Anime & Manga Teh CX Anime Review Thread

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
Hot take: I don't think the Cowboy Bebop English dub is that good.

Oh don't mistake me: it's not trash like most English dubs at the time were, but everyone keeps hyping it up as the most amazing thing ever, and... it's just okay? I'd certainly put a lot of later anime dubs over it, like Fullmetal Alchemist's (both 2003 and Brotherhood).
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
I only ever saw Dirty Pair Flash. Kei's hair was superior there.
That version of Kei looks like she glued the business end of a broom to her forehead, in preparation for a Yugioh protagonist audition. I'm sorry, but I don't see any improvement there; just a different kind of bad.
 

prinCZess

Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Kei's hair looks like a poodle crawled onto her head and died; Yuri is way prettier.
Kei's lady-pompadour is one of the things that makes her better even if it does look like a shaggy dog crawled onto her head.... It's like someone slammed-together David Bowie and Pat Benetar on the girl's head, and then called for some support from Rambo so she could have a battle-bandanna!
Yuri's hair is boring. :p

Plus, Kei is the more quick-witted problem-solver:
iu
(And this is what I mean! The potential for stupid-argument over the series has gone underutilized because of damn whippersnapper kids in the 90s hopping on the Asuka-Rei-Misato bus to argue and therefore ruining things...Damn kids)🤣
 
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Terthna

Professional Lurker
Kei's lady-pompadour is one of the things that makes her better. It's like someone slammed-together David Bowie and Pat Benetar on the girl's head, and then called for some support from Rambo so she could have a battle-bandanna!
Yuri's hair is boring. :p

Plus, Kei is the more quick-witted problem-solver:
iu
🤣
If by "quick-witted problem-solver" you mean total slut, then yeah. Yuri, meanwhile, is a classy lady who actually has standards. She also has much better fashion sense then her tomboyish compatriot.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
In a (better) world without endless fan-fights over which mentally and emotionally-scarred girl in Evangelion was superior, there would probably be endless fan-fights over which of the Dirty Pair was...Even if the answer is obvious (Kei).
Kei is definitely best girl. Helps that I love tomboys. :giggle:

Kei's hair looks like a poodle crawled onto her head and died; Yuri is way prettier.
tenor.gif


I happen to love her awesome '80s hair. I also loved it when Major Kira over on DS9 rocked this cut:
Screencaps-major-kira-nerys-15495615-705-530.jpg
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
Minmei is best girl?
Lynn Minmei from Macross? Yeah, I'd say so; though is has been a very long time since I'd last seen that show. Actually, now that I think about it, I never did see the original version; just Robotech. I really need to get on that one of these days.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
She's waaay to annoying to best girl. Lisa Hayes is a better choice.
I think she was one of the most hated females in all of Anime when Robotech was still a thing. Minmei hate back in the day was on par with what Joffery gets today.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
Dirty Pair: Project Eden
(1986 movie)

Being an actual movie and all, one might hope for an increase in animation quality and maybe even a somewhat more involved storyline. Well, do not look to hope, it has forsaken this movie. Now the animation isn't horrible or anything and neither is the story exactly, it's just that everything is pretty much on par with the original TV series. What that translates into for this movie is a long drawn out storyline that actually made it a little difficult to remember what the Lovely Angels were originally sent to do when the movie was finally getting close to being over. The movie tried to make up for this a little by filling up time with musical action sequences, some of which were in slow motion and none of which had any dialog. Basically it was like someone had made some AMVs and stuck them in the middle of the movie.

As for that actual story, it revolved entirely around some strange lizard creatures attacking some kind of unobtanium plants, killing everyone in sight, and running off with the unobtanium. There are two main factions on this planet, one of which is capitalist and the other communist, and both sides are convinced the other is behind these destructive attacks. The Angels are sent in to figure out what's going on. It doesn't take that long for the movie to reveal that some mad scientist type is behind it all, apparently seeking some kind of next stage in evolution or some crap along those lines. These creatures are basically the result of him zapping some kind of a fossil with a weird-looking vagina eye energy ray.

While the Angels take a brief side trip to one of the factories that had been ruined in one of these creature attacks, they meet a thief who very obviously is also supposed to double as a love interest. Naturally this happens when the Angels are taking a bath, since there were conveniently a couple of tubs available right next to each other in some completely ruined room which also apparently had hot running water available to them. As you might expect, our thief/love interest, Carson D. Carson, falls into the tubs, both of them. He even manages to feel Kei up. And for me, this is where mediocre started to go downhill, because from this point on the Angels suddenly aren't as capable as they always otherwise have been, basically just so this thief can prove his worth to the Angels. It's a classic example of making one character look better at the expense of others. They also do that whole love/hate thing between Kei and Carson, where the two act like they don't like each other even though it's really obvious that they're supposed to have a thing for each other.

