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CAT'S EYE (= Ein Supertrio) Sisters | Toshie & Mitsuko | Man
Though
never released in the West (as far as I know) the series has been known
in fan circles for a long time. Cat's Eye chronicles the lives and
exploits of a three-woman team of art thieves. Many years ago, the
famous painter Heinz owned a large art collection. His partner,
Cranoff, stole the entire collection, sold off the pieces, and disappeared.
Heinz's daughters, Rui, Hitomi and Ai Kisugi, devote their lives to reassembling
their father's collection. Each recovered piece provides a new clue to
their missing father's whereabouts. Unfortunately the three sisters need
to steal the pieces back from the museums and unscrupulous criminals who
own them.
As a cover, the sisters run the "Cat's Eye" coffee shop, which serves
as base of operations, home, livelihood and cover. The coffee shop is situated
across from Police Headquarters. The title also alludes to the sisters'
love affairs, "Eye" being a homonym for "ai" , the Japanese word
for love. Toshio Utsume, a police detective, is Hitomi's sweetheart, and
also assigned to track down the Cat's Eye gang!
Characters: Hitomi: most athletic sister, Rui: oldest
sister, Ai: youngest sister & inventor, Gosuke: Cat's
Eye's mysterious informant and supplier. Police: Toshio: Hitomi's
sweetheart, rather dim, Mitsuko Asatane: Toshio's partner (female),
suspects the sisters are Cat's Eye, Captain: apoplectic head of
the police Cat's Eye Special Unit.
This series seemed aimed at an older audience than much of the other
TV anime. The character designs are quite good, and relatively lifelike
(no huge eyes), but the settings are too often stock huge buildings, casinos
etc and rather unrealistic, as are the episode stories. It's also very
"talky" and in the German version at least, there seems very little to
engage the viewer's interest.
EL HAZARD (26 ep. TV series) (Turkish edition) Afura Mann
TV
version of Pioneer's excellent and well-known OVA series. Makoto and his
friends are magically transported to another world where they try to help
Princess Rune Venus and the inhabitants of Roshtaria repel the insect-like
Bugrum, who unfortunately are being led by Makoto's crazed schoolmate Jinnai.
There's a series synopsis at: The
Wanderers. Comparisons with the OVA version are inevitable: the TV
series has a somewhat different and more episodic storyline, though the
same characters appear. The initial transport to El Hazard is here accomplished
by an apparatus that Makoto constructs and Jinnai interferes with. The
racier elements of the OVA series, ie the cross-dressing, incidental nudity
and Alielle's lesbian lusts have all been dropped. Much more time is devoted
to the three Great Priestesses, who are well characterised. The artwork
is very good, to the point where it's worth watching even if you don't
understand a word of dialogue. The Turkish edition audibly preserves the
Japanese names and honorifics of the characters.
Sailor Moon
Usagi
& Luna | Usagi
& friend
This
is too well known for me to review it as a series, anyway if you followed
this link here you probably know more about the series than I do. If the
past year is anything to go by, if you are patient you will see repeats
of the whole of Sailor Moon TV, either in German, or in Japanese/Polish,
or both . The German opening song is NOTan improvement, but if you haven't
seen it before, you'll find that walking over to your ASTRA receiver and
punching a few buttons is far less hassle than ordering fan tapes! It's
easy to follow, and from what I hear, each episode of the first series
has the same plot anyway.
Then there's Sailor
Stars (that's what the fancy katakana says) on POLSAT. This is a later
series, with 8 sailor warriors. Astonishingly, this is the Japanese version
with a partial Polish overdub. Sounds wierd, but if the soundtrack doesn't
drive you to distraction, it's better than the first series, with super
designs, a more extended story scheme, and lots of lovely sailors talking
Japanese. The three Sailor Stars are a boy pop group, and also powerful
magical allies who wear a rather startling black bra-and-pants uniform!
If you're a 14 year old girl, annoy your brother/father/boyfriend till
they set up the hardware for you. You won't regret it (nor will they once
they see the Sailor miniskirts).
JSTV was showing Sailor Moon R at 18.30pm on Fridays- maybe still is.
Naturally this is in Japanese, and the subscription is amazingly expensive.
If you are still wondering why this shoujo series is so popular,
I'd say it's because Usagi (Bunny) is such an ordinary girl, but still
gets to be a super-heroine (but a somewhat clueless one) and there are
lots of references to ordinary life. The character designs are very pretty,
and the Sailors are rather cute.
Having seen a few episodes from all the segments, I'd say that Sailor
Moon S and Sailor Moon Stars are definitely the best bits and
also the segments most likely to appeal to adult viewers. They have better
artwork, and also the adult senshi, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. They
include on occasion images to die for (like the scene with four Sailors
bound to crystal crosses.) I still fast-forward through most of the fighting
bits, though.
Sailor Moon Movies
I'm not able to review the movies properly, as I've only seen two or
three all the way through and bits of others. They're not as well known
as their equivalent, the Urusei Yatsura movies, and having sampled them
I can see why. There are about five movies, one for each of the TV series
(R, S, etc). Each is about an hour long, and while the earlier ones are
adapted from pairs of TV episodes, the later ones are original. In style
and production values they don't differ that much from the TV episodes.
In short, they will be of interest to Sailor Moon fans who want to watch
some more material.
NADIA
The
famous anime series, based very loosely on Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea. Nadia, the orphan circus girl, is befriended by Jean, a
bright boy of the same age (14). Jean is always inventing amazing machines
which don't always work properly. The series is set in the 19th century,
and the story is more or less about a struggle against technically advanced
secret forces who (of course) want to take over the world. Nadia, who is
still the only dark-skinned character to play the lead in an anime series,
is decidedly cute, not least when she's angry, which seems to be quite
often. There are a host of minor characters, some comic, some not.
