Battle Athletess Daiundoukai (TV)

Battle Athletes is a comedy sci-fi sport anime by Hideyuki Kurata, a manga by Nakano Yuki came out at roughly the same time as the original OVA. It later turned into a longer television series both with the same basic story. I'll be looking at the longer series from AIC, the eclectic studio with works ranging pretty widely in quality with Oreimo on the low end and Sasameki Koto on the high end. My biggest concern is simply that it's a sport anime and most sport anime are as dull and monotonous as the games they're based on. But who knows, maybe this is one of those rare exceptions that does something unique and/or has really compelling characters. Or it could be your typical story of a group of one-dimensional underdogs pulling together and managing to grasp victory. Let's take a look and find out. Our story opens in a training ground in Antarctica where a bunch of young female athletes are racing across an obstacle course while dragging giant steamrollers. It urns out that after an event that wiped out most of humanity, humans rebuilt and set up training schools to try and get the top athletes. The best students go to a satellite University to compete for the coveted “Cosmo Beauty” title. What I like about this series is that it doesn't take itself seriously. It uses all the regular elements of a sport anime, but it uses them in a tongue in cheek way, mixes in sci-fi elements and just plays up their absurdity in general. So, while it is predictable, the comedic elements keep the viewer invested and keep the action interesting. That being said, the series has its problems too. The biggest being that it's pretty racist. For most of the athletes, the series will give some specific country or place of origin: China, Osaka, Russia, the United States, a specific encampment on the moon and so on. There's one character, however, whose area of origin is a continent. Her name is Tanya and her area of origin is “Africa.” Not like that's a huge continent or anything. To make it worse, she's a very... “primitive,” is unfortunately the most apt term, character. She's superstitious, she runs on all fours, she's simple minded to an absurd degree, she even howls at one point. Who knows, maybe the nations of Africa were too busy making artistic and scientific advancements, but they didn't want to offend the rest of the world so they found the dumbest, but most athletic girl they could, made up a bunch of superstitions to teach her and sent her on her way. They bet on the rest of the world being too clueless to notice that Africa has multiple countries. Another issue is that the het romance, although there's very little of it, is really creepy and involves major age and power imbalances. On the positive side, the yuri romance, which there's a lot more of, is pretty cute and well handled. Was Hideyuki trying to actively encourage lesbianism or did he just figure people would accept the het regardless of how screwed up it was and, consequently, he didn't bother trying to make it good? The world may never know but this is the writer behind Read or Die, so the former seems likely. The major characters are, for the most part, decently fleshed out and developed. The major exception being the aforementioned racist stereotype. One nice little touch is that Akari's development arc is pretty realistic. She goes through both good and difficult times with certain elements becoming prominent based on which end of the spectrum she's on. Each cycle she goes through becomes demonstrative of her growth. She becomes better at handling both extremes with maturity and grace as things progress. I also really liked Akari's love interest, Kris. She's just amazing. The art is nothing special. It's pretty standard late 90s fare. About the most visually interesting it gets is towards the end when certain elements are introduced that I can't really go into without giving spoilers. That being said, it is competent artwork. The voice acting in this is really good. You have some really great actresses like Hisakawa Aya, Kawakami Tomoko and Itou Miki being among the biggest names. The music is pretty nice as well. The ho-yay factor is a 6/10. Primarily because of Akari and Kris. Although Akari and Ichino have their moments as well. There's also the dynamic between Lahrii and Mylandah. And that's Battle Athletes. To be honest, I rather liked it, in spite of its racism. It's a fun series with some good characters, and one really bad one. The jokes are usually very effective, Akari and Kris have a lot of cute moments and it is an entertaining watch, if you can ignore or forgive its issues. Final rating: 7/10. Next week I'll look at Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge.

