Metal Fighter Miku

By Jon Faciane     February 16, 2002
Release Date: July 31, 2001



The Review!
I remember back when this series was first released on VHS, I was in love. Being a wrestling fan myself, the show just had everything. Sadly, I was never able to finish it. Now, I have that chance in Media Blasters' release of the entire series on DVD. Of course, with shows like Rurouni Kenshin and Magic Knight Rayearth, I had lots of expectations upon Media Blasters'.

Audio: B+

The audio was very clean throughout the entire show. I stuck with the tested and true japanese audio and was pleasently surprised. Without watching it in surround sound, its hard to say how the stages were played out but on a show of this age, I can pretty much guess. There's no 5.1 tracks or anything of the sort.

Video: B

The show obviously started to show its age(1995) during the opening and occasional bits of animation. I did notice one bit of pixelation during 1 extremely fluid fight scene but that was very minor. The opening had a old movie feel to it with the original master looking a bit worn.

Packaging: C

This box is your basic 2-disc box. Nothing pretty, nothing to really catch a new fan's eye. With a simple winning pose, a phrase and the logo, I doubt seriously anyone will be drawn to it because of this.

Menu: D-

The menu was probably the most disappointing part of this show. There was no music or animation of any sort. The standard fare is there and nothing else. Very very uncreative

Content: C

After getting past the lackluster box and the boring menu, we finally get to the series itself. The opening starts and you instantly get a feel for the series. After getting to know a bit about the Pretty Four and the world of Neo-Pro Wrestling, the end of the episode shows a nice newspaper clipping...in japanese...with no subtitles. At the start of the second episode, I expected the old romanji subs to appear at the top so I could sing along to an old favorite. Nope, MB had none of that. No sing-along. I accepted these obvious problems and moved along. During the show I began to notice that Media Blasters' had redone the script for the series(kudos guys!). Unfortunately, it also came to include typos and a lack of on-screen text subtitles with it. I'll be honest, the show begins to take itself a lot less seriously than it did in the first 4 episodes. Problems are solved extremely fast for the end of the episode, and usually by minimum amount of thinking by the cast. Maybe its just the fact I've been watching Rurouni Kenshin lately.

It all boils down to two honest questions: Do you like wrestling? Do you like cute girls? If the answer is yes, then I do reccomend giving this series a shot. If you don't, you may have trouble making it through all 13 episodes of the series.

Review Equipment
Panasonic DVD-A120