Project A-ko


Exactly how many panty shots can you squeeze into an hour and a half?




Review by: M.H. Torringjan

Length: 84 minutes
Genre: Robot superpower space romance comedy thingy. Trust me, you don't want to try and classify it.
Watched: Every last minute of it, subbed and dubbed way back in the day.

You know, this was one of my first anime movies, and it'll always be one of my favorites. The sheer absurdity of it is evident starting as soon as the first scene with the main characters starts to roll. It hits on some of the biggest cliches in anime with a sort of subtle sense of humor. It ain't Excel Saga, but it does the job.

Plot: Okay, stick with me here, people. You're going to love this one! Okay, it starts out with a space ship exploding and a meteor hitting the planet and going WHOOM!!! Right, that's the start, a giant explosion! Perfect! Okay, so after that, flash forward to Tokyo 16 years later. A-ko's a stereotypical red-headed anime chick. She goes to school, she's got an annoying blonde whiny friend, C-ko, and she's got superpowers. The two of them go to school with a purple-haired chick, B-ko. Yeah, gotta love those names! Right, so this B-ko hates A-ko and loves C-ko. We're talking Cousin love here. So, B-ko tries taking C-ko from A-ko by, how else in an anime, having her fight to the death with giant robots! Where'd she get 'em? Don't know! Don't care! She's got 'em, and she's using 'em!
Now, besides this, there's a thing about mysterious aliens attacking the planet, searching for their lost princess. I know! Aliens are sure fire in an anime! Especially ones where you can't tell what sex they are! And there's big space-ships and plane battles and explosions and BOOM! Yeah! Perfect!! And lots of panty shots! Always need panty shots!

Now, was that enthusiastic enough?

Artwork: Three letters can describe how I felt about the artwork in this series. Meh. Nothing out of the ordinary for an anime movie. The starships looked like any other starships would, the mecha looked like any other mecha would, the characters looked like any other characters would. Assuming every anime has guys with breasts. Of course, I think that the overall generic feel to the artwork was done purposefully to heighten the sarcasm. So, it worked well. And the panty-shots are integrated into the artwork very well.

Music: Now, I've got mixed feelings about this soundtrack. The techno-80's-hair tracks, like the intro track on the DVD, are really nifty. That's about half of the soundtrack. The other half is the vocal tracks and the derivatives thereof. I can stand the poppy "Dance Away" and the instrumentals of it. However, the slow, soft medley, "Follow Your Dream" gets real old real fast. On the up-hand, the song's playing during the scene where B-ko's in the bath. Now, *that* made it all worthwhile. It also does well to accompany the frequent panty shots at various points in the movie.

Characters: Well, there's a pretty large cast of characters to worry about in this movie. Most of the characters are likable in some way. A-ko's a nice girl, B-ko's hot, as will be addressed in the Chicks section. Definitely worthy of all those panty shots. The aliens are the comic relief, which works pretty well. On the other hand, C-ko is one of the most annoying anime characters I've ever met. The high voice, the crying, the mouth that's about five times the size of her head, the utter BLOND that is C-ko is almost enough to make the most seasoned anime-watcher want to tear out his or her esophagus and throw it at the screen. Well, maybe not his or her esophagus. Perhaps someone else's. And then, the fact that they made C-ko the target of B-ko's obvious sexual interest never fails to confuse and disturb me.

CHICKS!!: Man, this one just lays it on you thick. A-ko is just the cutest little super-powered ditz you'll ever seen. I mean, she's just so oblivious that you almost can't help but like her! B-ko is uber-hot, especially in her tight, tight leather battle uniform, fighting with the whip. She's popular with the domination crowd, for sure. The two of them have an excellent ability to provide quality panty shots. And if anyone finds C-ko sexually appealing, please, for your own good, seek professional help. Immediately.

Overall: Hey, I had a good time. The humor's just low-key enough that it doesn't dim the effect of the anime overall. Of course, the second movie, which I doubt I'll review, does that. I guess that you can't have everything. I think that overall, it was a pretty well-rounded anime, if not a bit predictable at times. The plot's unique, if not a bit dull at times. Everything works pretty well, even if you're only being forced to watch it by someone else, if only for the purpose of making fun of it. It's just so easy to do, even if you enjoy it. Heck, I love it and I admit that it's one of the more pointless animes I've seen. It's just so easy sometimes! But if you can find no other reason to watch it, then you can at least enjoy the panty-shots. I don't know if I mentioned them, but there's lots of 'em.

In a nutshell:
+ Good sense of humor
+ A pair of nice chicks
+ Decent soundtrack
- C-ko. Enough said.
- Plot's kind of generic for the purpose of the movie.
- "Follow Your Dreams" bites.

Final Rating: 7/10



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