As it turns out, Carson is looking to get back at the mad scientist and his butler for stealing some very rare wine which he stole himself fair and square. The movie then quickly becomes a fight between the mad scientist, his butler, and the lizard creatures against Carson and the Angels, which is why it became somewhat difficult to remember why the Angels were even there to begin with. The movie, being oh so stereotypical in pretty much every way imaginable, manages to have its cake and eat it too by having Carson not only make the heroic sacrifice, but live through it so he and Kei can get their kinky thing on. Of course, this wouldn't be an episode of angels without things ending in disaster, so the movie ends with the Angels having unwittingly unleashed a ton of those lizard creatures on the entire planet.

When it comes to the characters, there really isn't a lot to say. The Angels are pretty much the same as in their previous outings, except that in this movie they become somewhat less capable after Carson shows up. Mughi is the only other character from the original series to show up in this movie, and his role is very limited. Nammo didn't even turn up at all, which disappointed me a little because I always liked her better than Mughi anyway. Carson is a very stereotypical sympathetic thief archtype who we're just supposed to like. I have to admit that I liked some of his responses to the Angels, but otherwise he was somewhat boring.

As for the fan service, well, it's pretty much like the TV series, which is again disappointing if you're a perv like I am. Pretty much all of it was the teasing type that didn't really allow you to see anything, except for the very Bond movie-like opening and one scene where Yuri gets her makeshift shorts torn. To make things worse, there is plenty of fan dis-service, mostly from the lizard creatures. The thing about them is that their long neck and lack of a distinct head was somewhat phallic-like, which wasn't helped much by their tendency to spew some kind of white sticky substance from their mouths. Later versions of these creatures all had some nice racks and asses, but with the typical anime anatomy, though in this case it wasn't a bad thing. Aside from being lizard creatures, they also lacked a typical head, and had something resembling a head nestled where the breast bone would normally be on a human, though their mouths were where the neck would normally be.

I don't hate this movie exactly, and I don’t even regret seeing it, it's just that it's not an experience I ever intend to repeat. I can honestly say that this is the worst outing of the Dirty Pair franchise that I've seen to this point. The only fun to really be had in watching it is in how very riffable this movie is. 3/10.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
Dirty Pair
(10 episode OVA)

While this OVA is listed as a sequel to the original series, with all the differences from the series, I'd say that this is closer to a reboot. The 3WA building is different, a new ship, and a distinct lack of Nammo highlight the main differences. Other than that, it tries to be very much in the spirit of the original series, with the two lovely Angels, Kei and Yuri, going on random missions every week while trading the usual shallow jibes at each other. It also tries to be funny, but most of the time it doesn't succeed.

I'd honestly compare this OVA to the Slayers series that I saw recently. It has lousy voice acting that accounts for most of the laughs to be had while watching it, and while at times it seems like it's intended for a more mature audience, most of the time it comes off as a lame Saturday morning cartoon aimed at kids. The vast majority of the humor also comes off as forced, and I honestly feel that while the series wasn't exactly made of awesome itself, it certainly had a charm that this OVA lacks. It also actually managed to be funny on purpose. Just as an example, in the series the Angels managed to destroy a planet completely by accident and through no real fault of their own, and this was actually a little funny in a dark way. In this OVA, the Angels destroy no less than two planets and it manages to not be funny at all, even though the OVA was trying to play it up as funny. Of course at its start, the OVA also really tried to play up the James Bond aspect of the series by featuring a Dr. Q who comes up with random spy weapons which usually fail to work properly. Again this was supposed to be funny but just wasn't.

This OVA is boring and very skippable, and I recommend that you do exactly that. I was going to rate this a zero, but +1 point for the random appearance of the Enterprise as a giant transforming mecha. 1/10.
 
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prinCZess

Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
I was always a slightly bigger fan of the OVAs over the TV series...But am fully willing to admit that may be because the OVAs seemed to have more outfit-changes per minute of runtime than the series so there's more glamorous animation of crazy 80s-future fashion that is absolutely wonderful, plus they were sillier in general (the 'Halloween Special' that's just multiple bank-robberies by caricatures and references getting stopped whilst the Pair chase a Terminator...*mwah* chef's kiss wonderful stupidity)...and since I never watched the english dub, I couldn't be off-put by the voice-acting (and, having looked up an example...oof).
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
I'll probably take a look at all of them again at some point with fresher eyes. I've probably watched Dirty Pair about 3 more times since I wrote my review of it, and in fact I own the latest release of it that Funimation put out (even though the jerks split it in half). I think it might say a lot, though, that the only thing I really remember from the 10 episode OVA is an episode where Kei and Yuri are somehow bested by a bunch of kids, who demand the TV show only cartoons, and one of the cartoons features a brief clip of the TOS Enterprise playing transformer, which just tickled the hell out of me.

