Metal Fighter Miku - Collection

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly and strangely fun.
Review: Metal Fighter Miku begins from a ridiculous premise: assume that sometime in the future (one that looks rather like our own, yet has some amazingly advanced tech tucked away in odd corners) one of the most popular sports in the world is ... female pro wrestling, with the females in question wearing powered armor to make the combats more interesting.

Add to this the standard stable of characters in fighting-anime -- the plucky main hero/heroine, the "handsome/beautiful one", the "tough one", and the "cute one", and a nemesis bent on forcing a final confrontation, and you seem set for some pretty stupid, and pedestrian, fare.

Somehow, with all this going against it, Miku (like its eponymous heroine) triumphs against the odds. There's something endearing rather than cloying about the characters. Yes, we know their general type, but the writers manage to make them separate, if not tremendously original, characters. Miku keeps the spotlight most of the time, but the other characters -- even adversaries -- often get enough screen time to make us feel that they're not just cardboard props for Miku's journey. As time goes on, you get the feeling that "something else" -- you can't quite define what -- is going ON in this series, and that feeling gets stronger. Eventually, you find out, and while the "something else" isn't at all unheard-of in anime, in THIS anime it comes as quite a gratifying surprise.

I was stunned to enjoy this one -- cynical as I was about it -- and having come to appreciate it as the simple but worthy entertainment it is, am glad to recommend it to others here.

Rating:
Summary: This series is stupid!
Review: There's really nothing good about this...
The characters and story are 2-D and the animation is poor at best. At times you'll think the characters have suddenly transformed into a Sloth(from The Goonies)-like creature, but it turns out that it was just the animators losing concern for the shape of the characters' heads and faces. I expected someone to yell "Baby Ruuuuth!!" during most episodes!
God bless recycled animation! HA HA HA! I hate this series!

This must be the equivalent to america's day time tv.

"Sloth love Chunk!"

Rating:
Summary: Before there was Oni, there was Miku
Review: What do you get when you put four pretty girls in mech suits and send them into a glamorous world of tag team wrestling? A sport to gain a huge following in Earth's fictional future; and some great fight scenes to mix in with the sweet story and spunky laughs. Not quite the caliber of Ranma 1/2, but if you like that series, you'll probably enjoy this one, too.