It's always an odd thing when parents re-marry in anime. In Marmalade Boy, they swap partners. In the fourth volume of Cool Devices, the new father figure just happens to be a Roofie-obsessed giant undercover policeman sex-maniac whack job. His drug of choice? The new designer capsule, "Yellow Star", which not only renders the victim too weak to move, but actually enhances the sensual feelings.

The first thing high school chick Ayana thinks about her new father, Mr. Fujisawa, is how big his hands are. After a little while, though, he thinks to use the drug on her, and the results are good enough that he has to do it again and again. Then he drags his friends into it for a jolly good four-some! Finally, having had more than she can take, she steals his gun and takes matters into her own hands.

Yellow Star's main selling point is its character designs by Yasuomi Umetsu, who is best known for his Robot Carnival short "Presence" as well as for his work on Megazone 23 Part 2. As usual, his women and clothing are drawn beautifully, and most male characters are drawn the most disgusting way possible -- no bishonen to be found here! However, Yellow Star is actually very well-done in the plot department. While she emotionally bounces back a bit too quickly from the drugged rape she's forced to endure, her desperation, coupled with some well-placed directorial touches, make this short OAV a well-done (if oversexed) vignette.

Slave Warrior Maya I & II, however, seem like Kitty Media releases with a little more spark -- there is very little substance to it, spooge or otherwise. What starts out like a bad Johji Manabe anime (schoolgirl is tricked by a street-side fortune-teller and gets beamed to another world, only to be found by weird lizard-men played for comic relief) eventually takes a perverse turn when she's sold at auction -- at an outragous price -- to Lord Estilgar, a mysterious member of the elite -- and is chained up and has a tube stuck up "there" in order to make her a sex slave.

She tricks the lizard men, Heckle and Jaekle, into letting her free, but she is soon taken back into custody, where she is forced to grow a penis, undergo bondage, and becomes a true sexaholic. She's implanted with a sex parasite, which will eventually eat out what little she has of a brain and turn her into an orgazming hunk of flesh (--er, moreso).

There's a lot about Slave Warrior Maya that doesn't seem to entirely make sense. For example, there's a side plot with a team of space-noblemen on their way to meet Maya but never seem to get anywhere or learn anything, and the entire ending seems rushed and nonconclusive. The show can't seem to make up its mind whether it wants to be farce comedy or hentai fare, and it's not successful in either, and just ends up being repeatitive and boring. It certainly doesn't deserve a Cool Devices name tag!

Overall, Cool Devices vol. 4 is a mixed bag, with one good OAV and a two-part piece of garbage. Watch it for Yellow Star, but forget Slave Warrior Maya.