this is another female wrestling show featuring some quite graphic fighting and the familiar sports `philosophy'. In other words the `bad women wrestlers' cheat, but through special exercises the `good' girls will win in the end. Admittedly this plot goes a bit further, with the corporation that sponsors the girls having some shadowy aims of its own involving the production and testing of a strange new bio-drug.
That might give a bit too much of the story away, but it is all fairly simple and obvious so it is not too much of a problem. In some ways the `corporate' story seems to be simply an excuse, or an attempt to deepen the plot, when the creators really just wanted to draw females wrestling. And there is a goodly slab of wrestling, with a reasonable amount of blood and serious blows being delivered. The wrestling moves seem to be fairly limited, being generally restricted to solidly thumping one another. Attempts to represent the `showmanship' aspect of wrestling fall fairly flat, bordering on corny. The story and characterisation go through the motions, but are not sufficiently strong to make this anime stand out. There's nothing terribly offensive, but it all just seems so familiar and fairly flat. Of course I don't particularly get off on women hitting each other, so i'm not really the one to ask about this sort of thing.
The animation is certainly not going to rescue the show, being relatively dated, simple and budget constrained. The character art is limited, not unattractive, but any larger scene tends to fall apart. There is a lot of use of simplified backgrounds, and `sliding cells', which detracts from the experience. The action scenes are likewise limited, with some strange motions and pacing that makes it look a bit odd. The voices were probably okay, but given the limited dialog it doesn't really matter. In summary this is watchable, but unimpressive, anime although those into wrestling or sports `philosophy' might get a bit more out of it.
The Anime Movie Guide gives it an average mark, and notes that it was produced by the Gall Force production team. This includes Kenichi Sonoda's (bubblegum crisis) first stint as character designer.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:27 WST 2009