Actually, it's kind of an interesting aside, because the various Dirty Pair shows are filled with Star Trek references. This ended up coming full circle, however, as Rick Sternbach, an illustrator/designer for TNG, DS9, and VOY, was a huge fan of Dirty Pair, and would constantly put references to Kei and Yuri in basically every computer readout he did (we weren't supposed to be able to read the text back then anyway), and a lot of the labels around the set. When ENT was being made, he was no longer working for Star Trek (AFAIK), so whoever was responsible for the computer read-outs and labels started referencing the fact he'd normally make a Kei and Yuri reference there, and we know because ENT was being filmed in HD and you could actually read it if you paused it. :LOL:

In any case, I'll try watching them in the original Japanese next time, because apparently it was the same voice actresses playing them for everything but Flash.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
Dirty Pair: Flight 005 Conspiracy
(single episode OVA)

After watching the other OVAs and the movie, this OVA is like a breath of fresh air. While it seems to be a continuation of the 10 episode OVA, it isn't nearly as corny, except in the beginning when the Lovely Angels, Kei and Yuri, are getting their traditional beginning of the episode briefing. Once again the joke is supposed to be how horrible the "Dirty Pair" are, though in this case their boss and the Angels almost seem like they aren't all that familiar with each other. In any case, the joke, which wasn't really all that funny, ends up falling flat because the way the story unfolds, the Angels are shown to be competent and the destruction of a large military station is the fault of a person they rescued, not their own. And for once this isn't really played for laughs either. Actually, outside from some comedy relief early in the OVA, this outing is a lot more serious in tone than pretty much any of the other Dirty Pair animes I've seen.

The story itself seems to be a bit of a rip-off from the only two-part episode from the original series. A space liner explodes and while it was supposed to have been fully loaded, there is no crew or passenger manifest available, and either no one on board had anyone to miss them, or all of their families for whatever reason never bothered to file any kind of legal or civil action as a result of the "accident." The Angels are sent to investigate both this, and the disappearance of a scientist and his family, and as you might guess the two incidents are connected. Where this becomes a bit of a rip off of a previous episode is that it turns out that no one was aboard the liner to begin with. That aspect aside, the story actually was marginally interesting, with the Angels investigating and people trying to kill them almost every step of the way. Oh, and as an added bonus, there are space Nazis.

Naturally the Angels manage to successfully complete their mission, and while there ends up being a significant amount of collateral damage and loss of life, as I mentioned before, this isn't played for laughs. Actually this outing seems more like a traditional space opera than the light-hearted girls-with-guns action comedy that it's always tried to be. I'm not saying this is a negative thing exactly, but I am noting the difference in tone from the rest of the franchise that I've seen up to this point. The ending actually underlines this difference because while usually an episode would end on a light note, even if it wasn't entirely appropriate, this time the Angels lamented the loss of people who had helped them along the way while the people they'd rescued mourned the loss of a loved one who had died to save them.

There isn't a whole lot to be said about the characters in this one. The Angels' boss is seen only in the beginning, and he's pretty much the same angry police chief stereotype that he's always been. The Angels start out about the same as they've always been as well, teasing each other and going on about men they find attractive. Of course even early on there were some differences I noted, like Yuri being more of a wuss and the Angels not getting nearly as upset about their "Dirty Pair" nickname as in the series. As the story progressed, they became a lot more serious themselves, and stopped taking the usual gibes at each other. There also wasn't nearly as much of the usual fan service from the Angels or any of the other characters.

I wouldn't say this OVA was especially good or anything, but it was definitely an improvement over the other OVAs and the movie. It might be worth watching if you liked the series. 5/10.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
Dirty Pair Flash
(16 episode OVA)

This is probably a great example of what a bad reboot looks like. Reboots are pretty much just an excuse to take a basic concept but change details, and that's exactly what happened here. This isn't always a bad thing, and in a lot of cases the reboot can actually be better than the original. This isn't one of those cases.

On the surface, making Kei and Yuri hate each other at first isn't really a bad idea per say, especially in light of the comedic nature of this anime. It isn't even all that far off from the way the original characters tended to trade barbs occasionally. But this, like so many other things in this reboot, are amped up to eleven, and manage to not actually be funny. It also doesn't help that they used voice actresses with some of the most annoying voices I've heard to play the main characters. Aside from the annoyance factor, this also means a joke that might have actually managed to get a chuckle becomes irritating when told by a voice that sounds like nails on a chalkboard. Actually the fan service is probably the thing I found most amusing. You know, the standard stuff. Like Yuri being in a sailor outfit when she's first introduced, and their clothes being torn to just a few gravity and physics defying shreds that manage to just barely hide the bits they aren't going to bother drawing in anyway, which we actually get to see thanks to the magical girl transformation sequence which dissolves their clothing and forms new fan service outfits over their naked bodies. Don't worry, no nipples to traumatize us with. I do kind of like how they had their cake and ate it too, though, because not only did they get the transformation sequence, but they lampshaded it by having a group of dirty old men enjoy the stripperific display. Of course the somewhat disturbing thing is that both Angels are actually 17, which would make them both under-aged, which is a little worse seeing as how Yuri is obviously supposed to be a slut. Okay, they aren't that under-aged, but still, oh Japan...

