Friday 24 July 2009

AIKa R-16: Virgin Mission

Watched the last episode of Virgin Mission last night.  Virgin Mission is the prequel to Agent Aika.  I have to say that Virgin Mission is like ten times better than Agent Aika.

The story is set 10 years before the events of Agent Aika.  Aika is a high school student who just recently passed her salvager license test.  She is then contacted by the class president, Eri, to join the Treasure Hunter Club as their pilot.  Aika meets Karen who has a tattoo on her breast of a butterfly, but upon closer examination, the tattoo is actually comprised of numbers that translates to "the gate of the truth will be opened by the sleeping butterfly" and a set of coordinates.  The three of them set out to go to the coordinates as the first outing of the Treasure Hunting Club.

The series still has the expected fanservice as the original.  I believe there is also more nudity in this series vs. Agent Aika.  Again the story isn't exactly good, but its not bad either.  The story in my opinion is better than Agent Aika.  Again the fanservice is still the main focus of the series.  The ending is equally as lame as Agent Aika's.  

Of the two series, I actually wouldn't mind watching this series over again.  Agent Aika on the other hand...  Same recommendation as Agent Aika.  If you're looking for a deep story, steer clear, but if you want a fanservice anime, this'll be for you.  At three episodes long, you can watch the whole thing in one sitting.

Agent Aika

Finally got around to finished Agent Aika.  It was alright.  It wasn't good, but it wasn't entirely bad either.  I think the series relied too much on the fanservice and could have actually made a decent series if they focused more on the story.  Most of the characters were pretty memorable, especially Gozo, Michikusa and Gusto.  The second half of the series was quite repetitive:  the Delmo corp tries to kill Aika, in every episode.  I won't spoil the ending, though it was kind of lame too.

Good thing about the series is that it was rather short at only 7 episodes.  Overall I wouldn't recommend this anime to people looking for a story.  If you want fanservice, this might be a series you'd be interested in.  As Wikipedia states, there's about one panty shot every 20 seconds.

Friday 17 July 2009

Japanese Barbie Stop Animation

Pretty entertaining videos I found while reading some of the blogs I follow.  There are two videos, both made in the 80s.  The first one is kind of funny in a cheesy way.  It picks up in the second half.  The first part involve a doll riding a toy motorcycle through the streets of Japan.  Half way in it changes to I guess a parody of action movies in general.  The doll is the heroine of a spy movie, with live action villains.

The second video is longer, but in my opinion better.  Its like a stop animation magical-girl/gundam.  The heroine's friend gets kidnapped by foreigners.  The foreigners take her on board their flying crab ship.  The heroine then calls for her paper airplane ship which can apparently turn into different origami creatures.

Click the post title to go to the videos.