Good title about sport and desire to win. Anime begins quite skin-deep, but after 4 episodes it gathers momentum developing characters, showing their motivations and fears as well as the skeletons in the clothets. What is this anime about? Anime turns from light comedy into quite serious spokon with drama about girls who try to overdo their own abilities, with blood, jealousy, broken bones and rivalry until the end. Sometimes serious scenes are mixed with slice of lifecomedy parts. Anime pays particular attention to such kinds of sport as running and swimming, and also pole vaulting, tennis, air hockey and so on. Also near to the end you will be surprised by some entertaining plot twist. Plot Mankind was nearly destroyed 3000 years ago, but then Earth was recovered and humanity colonized Solar system. Sport became important part of people`s everyday life. Sport academies were founded on each planet to find the best athletes to attend the University Satellite. There the best sport girls can take part in The Big Competition to become a Cosmo Beauty - the best athlet in the universe. Why only girls can attend this university you will find out when that plot twist happen. Characters Main heroine is cute and gentle Akari Kanzaki. Her mother was the legendary Cosmo Beauty who set lots of records. Akari will have to go through the hard way and turn from a weak girl, who hides from the troubles in the cardboard box with inscription "Akari house" to strong athlet to keep her promise given to her mother. I liked Akari so much actually. All other characters have their own peculiarities too. Ayla and Jessie compete so hard that fall unconscious while swimming, Ichino starts envy to Akari when she becomes better that her, but fate punishes Ichino for this wrongdoing. Anna does a terrible thing to her sister to attend the university. Chris torments between her religion and sport, and also she is a lesbian and loves Akari. Tanya is mischievous african girl who worships to totems. Art Average for those years, but I liked it. Sound Nice OP song "Tsubasa" by Yukari Asakura. Also I liked voice of Akari`s seiyuu Rio Natsuki. Enjoyment Sometimes sport competitions in this anime finish a little bit naive, nevertheless it was so pleasant to watch. I definately recommend it for people who like sport, drama, girls and the relationships between them.

The year is 4999 AD. A very long time ago, the planet was knocked off of it’s axis by a devastating event that left mankind teetering on the brink of extinction, and the full nature of which has been lost to history. In their efforts to rebuild society from the ground up, mankind has decided to abandon war and instead settle their differences through athletic competition. This may sound like the Olympics to you, but the nature of their Great Competition is almost nothing like the gladiatorial events that we know today. For just over 1000 years, young women from all over the world have been flocking to a special school in Antarctica, to train and compete against each other, with the the top three students from each year being sent to the University Satellite! But that’s not all, because over the millennia, mankind has finally expanded into outer space, and every single planet(including some of their moons) sending their own athletes to compete at the Satellite! This intense, harrowing tournament will separate the tough from the timid, the hardcore from the soft, and the naturals from the dreamers as the best and the strongest athletes from the entire universe will battle it out for the title of Cosmo Beauty! One of these young hopefuls is Akari Kanzaki, who... Let’s just face it, is completely hopeless. She’s slow, fragile, and is just as clueless as to what she’s doing at the Antarctic training site as we are. Being the daughter of Tomoe Midoh, the greatest Cosmo Beauty in the history of the Great competition, she has the genetic make-up that any other competitor would kill for, but her athletic abilities, and her attitude towards training, make her long-lasting lock on last place feel even more painful to watch. While some of her fellow students may have a soft spot for the doe-eyed lump, others see her as an insult to everything they’ve dedicated their lives towards, and aren’t shy about letting her know it. But could the apathetic Akari be more than meets the eye? Could her exterior, which is about as threatening as a rag doll, be hiding an untapped well of talent that’s just begging to be discovered? And even going beyond that, is there some darker truth hiding behind the Great competition itself? As the competition heats up, and the champs rise above the chumps, the 1003’rd Cosmo Beauty may turn out to be the most important one of all. For Battle Athletes victory, we return to AIC, or Anime International company, only this time we’re looking at one of their earliest works, which came out in the late nineties. The series will be 20 years old this October, and as such, it looks extremely dated. This was a time when the moe style was