Gone is the very episodic nature of the original series. Which is to say that while there is more than one unrelated mission, they stretch out over several episodes, and they'd only make sense in sequential order since the OVA follows all the team-forming stages the Lovely Angels go through, even if the "storming" stage tends to stretch on somewhat indefinitely. Somewhat unfortunately, also gone is the level of competence the Lovely Angels had in the original series, and as a result their "Dirty Pair" nickname is somewhat more deserved.

Another area this anime suffers is in animation quality. Normally this isn't a huge deal for me, but in this case the quality is noticeably worse than the original, which came out a decade earlier in the mid-80s. I'd actually make the comparison to Slayers again.

So to sum it up, The stories and characters aren't particularly interesting, the comedy isn't all that funny, and the animation quality is pretty bad. It does manage to revive some of the spirit of the original series, but really it has a lot more negative about it than positive. To be honest, after the halfway-point of the series I basically just started skipping through the rest of them because I started to get bored. 1/10.
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
Dirty Pair Flash
(16 episode OVA)

This is probably a great example of what a bad reboot looks like. Reboots are pretty much just an excuse to take a basic concept but change details, and that's exactly what happened here. This isn't always a bad thing, and in a lot of cases the reboot can actually be better than the original. This isn't one of those cases.

On the surface, making Kei and Yuri hate each other at first isn't really a bad idea per say, especially in light of the comedic nature of this anime. It isn't even all that far off from the way the original characters tended to trade barbs occasionally. But this, like so many other things in this reboot, are amped up to eleven, and manage to not actually be funny. It also doesn't help that they used voice actresses with some of the most annoying voices I've heard to play the main characters. Aside from the annoyance factor, this also means a joke that might have actually managed to get a chuckle becomes irritating when told by a voice that sounds like nails on a chalkboard. Actually the fan service is probably the thing I found most amusing. You know, the standard stuff. Like Yuri being in a sailor outfit when she's first introduced, and their clothes being torn to just a few gravity and physics defying shreds that manage to just barely hide the bits they aren't going to bother drawing in anyway, which we actually get to see thanks to the magical girl transformation sequence which dissolves their clothing and forms new fan service outfits over their naked bodies. Don't worry, no nipples to traumatize us with. I do kind of like how they had their cake and ate it too, though, because not only did they get the transformation sequence, but they lampshaded it by having a group of dirty old men enjoy the stripperific display. Of course the somewhat disturbing thing is that both Angels are actually 17, which would make them both under-aged, which is a little worse seeing as how Yuri is obviously supposed to be a slut. Okay, they aren't that under-aged, but still, oh Japan...

Gone is the very episodic nature of the original series. Which is to say that while there is more than one unrelated mission, they stretch out over several episodes, and they'd only make sense in sequential order since the OVA follows all the team-forming stages the Lovely Angels go through, even if the "storming" stage tends to stretch on somewhat indefinitely. Somewhat unfortunately, also gone is the level of competence the Lovely Angels had in the original series, and as a result their "Dirty Pair" nickname is somewhat more deserved.

Another area this anime suffers is in animation quality. Normally this isn't a huge deal for me, but in this case the quality is noticeably worse than the original, which came out a decade earlier in the mid-80s. I'd actually make the comparison to Slayers again.

So to sum it up, The stories and characters aren't particularly interesting, the comedy isn't all that funny, and the animation quality is pretty bad. It does manage to revive some of the spirit of the original series, but really it has a lot more negative about it than positive. To be honest, after the halfway-point of the series I basically just started skipping through the rest of them because I started to get bored. 1/10.
Here's a fun fact; Dirty Pair Flash is the debut of Takahiro Kimura as a character designer. You may recognize his work in later, more well-regarded anime such as GaoGaiGar, and Gun X Sword. He also worked on Godannar, which is extremely fanservice heavy.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Moyasiman:Tales of agriculture.11 + 11 episodes.
Interesting idea,becouse author made good slice-of-life mixed with university life,and added guy who could see and hear bacteria.Which are very helpfull in making good sake and other products.And like him and gave him moral support,too.

All in all - good anime.7/10,i think.
 

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