Akai Koudan Zillion: Utahime Yakyoku

The summary for the show doesn't go into the fact Apple is getting kidnapped because they want her to become the bride of the eldest son in the group, yet I think if I saw that in the summary I wouldn't have been as thrilled going into this as I was - I was honestly looking forward to a series where the heroes get on with their lives despite not having ever seen the original series, only to find they never really do get on with their lives, but instead are definitely left at a place of picking up the pieces, but not moving on.That's not a very nice send off for a beloved series characters, but I'd argue the characters in AD police, even if they did get a tragic ending still ended up with a chance to move on. I mean, they discussed moving on. While the Animation is beautiful, the sound as well, this really didn't make up for the story, character and - well, watching yet another female pulled into a damsel in distress role and unable to fight back simply because she was female and this was for the male audiences personal wish fulfillment. Yeah, I'm female, but that doesn't mean I can't watch or appreciate something from the shonen genre, nor does it being the shonen genre really excuse the poor narrative. That said, its rather hard to by into the whole shonen isn't about romance argument a lot of the younger fans put forth when the plot definitely revolves around romance, albiet a poorly done one. The expectation was never that there would be no romance in shonen, but that the narrative for the female character is about being this romantic interest. In some ways the industry has moved on from this, in others, not.

I haven't seen the show this is based off of, so I didn't know anything about the characters. That may have actually made watching this funnier, though. It starts out almost Bubblegum Crisis-like, with a woman in a band singing a rock song on a stage to a packed audience in a club. Things quickly go awry though as she is kidnapped, and her band-mates comically fail to save her. I'm not sure if we are supposed to know who the kidnappers are, either, but their backgrounds and origins aren't explained here. Anyway, they kidnapped the main female character, Apple, in order to marry her offto another bad guy (I guess their brother?). It seems like villains in this one are all part of a family, with "Mama" as the boss. After Apple's locked away in some desolate dungeon-like tower, it's up to her band-mates to rescue her, and they use laser guns, motorcycles, hang gliders and a dirigible (!) to do so. Complicating matters is a mysterious guy hired by the villains to dispose of Apple's friends, who seems to have a past with Apple. Can JJ and Champ save Apple before she becomes the bride of some sleazy guy in front of his family and an army of mask-wearing robots? And what will the mysterious guy do? I won't spoil the ending, so let me get to the more technical aspects of the OVA. While the character designs are good, the animation isn't that great. Characters move awkwardly sometimes (like when characters far away are supposed to be walking, it almost looks like they just get dragged and dropped by a mouse cursor). Also, characters' facial features aren't well-defined from a distance, and characters that are speaking will sometimes not be moving their mouths. Music is OK, but forgettable. Voices are decent; there are a lot of veteran voice actors in this one. Characters aren't developed too well (especially the other 2 members of the band who don't get much focus), and we don't really get to understand the villains' motivation: why do they want to have Apple marry one of them in the first place? What does that accomplish? There are also a bunch of seemingly pointless scenes, like when the mysterious guy fights one of Apple's friends. The friend even asks why the mysterious guy is fighting him, to which the mysterious guy responds with something like: "do you need a reason to fight?" as the buildings around them are falling down. There's also a lot of cheesy bickering between the two main male characters (they both clearly have a crush on Apple), and then there is some cliche groping, looking up a dress, etc. On a more serious note, there is also an attempted rape by Apple's evil wannabe groom, but this gets thwarted before things get too far. The overall tone of this OVA is humorous. They make a big deal about Apple's music box locket, and even show it at the end of the credits, but its significance is never explained -- maybe this is something else that isn't understandable without the context of the original series. Anyway, as a whole, this is a fun action-comedy romp that is highly nonsensical, but it might make more sense to viewers of the story on which it's based.

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