nowhere to be seen, anime had to work harder to look good regardless of budget, and character designs ranged from cartoony to realistic, while rarely ever straying away from believable human anatomy. Artwork was a lot less polished, and physiques were exaggerated a lot more than they are today. For the time it came out in, Battle Athletes victory looks really good... When it wants to. The animation in this title is heavily inconsistent, and it works for the most part. For athletic competitions that can’t be written off with cheap budget saving tricks(And a few of them definitely are), the animation can be straight up gorgeous. I’ve heard it said that one of the most difficult things to animate is character’s legs when they’re walking and running, and yeah, I’ve seen enough failed attempts to understand this. A lot of work goes into the simple visual of feet hitting and pressing back off of the ground, which is why a lot of animation tends to focus on above the feet, if they’re not just resorting to bouncing the image of the character’s face. In spite of this, I’m not exaggerating when I say that Battle Athletes Victory makes running animation look easy. They can pull it off at any speed, from fast running that doesn’t give you time to analyze it, to slow-motion running that perfectly captures every single movement of the body to the point that I have to wonder just how much live action research they must have done beforehand. A lot of money clearly got poured into these scenes, because most of the other sports featured in this show aren’t really as impressive. That’s not to say they look bad, but there’s a lot of close-ups, a lot of short bursts of action, and occasionally even repeated animation cycles that are meant to give the illusion of physical activity, and thanks to some smart editing, it almost always works. About half of the action in this series is running, of course, so it’s still an impressive looking series. Well, for the most part, at least. The budget gets spread too thin at times, and when they run into trouble with it, the quality just abruptly tanks. There are sequences, and a couple of entire episodes, that look less like a high budget show from the late nineties and more like a low budget show from the early nineties. A lot of the material between competitions is just characters talking, interacting and having the camera freeze on them during internal monologues, and this does worlds of good for the budget, but at it’s worst, even scenes like those wind up looking like ass. The character designs, while imaginative, don’t follow the most attractive color palette, making the artwork look kinda grungy at times, and since the characters are mostly designed to carry realistic human anatomy, there are only a few of them that can get away with deformed anime expressions... Some of the more serious characters, such as Akari’s rival Jessie, just look terrifying when attempting to do the same. The color saturation and use of lighting are beautiful, but there are too many instances where the artwork looks rough, and over-all unfinished. The music, while pretty repetitive, is unbelievable. As with any good sports-related media, the story has a deeply emotional feel to it, and the music composed by Yoshikazu Suo was clearly designed to augment these emotions. Some of the happier moments between competitions will be played alongside the upbeat “There’s no Point Unless You Goal,” actual competition will be accompanied by the intense pounding beat of Battle Program, and for those more devastating and heart-breaking moments... Of which there is a surprising amount... We’ll get the violin track Adagio of Despair. Character themes were very thoughtfully put together and instantly reminiscent of the characters they’re attached to... Even when that’s primarily because they’re based on the races of extremely stereotypical characters, which i’m going to get to in a minute... But the highlight is Wings, the opening to the series, and easily on of my favorite of all time. Joyful and inspirational, and full of imagery that gives each character a fair dose of screen time while throwing in subtle hints about the series. Too bad you only get to see it once per disk... No, I’m not kidding. The same can be said for the sweet Honeybee, the closing theme. The English dub is a bit hit or miss, but I still prefer it over the Japanese by a great deal, even if the writers made a few embarrassing mistakes in it, such as mistakenly writing a flashback scene as a current scene, or having Akari say another character’s name before actually learning it. I can kind of imagine mistakes like those happening in the old days, but it would be unheard of today. Hey, at least they didn’t try to crowbar in any pointless references to obscure current events, am I right? Anyway, the cast is full of Geneon actors from the late nineties, including the legendary Lia Sargent as the main character Akari, whom she plays very straightforward, innocent and full of heart, even as she grows from a spoiled and co-dependent slacker into a stronger, more confidant idealist, constantly changing while still sounding like the same person at heart. Wendee Lee plays the gruff Osakan native Itchino, in what’s probably one of my favorite roles of hers, as she ba…

