Birdy the Mighty Vol. #1: Double Trouble

By Chris Beveridge     March 05, 2004
Release Date: March 09, 2004



What They Say
Birdy?s a beautiful space cop whose job just went from bad to worse. While hunting an alien felon, Birdy accidentally killed Tsutomu, a mild mannered high school student! To save his life, she is forced to time-share his body. Can these unlikely partners pass the deadly high school exams while being attacked by killer robots?

The Review!
What better way to confuse a young lad than to put a female space police officer inside his body day in and day out.

Audio:
For our primary viewing session, we listened to this series in its original language of Japanese. The mix for the two episodes here are pretty standard stereo mix with some mild forward soundstage directionality during some of the action sequences, but that's generally it. Dialogue was clean and clear throughout and the track is free from distortions and dropouts.

Video:
Originally released in 1996, the two OVAs on this disc come across well for the most part, but will vary depending on hardware pretty heavily with regards to the cross coloration. On our primary setup, it was very strong and in both full faces and hair of most characters and showing up in numerous backgrounds. On our portable player, the cross coloration was much less noticeable to almost gone. Colors look good throughout and the OVA quality from the time shows through nicely with a number of fluid areas of animation. The level of cross coloration really brought the quality of this release down though.

Packaging:
The Birdy release has a fairly text heavy cover in areas and is light on the actual fanservice available in the shows lead character, as Birdy gets a single pose in her multicolored spandex outfit here while her alien boss gets a much bigger image. The cover is all right but nothing terribly eye-catching. The back cover provides a few more character shots from the show and a breakdown of the discs extras. The summary is pretty minimal here as well, adding to the overall feel of the release. The reverse side of the cover is heavy on the white with some black and white character artwork in the center. Episode chapters are listed as well as the English voice cast. Once again, no information is available on the Japanese voice cast, a problem that CPM seems to have more than any other company.

Menu:
The menu layout uses some static custom imagery of nameless high technology to provide a display of the discs selections. Set to music, there's various clips of the show playing underneath that that's partially visible through the display. The menu is decent looking and fairly in theme and is also quick to access submenus and easy to navigate.

Extras:
The extras are pretty minimal with a simple video art gallery showing off what little art is available for use and a few clips from the show itself set to the opening song. The Japanese preview for the second episode on this disc is also available here.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the number of OVAs continued to dwindle throughout the 90's, the few that trickled out either managed to gain an audience or just disappear to the winds. Birdy the Mighty managed to get its four OVAs out and tell its tale, gained a small following in the US but otherwise never made much of a real splash in the anime world.

Which is somewhat surprising since it comes across as a rather enjoyable and competent series, though held back somewhat by the genre its in. The story takes place in present day Japan where there are two things going on. The first is that we're introduced to high school lad Tsutomu, a fairly average kid that seems to be going through a slight rebellious phase that doesn't do to well at school but really tries. He's got a few friends and his family gives him the usual kind of abuse, from the disinterested father to the overly interested mother and the wisecracking sister. He's going through taking his entrance exams to go on to the next part of his life, so he's a bit stressed and tense.

Enter Birdy, a young sexy woman with a space police unit that's on the hunt of one Christine Revil, a woman who had killed someone rather important to her in her youth out somewhere else in space using a rather nasty creature. Since then, Birdy has spent her time training to become a police officer and is working to track down Revil and bring her to justice. So with Revil now on Earth and her group making the rounds in doing all sorts of plans and evil deeds that will gain them power on the planet, Birdy spends her time tracking them down and trying to eliminate them.

The two plots come together when Birdy is chasing one particular nasty who is in human form, only to have him run into Tsutomu. Tsutomu offers to help him hide since the guy is just generally afraid, but ends up on the run himself when the guy freaks out as Birdy finds them and starts dropping massive objects their way. It all comes to a head pretty quick when the bad guy holds Tsutomu as a shield and throws him at Birdy as a distraction to get away. Confused by the movement, Birdy ends up thinking Tsutomu is something else and, well, kills him.

To repent for her grievous mistake, she ends up merging bodies with him and providing the life to his dead cells. The two share the body consciousness though only one is in control at a time and the other has to let them take control, so there's no sudden surprises of one taking over the other. And when Birdy takes over, she can "rework" the cells so that she takes on her original form, a coincidental quirk in similar genetic makeup between the two races they say. There are some amusing moments where Birdy takes control of Tsutomu's body while not changing it over, which gives him almost superhuman abilities. The internal arguments are also rather fun to listen to as the pair aren't completely enamored with each other either, since Birdy would rather not be stuck there and Tsutomu has more than enough problems as it is.

So once the pair are tied together and the basic explanations given of the plot, it turns into the standard science fiction fare of the hidden aliens trying to gain power while a lone police officer tries to take them down. With the backdrop, there's a number of very good aspects to it that make it enjoyable rather than typical. The first is the light nature of the comedy that's brought in, such as Tsutomu's father going to have a talk with his son while he's in the bath since naked communication between men works better. Unfortuantely he chooses a moment when Tsutomu turns things over to Birdy, so he gets treated to a rather lovely view, but a confusing one nonetheless. His questions to his family asking whether they have guests only gets a roll of the eyes from his wife and daughter, a priceless moment for those who have similar family members.

The other element that works to help bring this OVA series up a bit more than average is the work of those behind it. With direction by Yoshiaki Kawajiri of X and Ninja Scroll fame, there's a great feel to the city here with the layout and angles used to bring the darkness to life. He's also given the wonderful talent of Chiak Konaka to do the script, which is really quite excellent throughout much of this when you get away from the obligatory cliché moments. The family time alone is just so well written and done as a loving comedy instead of mean-spirited comedy that it works great. With this being a Mad House production and some great character designs from Kumiko Takahashi, it's really a surprise that this didn't do better. There isn't a lot of really unique elements to it, but there's plenty of style and substance here that it's just a lot of fun and very well made.

In Summary:
Birdy the Mighty has a lot going for it but in the end something seems to just keep it at an average level, not something that manages to break out of the mold far enough. There's some really good material in here mixed among the standard trappings, from great direction and designs to some great smart scripting moments, but that magic key ingredient that gives it just an extra something doesn't spark at all here. It's definitely an enjoyable show and with this volume having half of the series, it's not a long-term commitment. The show is worth recommending, but only if you don't get disappointed that it never got to be more than just the four episodes that were made.

Features
Japanese Language,English Language,English Subtitles,Art Gallery,Japanese 2nd Episode Preview

Review Equipment
Panasonic PT50LC13 50" LCD RP HDTV, Panasonic RP-82 Progressive Scan codefree DVD player, Sony STR-DE835 DD/DTS receiver, Monster component cable and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.