Hayate Kurogane
03-25-2007, 01:44 AM
Disclaimer: may contain both Bakuretsu Tenshi TV series and OVA spoilers!
So, unlike my My-HiME volume 7 thread in the R1 forum, I'm fairly certain nobody has posted pictures of this thing, which means I can still borrow a camera tomorrow and provide a service. Huzzah! :sd:
As I said in another thread, I must've ordered Bakuretsu Tenshi: Infinity because I'm a glutton for punishment. Yes, the TV series is only so good. Yes, FUNimation is releasing this OVA in R1-land in several months (which is a helluva quick turnaround time, though I guess the materials were just sent to them pretty darn fast after they were completed for this release) for much cheaper. But the fates conspired to trick me into it, or something.
Packaging
Though the box is the only image available on a number of sites, suggesting it's a standard part of the release, Amazon Japan's listing seems to indicate that it's actually a first-press item, along with the 60-page booklet that comes in it and picture-labeled/silkscreened discs. The odd thing is that the extras disc is a standard part of the release, and comes in its own keepcase, so I don't know if Amazon Japan is wrong or what, since if the box is an FP-only item then eventually the discs will be, what, shrinkwrapped together, or stuck in a double-disc keepcase?
The box is sized to fit the two cases and the booklet, and features gorgeous wraparound artwork by Hakua Ugetsu showing Meg and Jo on one side, the logo on the spine, and the episode 14 and OVA characters Charlie, Shirley, and Dorothy, along with Sam the cop, on the other side. fabio I'm not, so only one box for me rather than three. :D :sd:
The OVA keepcase features art of Meg and Jo by Osamu Horiuchi while the extras keepcase features wraparound art of Meg, wearing her end-of-episode-24 outfit, by Hakua Ugetsu.
Content
The OVA disc contains the OVA, which comes in at just around 26 minutes, three versions of the trailer for the OVA, all 23 next episode previews from the TV series (Why? Who knows.), and a trailer featuring listings for all available BakuTen merchandise, including Ugetsu's "Flamboyant" artbook, oddly enough.
Audio options for the episode include 5.1 and 2.0 DD tracks, Japanese. No subs of any type.
Video quality is fine, with no major or even minor issues. There are some odd scaling problems with certain animation elements that result in some jagged lines, but that's inherent to the animation and, aside from smacking around the people doing the digital composition work, can't be fixed. There's also a few dark scenes where the usual gradient issues come into play, as per usual for computer-assisted animation. If for no other reason, it's good to have a clean-looking copy of this episode, as I see no reason to expect FUNimation's R1 release to look this good, but instead feature the soft video, massive amounts of artifacting, and edge enhancement that's now SOP for all their subpar authoring and DVD releases.
The episode takes place after TV episode 14, the flashback episode that showed how Meg and Jo first met in America. The episode starts with an Evil Shadowy Robot Thing attacking some poor guy. Unfortunately, Shirley just happens to be wandering down a dark alley at night for some reason, stumbles upon this scene, and also gets attacked. Meg and Jo return to New York after being elsewhere for a while, help rescue a cat from a tree, buy a birthday present for Shirley, and go to visit Sam the cop to ask about Shirley and the others. They learn Shirley's been hurt, and the Evil Shadowy Robot Thing has been attacking other people as well, so of coures they decide to go take it out. We learn a creepy crazy guy is in cahoots with the Evil Shadowy Robot Thing and is filming all its kills, and that a seemingly normal but really eerie politician may or may not have something to do with it, and that Sam is getting all wishy-washy about being a cop and whether he's making a difference.
Meg and Jo get attacked by the Evil Shadowy Robot Thing and the creepy crazy guy, and Jo gets into a short gunfight with the robot while Meg is somehow knocked unconscious but comes around in time to beat crazy guy with a baseball bat. Both villains escape somehow. Later, Meg gets captured (Whoa, didn't see that one coming!), Jo gets Sam to help find her, Jo finds Meg tied up, the warehouse in which Meg was being held captive is blown up by missiles, Jo and Meg escape through the sewer.
The Evil Shadowy Robot Thing chases them into the sewer and throws off its cloak to reveal a pretty well-done CG spider robot sort of thing. Jo attacks it, and she and Meg escape by climbing a ladder up a long pipe that leads to the rooftop of a building, which is utterly ridiculous, but that's BakuTen for you. With creepy guy flying around filming from a hovercraft, Jo falls seemingly to her death (and a well-aimed slash by a flailing robot claw explains why Jo's hair is short by the time the TV series starts, silly but true), Meg is about to die, Jo reappears predictably, and stabs the robot with a metal pipe. For Maximum Dramatic Effect, Jo tells Meg to grab her other gun, and the two shoot down both the robot and the creepy guy at once. I have to admit that Meg firing from a distance and having the bullet go through creepy guy's video camera lens and into his eye was pretty cool, though it's just another one of those things that makes you wonder how she can keep getting into so much trouble if she's actually very capable from time to time.