I discovered Battle Athletes Victory when I asked a guy at an anime convention “Do you know any good anime that are really obscure?” and he responded “Have you seen Battle Athletes?” I want to dedicate this to that guy. Every so often one might choose to watch a random anime that you have never heard of before and know next to nothing about. Sometimes you will discover a hidden gem, sometimes its a huge piece of crap, but more often than not it’s something serviceable but fairly unremarkable. I am pleased to say, that for me, Battle Athletes Victory was the first option. There are two anime productions in the original Battle Athletes franchise, a 6 episode OVA and a 26 episode television series. For my part I prefer Victory, the television series, to its OVA counterpart. Not only are the characters more fleshed out but I find the choices made by Victory to be more interesting than those in the OVA. Battle Athletes Victory uses its extra time to great effect to enhance the story. At the same time Battle Athletes does not over stay its welcome or belabor itself to pump out more episodes. Its 26 episodes contain 3 different arcs, and each wraps up cleanly and in a satisfying manner. The most typically viewed type of shonen is the battle shonen and these typically drag out for quite a long time with training and tournament arcs that often over stay their welcome and feel repetitive. Ironically Battle Athletes, which is all training and tournaments, manages to avoid this feeling of repetition and clears up in timely manner. This isn’t to say that Battle Athletes contains nothing but fresh ideas and presentations, it has many tried and worn cliches, but I am of the opinion that cliches, if done right, can be quite enjoyable. For those interested I will attempt to summarize the three arcs while avoiding any major spoilers Overview: Battle Athletes takes place in the year 4999 and focuses on Akari Kanzaki as she strives to improve herself in all things athletic and aim for the title of Cosmo Beauty, the highest honor in the sports world. Akari is the daughter of the most legendary Cosmo Beauty of all time, Tomoe Midou. Despite this pedigree Akari does not seem to possess her mother’s abilities for all things athletic and is actually quite bad. Tomoe Midou herself has been killed by anime parentitus and her dying wish was for Akari to attend University Satellite as she did in her youth. The first arc focuses on Akari’s time at the training school, which is a school that girls go to so that they can train in intense future athletic events so that the best of them may go to the satellite school where they may then compete for the title of Cosmo Beauty. In the training school we are introduced to the other students such as Ichino Yanigida (Akari’s best friend), Jessie Gurtland (the immensely talented American), Ayla V. Roznovsky (the almost equally talented Russian), Ling Pha Wong(the comic relief), and Tanya Natdhipytadd (who is a kinda racist African character). The first arc despite being the most comedy focused of the three, deals with some pretty serious themes such as jealousy and expectations. The core message of the arc, and the series as a whole though is on friendship. Throughout the entire series the focus is generally set on the relationships between the various girls. Kindhearted Akari wishes to be friends with everyone, but it’s not always that easy. There are those like Jessie who are laser focused on excellence and competition, and who like any true shonen rival, respect only power. This arc can go from silly things like dawning face paint to try and gain the favor of the god of running, to serious moments of intense jealousy over raw talent similar to those in the film Amadeus. It is also in this arc we see the first hints of Akari’s natural athleticism, which she is eventually able to tap into and propel herself to a spot in University Satellite which is where the second arc begins. In University Satellite Akari is separated from her training school companions and assigned two new teammates, Kris Christopher and Anna Respighi. This is also the same Arc covered in the OVA series. Like in the first arc Akari, and her team, do not perform well at the beginning. Their trainer is a man named Mr. Miracle(not the super hero). He is a man who has trained 7 Cosmo Beauties in his time, but since he spends most the entire series doing nothing for the girls I’m practically convinced this was sheer luck. Differing from the first arc the initial failure comes from the girls inability to perform as a team. Akari becomes too focused on winning and is unable to utilize the talents that Anna and Kris bring to the table, choosing instead to trust only in herself. Like I said friendship is a big theme. Another major