n a distant future year closely approaching 5000 A.D., Terran society has re-centered itself around obsessive physical competition. Each year, a handful of the planet's best specimens are sent into space, to train on one of two gender-segregated University Satellites and vie for the dubious title of "Cosmic Beauty." ("Cosmo," in later translations.)
Last year, Pioneer released Battle Athletes, the original video animation trilogy about feisty, determined Akari Kanzaki, daughter of the youngest and most famous Cosmic Beauty ever. That series' story began with her and two other finalists heading into space to compete. But these first two installments of the eight-volume Battle Athletes: Victory TV series star an earlier, weaker Akari, one of more than a hundred Earth-based trainees competing to be chosen for University Satellite. Theoretically, viewers already know who's going to win. But the story doesn't seem nearly so clear-cut.
Here, it's clear that Akari is only competing because of a desperate promise made to her dying mother. She has no confidence in her own abilities--faced with conflict, she bawls and hides in a cardboard box painted with the words "Akari House." She exhibits the desperate, hopeful friendliness of a kicked puppy. Even her best friend Ichino despairs of her. But the school's serious competitors know that Akari's got unlimited potential in her genes, if she ever decides to explore it. While she's cowering or crying, they're determinedly facing off against each other--and watching her out of the corners of their eyes.
From silly to stupefyingly serious
Victory starts out as a strident, cartoony comedy, heavy on flying sweat beads and exclamation points, "super-deformed" burlesque humor, and a lot of running and shrieking. For instance, one entire episode is devoted to a feral African redhead (Tanya, another staple of the OVA series) whose hyperkinetic supplications to a tribal speed god leave the entire student body covered in war paint. These episodes are energetic and authentically fun, but definitely overdone, at least for anyone over the age of 12.
But throughout the giddy early episodes, tension pops up at bizarre times. As if starring in their own private series, trainees Jessie and Ayla, an American and a Russian respectively, recapitulate the Cold War and explore the complex duality of competitive human nature in the middle of the most excessive slapstick possible. These two form the poles of an increasingly powerful plot in the second volume, as Ichino violently forces Akari to face her own mewling idiocy and start standing up for herself. By the riveting, horrifying conclusion to episode 7, it's hard to believe this is the same goofy series that featured girls leaping through minefields while hauling giant granite rollers in episode 1.
Victory was intended for a younger audience than the original OVAs--there's more physical humor, less nudity and sexual innuendo (so far), and the characters are younger and cuter. The often-exaggerated animation, with its planet-sized eyes, jet-wing hair and satiric simplicity, brings Sailor Moon to mind. But the artistic direction is solid, and the story is surprising. Whatever extreme this series decides to stick with, it promises to be interesting.