Turns out the politician was behind creepy guy and the robot (imagine that). Shirley wakes up, and gets her birthday present. Meg and Jo are leaving the U.S. on a boat. Meg's sad, but, blushing, "It doesn't matter where we go as long as I'm with you, Jo." And thus my mind sinks into the gutter as the ship sails off towards the horizon.
End credits are set to an instrumental piece, text scrolling on the right while scenes from episode 14 play on the left.
The animation isn't outstanding, but it's very consistent and on-model, and overall is better than that in the TV series, save for episode 1 and maybe a couple others. The BGM is simply reused TV series music.
Was it entertaining? Yes, it was. Better than most of the TV series episodes for me personally. It doesn't do very much to add anything to BakuTen as a whole, other than explaining Jo's hair (questionable at best), but it's a nicely self-contained story that looks pretty and features some good action scenes.
Extras
The booklet comes with a glossy cover and more Hakua Ugetsu art of Meg and Jo on the cover. Contents include several pages of art and info about the OVA episode characters and mecha, brief comments and descriptions about the 24 TV series episodes, character and mecha designs for the BakuTen short animation extra, and the complete set of storyboards for the short by Hakua Ugetsu.
The extras disc is a little strange.
One of the included extras is a selection of TV series footage, entitled "Hikari to Yami no Jo," running just over 23 minutes, that was apparently originally shown at AX 2005, and as such comes complete with English hardsubs. Included scenes are Leo agreeing to fix Django, the four girls lounging around at the pool, a lot of footage from episode 14, Jo rescuing Meg, the awesome first fight between Jo and Maria, and a sequnce of clips set to the ED "Over the Sky" which may at one point have had credits on top of them but don't here.
The second extra, clocking in at 84 minutes (!), is what's billed as a digest version of the TV series. Basically, it's a series of clips taken from each episode and edited for length (Again: why? Who knows.). It's amusing, and actually a pretty handy way to review the TV series, and it helps that each episode's section is separated by chapter, but I think a good opportunity was wasted in that they could've spent a little more time and energy and generated a coherent compilation movie version instead of clips that don't flow together anywhere near well enough to be anything but reference material and a novelty.
The third extra is bloody awesome, yet at the same time highly depressing. It's the aforementioned short animation, directed by Hakua Ugetsu. It runs about two and a half minutes, one minute of which is either opening credit screens, albeit with animation in the background, or end credits. The middle minute and a half is brand new animation, set to the TV series OP "Loosey," and is more or less an opening sequence for an imaginary second series. Some shots of the city, helicopters, and Maria appear before the opening credits fade in and out over a red moon in the background. After opening credits, we see Meg in her red end-of-series outfit, on a motorcycle, getting ready to take out a berserk robot that's attacking a train, running through a crown, training in some sort of simulator, all in all coming across remarkably cool and competent relative to her TV series character. There's Sei, looking infinitely sexier than in the TV series, first in OL clothes then changing into her regular outfit, walking down a hall, flanked by soldiers. There's Amy, older, in an airport. Meg rides down a highway next to some water, out of which emerges a gigantic, futuristic submarine named Elizabeth, captained by Sei and piloted by Amy and two cute robot assistants of hers named Nana and Hachi (as per the booklet's descriptions). A robot appears and attacks the city, a satellite burns and crashes, evil monster-type things appear. Then we see Jo, having apparently survived the explosion at the end of the TV series, looking awfully out of it, wearing a Shirow Masamune-esque outfit with very little front coverage, which thankfully allows Maria to more easily feel her up after appearing behind her. :virgin: Meg shouting at Leo. Kouhei in a chef's outfit in front of a castle, apparently having either gone to study cooking in Europe or made it through culinary school and landed a fancy job away from the chaos of the girls. Django shows up. Meg and Jo float around in some sort of red cyber-spacey environment, where lack of clothing clearly indicates that Meg wins hands-down over Jo in the chest size department and perhaps even stole a few inches as per Sakaki stealing Chiyo-chan's height in AzuDai. :D Big train-attacking robot from the beginning blows up Meg's motorcycle, and Meg fires back. End.
Bloody awesome: slick animation, upgraded character designs, very intriguing developments. :D
Highly depressing: there aren't any plans for a second season, so this is simply a cruel tease. :( Although given how the first season turned out I don't know if I'd be up for a second season that might just completely waste the potential presented in this mere minute and a half, unless they dumped Koichi Ohata and Fumihiko Shimo and replaced them with individuals who can actually direct and write.