theme is lesbians. Battle Athletes provides viewers with a choice of ships, you can either pair Akari with Ichino or Kris. The first arc is littered with hints that the relationship between Akari and Ichino might be more than just platonic. The second arc is a little less subtle. Upon meeting Akari for the very first time Kris Christopher exclaims “I’m in love!” Kris wastes no time in conveying her feelings to Akari, immediately expressing her romantic interest. Akari is shocked and often runs from Kris’ affections however the two become incredibly close friends and when confronted Akari is reticent to say that she and Ichino are anything more than just friends. And without spoiling anything I would say that Akari and Kris have a level of connection that rivals that of fellow 90s anime LGBT icons Utena and Anthy. Like in the first arc they manage to claw their way up out of defeat and make it past the prelims. At this point they are split up and must compete individually for the title of Cosmo Beauty. This arc also features two antagonists, Larrhi Feldnaut (which for some reason seems to be pronounced Fernando) a two time Cosmo Beauty winner who has trained herself to become a record breaking athletics robot, and Mylandah Akar Walder who is an over the top villain that is carted out to her matches in chains which she then immediately breaks and kept in a cell for the rest of the time because she likes to physically beat her competition. In fact during one match Mylandah crashes down into the stadium creating a crater around her, then slaps a girl so hard she breaks through a wall. If I were playing charades and the category were anime bad guy this is exactly what I would act out. After the Cosmo Beauty title is claimed on episode 22 the show begins its third and final arc. This 4 episode arc is the shortest in the series and can at first feel unnecessary because the end of the Cosmo Beauty arc felt final and like good end to the series, it was even where the OVA ended. However, there was one loose end that needed to be tied up. Without going into any spoilers something happens before the Cosmo Beauty competition and this arc addresses that event and what the entire Cosmo Beauty title had been about. There are some hints buried in the series about the reveal but most people won’t really absorb them on their first time though. This 4 episode arc is mostly a showcase of the “best of” of Battle Athletes characters. Most all major girls return for a final team match that the will impact the whole world. At times it seems like a lot to pack into 4 episodes but Battle Athletes ability to trim the fat really shows here. The training portion of the arc took up only half an episode and I myself wondered why they hadn’t done more before realizing that it would have accomplished nothing. All these girls were at the end of their personal character arcs and any future development between them (which should be the only reason extended periods of training episodes) was not necessary. There is are a few final emotional hurdles for Akari to overcome in this arc but I’ll leave what those are a secret for those who wish to watch the series. Overall Battle Athlet…

If you're reading this, I'd dare to assume you're planning to watch this anime or are still deciding whether you should watch it or not. I'm going to give my opinion, though I'm not a professional reviewer. Plot In this (almost) 27 years old anime we are unfolded the history of Akari and her efforts to reach her dream, her goal, achieved previously by her mother. Shy, honest and caring Akari isn't your average op character. You could even say she's mid in terms of power, agility, speed etc. But she makes up for it with her heart. Despite that, she does grow in the anime, both as an athlete and as a character, together with the other participants who inhabit the same dormitory as her. Together they go through mischievous mishappenings, where they redefine friendship, struggling to be better and so on. In my opinion, the plot was good, but didn't really deliver. Perhaps it's because I'm not into this genre. Characters As you can imagine, here we have the usual bunch: The angry, the deceiver, the energetic, the stoic and so on. They do go through personal growth, although it's not very noticeable. The main character doesn't over-occupy the screen, leaving space for the other characters to shine, so that the viewer can get familiar with them. I really liked the designs of the characters, but more than that I loved the voice acting. It's really well done. Animation As I previously mentioned, the anime is 27 years old. But despite the age, the art is good. It's not the best, but it gives that nostalgic feeling. Personally, I'm into retro and that's why I mostly watched this. The voice acting got me hooked to it. And that's about it. Summary I'd like to say that this show is for you if you're into sport and classical troupe. It's not the best , but it's further from being the worst. Even if you're not, it can be enjoyable.