Synopsis
Gene Starwind and Jim Hawking will do anything for a buck. While playing bodyguards for a tight-lipped visitor to their backwater planet, they find that their client is not just another pretty face but an outlaw, “Hot Ice” Hilda, on the run from a powerful and angry pirate clan aiming to reclaim the booty she has stolen from them.
Together with Hilda and the booty, which turns out to be a shy humanoid girl named Melfina, Gene and Jim escape into space, where they try to uncover the mysteries of Melfina, the ship known as the XGP, and the Galactic Leyline, all while staying one step ahead of the pirates and the law.
Impressions
Outlaw Star, the anime which reminds us that what a man really wants is a demure girl who fits in a suitcase and stays naked most of the time.
At first glance, Outlaw Star is the Battlestar Galactica to Cowboy Bebop’s Star Wars. But since it hit the airwaves earlier in 1998 than Bebop, it’s hardly fair to class Outlaw Star as a second-fiddle interpretation of the space cowboy action-comedy. It is, however, more of a classic space anime, lacking the upfront style and character of its Sunrise brother but packing in more flashy battles for your anime dollar. It’s a fair action anime and a good show for indoctrinating newcomers.
Together with Bebop and Trigun, Outlaw Star forms a powerful trinity of initiation anime, pseudo-western (well, not recognizably Asian) settings, storylines, and characters which won’t alienate newcomers with uber-kawaii chibi love, inscrutible references to the Journey to the West, Moon Tiara Power, or Unfamiliar Ceilings. None of them would’ve been terribly out-of-place airing next to a show like the original Johnny Quest.
One of the nice contrasts between Outlaw Star and those other two is that, except for the Hot Springs Planet episode, the show maintains a steady tone and easy blending of comedy and action. It is at its heart a light-hearted wisecracking Hollywood-style action-adventure. On the other hand, Outlaw Star lacks the visual spark of its siblings, especially Bebop, instead coming across as something produced ten years earlier with half the budget.
Random Thoughts
Hand-to-hand grappler ship battles are quite possibly the dumbest idea since live-action La Blue Girl. I mean, I can suspend my disbelief for tentacle sex but there’s no way I’m buying physics-defying high-speed manipulator arm fights no matter how much the Canadian space program may laud the plausibility; does that make me a bad person?
Neko Factor
Supplicate yourself before the mighty Ctarl-Ctarl Empire.
- 2003-12-11 19:05 -