Voogies Angel

Rating:
Summary: Passable filler anime
Review: Did you like Saber Marionette J? If so, just go ahead and buy this without hesitation. Or, if you like Masami Obarii's character designs, go ahead and buy this without hesitation too (although the chest sized are certainly scaled down from something like Gowcaizer, there's still more fanservice than you can shake a stick at). For the rest of you, here's my opinion:

Inspired by a set of radio dramas, Voogie's Angel is perfectly passable filler anime. It's one of those OVAs that you don't feel like you've wasted your time if you watch, but at the same time you can probably pass over it and not feel like youre missing too much either. The super-quickie plot summary is as follows - aliens show up, drive humans into underwater bases, humans build a 5-woman cyborg combat team (complete with strange ship thing with the brain of a dead taxi-driver) to go kick some alien tookas in ludicrously revealing outfits. Voogie is the leader of the team, and each team member has a "quirk", as one has psychic powers, one has reoccuring amnesia, etc. Each of the 5 main girls actually has a somewhat sad side story of how they originally died, and were eventually reborn as the cyborg fighters. You have your requisite mix of comedy, action, and pseudo-drama, and there is a climax of sorts that leaves the way open for a sequel.

The DVD does get decent marks for having all 3 OVAs on the disc... standalone discs are pretty rare. The picture quality is fine. It looks a little soft, but that's probably more the fault of the original material. Colors are decently saturated and I noticed no major artifacts or encoding errors, and the menus are static and very fast in access speeds. No real extras to speak up, just 4 trailers.

Rating:
Summary: More plot than expected
Review: Too bad this is the only vid' I can find of Voogie; it's another lost gem in my opinion. The basis is pretty plain: alien invaders are conquering Earth and a band of heros must defeat them. Nothing new on the fly, but the way the story plays out is quite interesting.

Voogie and crew are another set of good looking anime gals (if you like 'em skinny and breasty and tall) in a rather serious situation with some humor to break the ice. But in the end this has some serious stuff. The main exploratory theme is what makes a person human; it doesn't get in the way of some good melodrama and decent graphics and action. There are kinks (same darn plot devices here and there) but overall I liked it.

Perfect? No. Terrible? Only if you want to avoid some thinking and prefer ninjas, sex-only, non-violence, comedy only, kiddie shows, etc. If you like a good action-humor sci-fi plot with characters who are real and girls in skimpy duds and a talking intelligent space ship that can kick-butt (but OOPS! runs out of power doing so), at least rent it. I compare it to the quality (but not plot) of Outlaw Star, Cowboy Beebop, Tenamonya Voyagers, and most other ordinary Japanese anime.

Sigh, only episodes availble. Indeed, it seems the popularity of many videos requires multiple episodes; few people want to watch one set and get a good pic' and then have no more to watch. I rate few movies as "****" four stars; they have to stand out for me.

Money well spent to me.