Revived Classic

Originally published on www.otakureview.net

Intro

When did CPM start putting hordes of trailers on all of their releases?

The Story

Earth is being invaded by aliens… again. How many times have I typed out that exact sentence to begin my description of an anime’s premise? Sheesh! Anyways, Earth is being invaded by aliens. The alien armada is mowing through Earth’s defenses left and right.

Down on Earth, Kahm, princess of the alien invaders, has come down to loot and plunder when she runs across a young photographer and chooses him to be her husband. After a long courtship of a few seconds, Tetsuya is whisked away to Kahm’s spaceship so that they can go back to her home world and be married.

Finally the truth is revealed and Kahm’s father wishes to exterminate the human race but if Kahm mates with Tetsuya and marries him, then that should change her father’s mind… she thinks.

Soon though, it becomes an intergalactic love story with alien and human learning to overcome their differences and learn about love, life and relationships.

The Good And The Bad

Originally released in 1986, the video quality is poor at first with obvious flickers but it gets a bit more steady in quality as it goes along.

The writing in this release is fun though it wastes absolutely no time in providing blood, sex jokes or fan service. It’s obvious that some jokes in the dub script have gotten a modern twist but the sentiment is the same.

From what I understand, this was actually part of a much longer manga series back in the 80’s and so that would explain how concise everything is in this release but I really was hoping for a bit more development. It just felt like the entire release went by so quickly, I just hit play and next thing I know I’m at the end with no real clue on how I got there.

Music

The music is pretty standard sci fi fare. Nothing that was overly impressed but I did think that it transferred over to DVD quite well.


Dub vs. Sub

For those not already aware, CPM did something quite interesting with this release by turning over the job of casting to fans. Over a period of weeks, fans got to cast their vote online on who got to play the roles and over 18,000 votes later the cast was chosen.

I really like Liza Jacqueline as Princess Kahm (though I’ll be honest when I say that I’m really not familiar with any of her other roles). Rebecca Soler was an interesting choice for Battia as the last role that I remember her as was Miu in Piano, so this was a big change and really showed me vast amounts of growth.

Extras

Speaking of which, the main extra on this volume is a casting featurette which has Tom Wayland and some of the leads talking about being chosen by fans and their experience with the anime.

Also included on the volume is the original trailer for the release.

Overall

This release by CPM was the big 20th anniversary edition for an OVA that many thought was doomed to obscurity and would never be seen again. For the most part I really enjoyed this release and am now quite glad to know that it was brought over.

Unfortunately while it was fun to watch once I just don’t see myself putting this into my player very often in the future. It was fun and enjoyable but the pace was just a little too fast for me and there was no real development. Maybe if I knew more about the history of this, I would be able to enjoy it more but for now I’m going to leave it as an enjoyable one time thing.

Final Grade: 79% - C







©L.B. Bryant 2006