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Outlanders

Review Date: 2008 May 31 15:43

Reviewed by: Eeeper

Released by: Central Park Media

Age Rating: 16+

Region: 1 - North America

Length: 48 minutes

Subtitles: English

Audio: English 2.0 Stereo

Summary

Scantily clad space princess Kalm arrives on Earth to shake things up! As her father's armada pummels the Earth's forces this busty space maiden plunders the planet in search of a good man to call her own. Hapless Earthling Tetsuya finds himself caught between the alien invaders and the warrior woman who would be his wife!

Review

If I ever woke up one morning and found my planet under attack the last thing I'd do is hide in a crater and take pictures of strange scantily clad girls cutting troops to pieces. Nope, I wouldn't but then I'm not Tetsuya Wakatsuki and that's what he does. In doing so he stands up to this girl and stops her from killing him. She decides that he's excellent husband material (plus during their grapple she notices that..no wait! I won't spoil it for you!) and boinks him on the head. Sometime later he's awake, onboard her ship and about to marry her. Oh boy.

This one-shot OAV from 1985, and based on Johji Manabe's 8 volumes strong manga of the same name, has my heart, hook, line and sinker. Not because it's the nicest looking or best written anime I ever seen. No, I like this title because it has heart. I mean where else can you find a justifiable reason for sex to come up in the script every ten seconds or so it seems? If Tetsuya and Kahm, ahem, consummate their marriage then her father the Emperor of the Santovasku Empire( Saint Evascuraze in the OAV) won't destroy the Holy Planet (also known as Earth). So there's a lot of suggested and outright nudity in this story so if that isn't your scene then stop reading now. Normally I don't watch this sort of story (Oh no he's pulled down her dress!!! Now her boobs are showing!! Now he's being punched!!) but it's done in such a cheesy way that I can't hold it against it.

As Kahm and Tetsuya get to know each other they are joined by Kahm's friends Battia and Geobaldi. Battia and Geobaldi ostensibly are there to retrieve Kahm but really want her to happy with her man as opposed to her being betrothed to some suitor. Geobaldi is a giant wolf-man and he gets my vote for best non-human drunk space captain in an anime. He and Battia have a thing but don't want anyone to know. Again the story finds some way of inserting bedroom scenes with them as well. It should be noted that never to we actually see them doing anything except talking. Any other anime would delete such content and all hentai would go further. Trouble turns up in the form of Progresso(Progress in the dub) an adjutant of the Emperor sent to bring back Kahm. But Kahm refuses to go and soon her father comes to find his wayward daughter.

One thing to bear in mind is that this story is a condensed version of the manga and as such plot errors are never addressed properly. Since I haven't gotten my hands on the extremely out of print manga by Dark Horse it's hard to judge if this necessarily a hanging point.

The character designs are lovely and natural. Kahm is pretty in a Kansas girl-meets-World-Of-Warcraft sort of way. Tetsuya unfortunately suffers from looking like generic, hapless anime guy number 15. Geobaldi is a larger than life character and everything he does is grand and booming.

But my favourite character has to be Battia. She's got armoured shoulder pads, a sword and cat ears. What's not to like!?

Plus the royal court (Progresso, attendants and the Emperor) are straight out of the Star Wars Sith Lord style of fashion sense and character design.

The animation on display IS old but fight scenes are well put together and animation is fluid. The spaceships have an organic look to them as does the interiors as well.

Despite being over twenty years old Central Park Media went back and redubbed this show when they got the licence. Further to that CPM went to the fans and asked who they wanted in the roles from today's current crop of voice actors. I can't say how successful TripWire Productions were against the older Animaze dub as the old dub is lost in the sands of time(or someone's upstairs attic VHS collection). I mostly listened to the dub for translation differences so can't really say if it's good. On the surface it looked clean and functional. The subbed version is neat with great performances from Fumi Hirano as spunky, outgoing Kahm and Mitsuo Iwata is brilliant as the already hen-pecked Tetsuya. Mr. 80's seiyu Akira Kamiya(City Hunter, Fist of The North Star) puts in an interesting turn as Nao, Kahm's manservant.

The DVD has English dub and Japanese with English subtitles. It also has a nice six-minute featurette on the new dub cast. Throw in some trailers and CPM previews and you're good to go.

Rating: 9/10

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