So, unlike my My-HiME volume 7 thread in the R1 forum, I'm fairly certain nobody has posted pictures of this thing, which means I can still borrow a camera tomorrow and provide a service. Huzzah! :sd:
As I said in another thread, I must've ordered Bakuretsu Tenshi: Infinity because I'm a glutton for punishment. Yes, the TV series is only so good. Yes, FUNimation is releasing this OVA in R1-land in several months (which is a helluva quick turnaround time, though I guess the materials were just sent to them pretty darn fast after they were completed for this release) for much cheaper. But the fates conspired to trick me into it, or something.
Packaging
Though the box is the only image available on a number of sites, suggesting it's a standard part of the release, Amazon Japan's listing seems to indicate that it's actually a first-press item, along with the 60-page booklet that comes in it and picture-labeled/silkscreened discs. The odd thing is that the extras disc is a standard part of the release, and comes in its own keepcase, so I don't know if Amazon Japan is wrong or what, since if the box is an FP-only item then eventually the discs will be, what, shrinkwrapped together, or stuck in a double-disc keepcase?
The box is sized to fit the two cases and the booklet, and features gorgeous wraparound artwork by Hakua Ugetsu showing Meg and Jo on one side, the logo on the spine, and the episode 14 and OVA characters Charlie, Shirley, and Dorothy, along with Sam the cop, on the other side. fabio I'm not, so only one box for me rather than three. :D :sd:
The OVA keepcase features art of Meg and Jo by Osamu Horiuchi while the extras keepcase features wraparound art of Meg, wearing her end-of-episode-24 outfit, by Hakua Ugetsu.
Content
The OVA disc contains the OVA, which comes in at just around 26 minutes, three versions of the trailer for the OVA, all 23 next episode previews from the TV series (Why? Who knows.), and a trailer featuring listings for all available BakuTen merchandise, including Ugetsu's "Flamboyant" artbook, oddly enough.
Audio options for the episode include 5.1 and 2.0 DD tracks, Japanese. No subs of any type.
Video quality is fine, with no major or even minor issues. There are some odd scaling problems with certain animation elements that result in some jagged lines, but that's inherent to the animation and, aside from smacking around the people doing the digital composition work, can't be fixed. There's also a few dark scenes where the usual gradient issues come into play, as per usual for computer-assisted animation. If for no other reason, it's good to have a clean-looking copy of this episode, as I see no reason to expect FUNimation's R1 release to look this good, but instead feature the soft video, massive amounts of artifacting, and edge enhancement that's now SOP for all their subpar authoring and DVD releases.
The episode takes place after TV episode 14, the flashback episode that showed how Meg and Jo first met in America. The episode starts with an Evil Shadowy Robot Thing attacking some poor guy. Unfortunately, Shirley just happens to be wandering down a dark alley at night for some reason, stumbles upon this scene, and also gets attacked. Meg and Jo return to New York after being elsewhere for a while, help rescue a cat from a tree, buy a birthday present for Shirley, and go to visit Sam the cop to ask about Shirley and the others. They learn Shirley's been hurt, and the Evil Shadowy Robot Thing has been attacking other people as well, so of coures they decide to go take it out. We learn a creepy crazy guy is in cahoots with the Evil Shadowy Robot Thing and is filming all its kills, and that a seemingly normal but really eerie politician may or may not have something to do with it, and that Sam is getting all wishy-washy about being a cop and whether he's making a difference.
Meg and Jo get attacked by the Evil Shadowy Robot Thing and the creepy crazy guy, and Jo gets into a short gunfight with the robot while Meg is somehow knocked unconscious but comes around in time to beat crazy guy with a baseball bat. Both villains escape somehow. Later, Meg gets captured (Whoa, didn't see that one coming!), Jo gets Sam to help find her, Jo finds Meg tied up, the warehouse in which Meg was being held captive is blown up by missiles, Jo and Meg escape through the sewer.
The Evil Shadowy Robot Thing chases them into the sewer and throws off its cloak to reveal a pretty well-done CG spider robot sort of thing. Jo attacks it, and she and Meg escape by climbing a ladder up a long pipe that leads to the rooftop of a building, which is utterly ridiculous, but that's BakuTen for you. With creepy guy flying around filming from a hovercraft, Jo falls seemingly to her death (and a well-aimed slash by a flailing robot claw explains why Jo's hair is short by the time the TV series starts, silly but true), Meg is about to die, Jo reappears predictably, and stabs the robot with a metal pipe. For Maximum Dramatic Effect, Jo tells Meg to grab her other gun, and the two shoot down both the robot and the creepy guy at once. I have to admit that Meg firing from a distance and having the bullet go through creepy guy's video camera lens and into his eye was pretty cool, though it's just another one of those things that makes you wonder how she can keep getting into so much trouble if she's actually very capable from time to time.
