Shelf Life

License to Krill

Unlike in Dragon Ball Z, there is a lot of honest-to-god animation in each fight. Here the characters learn to fly and move faster-than-the-eye-can-see for the first time, and it doesn't feel like a money-saving shortcut like it does in DBZ.

I watched this with friends who had never seen the original Dragon Ball. The DVD set begins mid-tournament, so I had to catch everyone up on the plot. Despite starting in the middle of a tournament, everyone became emotionally invested in the outcome. The ending involves a dumb-luck element that really upset Mr. Translator (see above).

After that, King Piccolo arrives, and we're given an epic flashback to his apocalyptic destruction of Earth, as explained by Master Roshi. After the tournament, the backstory feels incredible in scope, like watching the live-action Lord of the Rings movies immediately after the Rankin/Bass adaptation of The Hobbit.

Piccolo's progeny dragon-demon offspring go around serial killing the participants of the World Martial Arts Tournament. Eventually King Piccolo punches Shen Long in the face in a scene so exciting that if I were a kid, I would pee my pants.

The stakes are raised and raised as Goku goes on a Joseph Campell-prescribed Hero's Journey where he faces down a vague Darkness that probably represents death itself. At the end of the set, Goku fights Piccolo. Who could ask for anything more?

This set contains everything that is good and classic about Dragon Ball. Just when you get tired of the tournament, Goku leaps on Kinto-Un and flies off to collect the dragon balls again, restoring everything good about the series. All of the characters from Season Two return like old friends, including my favorite, Korin. Goku even makes a new friend, the True Neutral aligned Yajirobe.

I found the preferred method to watch Dragon Ball in our group setting was to turn the subs on and watch the dub, so we could simultaneously take in the original script and enjoy the added jokes in the dub. In this season, the dub script writers add just enough levity without being as heavy-handed as in earlier seasons.[TOP]

In the distant future, two single-gender human space colonies have been at war for so many years they have never even seen a member of the opposite sex.² A lowly (male) worker named Hibiki attempts to steal a mech and ends up onboard a space pirate ship (The Nirvana) crewed exclusively by women. Hibiki and the crew are up against the "bad aliens," a bunch of mysterious organ harvesters who are scary, but thankfully not as scary as Reavers.

Two other dudes, Bart and Duelo, also end up on The Nirvana. While Hibiki becomes a fighter pilot of one of the "Dreads", Bart becomes the nude navigator a la Outlaw Star, and Duelo becomes the sarcastic ship's doctor like the doctor on Star Trek: Voyager. (OK, so he's not that sarcastic.)

About a third of the plot is dedicated to the men fitting into the ship's crew against gender bias (from mild to misandry). Another third of the plot is devoted to a would-be romance between Hibiki and Dita, who continually calls Hibiki "Mr. Alien" ("The Truth is Out There! "). The final third of the show is a desperate battle for survival against the bad aliens.

The writing is solid. Every episode cuts between the large ensemble cast with as much deftness as any given Star Trek series. In one original Star Trek style episode, the crew stumbles across a Planet With a weird religion, which they later destroy, much to the upset of the natives. (Thanks, Captain James "Your bible is a lie!" T. Kirk!)

Vandread takes some of fights for survival too lightly. If the show were more serious, it could compare favorably to something like Battlestar Galactica. (Maybe it is more comparable to the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica…)

The bikini bottoms and occasional pointy-boobs (particularly on Sub-Commander Buzam Calessa) didn't bother me after a while. In one scene, Hibiki gets a faceful of breasts (I assume a law on the books mandates this scene in every anime series produced in Japan), but Hibiki doesn't react. He doesn't have any experience with women at all, so he doesn't know to be embarrassed. To Vandread's credit, this only happens once.

Despite the man:woman ratio, Vandread never turns into a harem show. In fact, Hibiki and Dita's are-they-or-aren't-they romance may be the most believable hesitant romance of all time in anime. Neither of them has any concept of love or dating, so their stumbling, blushing friendship comes off as a play on anime clichés.

I'm not much of a mecha fan. The all-CG mecha aren't terribly memorable, and since the series is from 2000 the CG isn't that great, but it is more than adequate by television standards. Remember the CG scenes in Babylon 5? Vandread's CG is way better than that.

This set includes the entire series and the OVAs. The dub is perfectly fine. My only complaint is that Buzam sounds very Takarazuka-like in Japanese, but she only sounds regular-sexy instead of Takarazuka-sexy in the dub (granted, this is not much of a complaint). The OVA isn't dubbed, but apparently it hasn't been released before.

This is an easily recommendable show to anime fans who are also sci-fi fans. However, I think there are too many anime tropes for sci-fi fans who don't like anime. The mecha combine in a hard-to-believe way, the logistics department is staffed by girls in maid costumes, and one Harriet the Spy-type annoying character carries around a hand puppet, which was the style at the time (Best Student Coucil, The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service).

Ironically, I would never have watched Vandread or even read a review of it if I wasn't writing this column. The well-endowed girls and mech on the cover art would guarantee I'd never touch it.[TOP]