DIRTY PAIR OVA

Now we're dipping into some serious classics. Coming straight at you from the year 198X... or 1986 if you want to be exact, the Dirty Pair OVA hails from an era when there was no Anime Network, Otakon or even Streamline Pictures. In the states if one wanted to see such marvels it was off to the Star Trek convention with a pocket full of cash. Funsubbers also did not exist, just a cabal of forward thinking opportunists who knew that people would pay dearly for the chance to see these shows. And in 1989 I paid way too much money for a poor quality VHS pirate copy of Dirty Pair: Project Eden, which probably was the first anime I ever bought. Of course there was NO other way to obtain this stuff, and I was young so I am obviously exonerated of any wrong doing, right? In addition to that awesome movie I was also treated to an additional three hours of promo reels and the notorious DAICON IV opening animation. This fan produced short was created by the people who were soon to become the core members of Gainax, and I'm sure that it was this four minute experience that cursed me forever with the anime habit. (RAMBLE ALARM!!!) Ok... the point is that the OVA and Project Eden share the same pedigree, so I was excited to see what else they had done with the story.

The series is smartly designed, even if the main characters seem to get easily distracted. It has a real sci-fi polish that most titles now a days simply don't care to exhibit. The world of the Dirty Pair is a cyberpunk in space motif, where governments and corporations clash routinely with the unknown and each other. Overall the stories maintain a plausibility and realism that is fun to see against the bouncy fun-loving Kei and Yuri, the series main characters. In reference to the aptly named Dirty Pair, it is so nice the see some women in anime who are not either prudish, crazy, traumatized or lusting after little boys. They're a couple of young, carefree characters that women seldom get to be in modern sci-fi anime. In fact in a couple of instances it becomes a kind of James Bond story with two female secret agents. Very cool.

All that being said, the stories can be predictable with a few exceptions. The situations contain a lot of cool ideas and sci-fi riffs but you usually know who the bad guys are and what the ending will look like. This could be a function of the title's age, but my guess is that cerebral storytelling wasn't the point of this one. While we are on the negatives let me say the english dub is a waste of time, terrible and bad. In fact comparing the two tracks, the japanese audio sounds like it has higher fidelity, and this is a title from '86! Another strike against ADV is that the transfer is littered with artifacts in the negative space and some really terrible after-images. Someone over there should have guessed this would have been a problem for a show that is centered in outer space. Add some really unimaginative menus to the mix and you have a rather lack luster effort given to the queens of the two-girls-in-space genre. It's not like there could be anyone over at ADV that doesn't have some nostalgia for the Lovely Angels... so what gives??

If you forget the crud layered on to it by ADV, I think the title has aged quite gracefully. The animation is very tight, top of the line for that era in fact, and the japanese voice work is very good and adds all the humor the show requires. Ship and environmental designs carry that mark of realism I talked about earlier and remain cool looking. Expect a lot gun-play and explosions and you wont be disappointed with this one. It's one of those 'girls with guns' things you can't help but like, though as my wife mentioned, it probably helps to be male when you're watching this. In it's defense blatant fan service does not enter into the picture here, not once. So there.

My suggestion: A real classic, something to keep your Sailor Moon and Project A-Ko discs company. Buy it.