Turns out the politician was behind creepy guy and the robot (imagine that). Shirley wakes up, and gets her birthday present. Meg and Jo are leaving the U.S. on a boat. Meg's sad, but, blushing, "It doesn't matter where we go as long as I'm with you, Jo." And thus my mind sinks into the gutter as the ship sails off towards the horizon.
End credits are set to an instrumental piece, text scrolling on the right while scenes from episode 14 play on the left.
The animation isn't outstanding, but it's very consistent and on-model, and overall is better than that in the TV series, save for episode 1 and maybe a couple others. The BGM is simply reused TV series music.
Was it entertaining? Yes, it was. Better than most of the TV series episodes for me personally. It doesn't do very much to add anything to BakuTen as a whole, other than explaining Jo's hair (questionable at best), but it's a nicely self-contained story that looks pretty and features some good action scenes.
Extras
The booklet comes with a glossy cover and more Hakua Ugetsu art of Meg and Jo on the cover. Contents include several pages of art and info about the OVA episode characters and mecha, brief comments and descriptions about the 24 TV series episodes, character and mecha designs for the BakuTen short animation extra, and the complete set of storyboards for the short by Hakua Ugetsu.
The extras disc is a little strange.
One of the included extras is a selection of TV series footage, entitled "Hikari to Yami no Jo," running just over 23 minutes, that was apparently originally shown at AX 2005, and as such comes complete with English hardsubs. Included scenes are Leo agreeing to fix Django, the four girls lounging around at the pool, a lot of footage from episode 14, Jo rescuing Meg, the awesome first fight between Jo and Maria, and a sequnce of clips set to the ED "Over the Sky" which may at one point have had credits on top of them but don't here.
The second extra, clocking in at 84 minutes (!), is what's billed as a digest version of the TV series. Basically, it's a series of clips taken from each episode and edited for length (Again: why? Who knows.). It's amusing, and actually a pretty handy way to review the TV series, and it helps that each episode's section is separated by chapter, but I think a good opportunity was wasted in that they could've spent a little more time and energy and generated a coherent compilation movie version instead of clips that don't flow together anywhere near well enough to be anything but reference material and a novelty.
The third extra is bloody awesome, yet at the same time highly depressing. It's the aforementioned short animation, directed by Hakua Ugetsu. It runs about two and a half minutes, one minute of which is either opening credit screens, albeit with animation in the background, or end credits. The middle minute and a half is brand new animation, set to the TV series OP "Loosey," and is more or less an opening sequence for an imaginary second series. Some shots of the city, helicopters, and Maria appear before the opening credits fade in and out over a red moon in the background. After opening credits, we see Meg in her red end-of-series outfit, on a motorcycle, getting ready to take out a berserk robot that's attacking a train, running through a crown, training in some sort of simulator, all in all coming across remarkably cool and competent relative to her TV series character. There's Sei, looking infinitely sexier than in the TV series, first in OL clothes then changing into her regular outfit, walking down a hall, flanked by soldiers. There's Amy, older, in an airport. Meg rides down a highway next to some water, out of which emerges a gigantic, futuristic submarine named Elizabeth, captained by Sei and piloted by Amy and two cute robot assistants of hers named Nana and Hachi (as per the booklet's descriptions). A robot appears and attacks the city, a satellite burns and crashes, evil monster-type things appear. Then we see Jo, having apparently survived the explosion at the end of the TV series, looking awfully out of it, wearing a Shirow Masamune-esque outfit with very little front coverage, which thankfully allows Maria to more easily feel her up after appearing behind her. :virgin: Meg shouting at Leo. Kouhei in a chef's outfit in front of a castle, apparently having either gone to study cooking in Europe or made it through culinary school and landed a fancy job away from the chaos of the girls. Django shows up. Meg and Jo float around in some sort of red cyber-spacey environment, where lack of clothing clearly indicates that Meg wins hands-down over Jo in the chest size department and perhaps even stole a few inches as per Sakaki stealing Chiyo-chan's height in AzuDai. :D Big train-attacking robot from the beginning blows up Meg's motorcycle, and Meg fires back. End.
Bloody awesome: slick animation, upgraded character designs, very intriguing developments. :D
Highly depressing: there aren't any plans for a second season, so this is simply a cruel tease. :( Although given how the first season turned out I don't know if I'd be up for a second season that might just completely waste the potential presented in this mere minute and a half, unless they dumped Koichi Ohata and Fumihiko Shimo and replaced them with individuals who can actually direct and write.