ike so many other anime superstars, "trouble consultants" Kei and Yuri
have been seen in many forms--a TV series, original video
animations, novels, manga, movies--but certain basic facts tend to carry
over from one release to the next. Code-named The Lovely Angels, and more
often referred to as The Dirty Pair, they zip around the galaxy in the
service of the 3WA (World Welfare and Works Agency), cheerfully taking on
amazingly dangerous cases in order to fully exploit their deep-seated
personal love of large weapons and large explosions.
The first two installments of this 10-episode OVA series, first released
in Japan in 1989, casually assume viewers are fans who know all this
already. Episode 1, "Prison Uprising! or I Hate People With Grudges!"
launches straight into the action, as the Pair are dispatched to help quell
a prison riot on a space station hovering above a dangerously
volatile planet. Unfortunately, the only logical flight path to the station
involves using it as a shield against the planet's boiling surface--and
facing directly into a barrage of heavy weapons manned by violent escaped
criminals. Of course, no one ever accused the Pair of being logical...
In Episode 2, "No Thanks! A Totally Wasted Halloween Party," the Pair
takes a simple enough job capturing a thief who's escaped with a robotic
prototype. But the prototype promptly escapes. Initially, the Pair cause
more havoc in hunting it down than it causes wandering around on its own.
But after 60 minutes of recon, it's set to go into battle mode, destroying
everything in sight.
Echoes of past greatness
After the irritating high-gloss, high-pitched, low-art tone of the more
recent Dirty Pair Flash series, these older OVAs are
a pleasant return to Kei and Yuri's original image, which included brains
as well as breasts. The Pair is still a source of fast-paced caper comedy,
as they brazenly shoot down anything that moves, riffing endlessly on the
local cute guys and on each others' faults. But they're also a lot more
coherent here.
Still, the animation is distinctly dated and below average for the time
period--its unrelieved two-dimensionality and washed-out details make it
look like a much older TV series. The dubbing, while distinctly superior to
the execrable Streamline Pictures Dirty Pair film dubs, has a flat,
toneless studio quality and no standout stars. The first episode in
particular is predictable and straightforward from the moment the fighting
starts.
But the Halloween episode compensates with some of the all-out silliness
that made Kei and Yuri famous. Pursuing an oddly personable death machine
through a city full of incompetent criminals dressed as Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs, or Alice and her mad tea party, the duo may not be setting
personal comedy records, but they're fairly close to par. These aren't the
best stories the Pair has offered over the last two decades, but
they're far from the worst.
