Sukeban Deka (1991) Anime OVA Review

Sukeban Deka is a 1991 action crime anime written and directed by Takeshi Hirota based on a manga by Shinji Wada. The manga series was highly successful in Japan, which gave way for a full live-action TV series and 3 films inspired by the same story. This particular OVA starred Kazue Ikura, Akio Ōtsuka, Akira Kamiya, Hiroshi Takemura, Kenji Utsumi, Masako Katsuki, Naomi Uchiyama and Saeko Shimazu. Juvenile delinquents were a pretty big issue in Japanese society at the time and media related to it gave way for a fiction subgenre that focused on the female variety and it's subculture, Sukeban Deka (Delinquent Girl Detective) being one of the prime examples.

Saki Asamiya is a young delinquent who gets taken out of her cell by the police in order to go undercover into the social structure of a dangerous school ruled by the wealthy Mizuchi sisters, girls who belong to a crime family and fight for control and to be head of the organization. Saki does this in order to get her mother out of death row and to gain her freedom.

Such a premise gives us an action-filled vehicle that goes at 200 miles per hour and has very little time to breathe or rest, establishing relationships, settings and ideas in little time but with a lot of dynamism and a playful nature. It's stylish and lyrical, highly poetic and potently dramatic. It's an excellent piece of the genre that takes advantage of its medium. Everything is executed with precise skill by the animators and the crew.

This is probably the best example of an OVA series that, while surprisingly short, is able to construct a proper dramatic structure that has the same effect in getting you attached to its characters, both main and secondary, in such a small time frame. One example is the girl that the protagonist meets and is then attacked at the end of the first episode. The series doesn't waste time and introduces her right away. Her dialogue is succinct and to the point but the VA's give the lines some personality and emotion. We have some brief scenes of her that are well juggled between other plotlines but also presents us her intimacy (her home, her hobbies, her aspirations, what she sees in life) that gets us closer to her in a single brief but effective scene (through the main character's point of view as well). Because of this, when the tragic event happens we are more invested in her as a person, the stakes moving higher and higher with every event and we understand why the protagonist cares at the same time.

I really love how overdramatic and heightened character's reactions are. The VA's really give it their all and embody their characters with perfection. They yell and grunt and shriek in the right tone and register to make everything more expressive and understandable. This doesn't stop at the voice actors' performances, the direction also emphasizes these intense emotions via angles and visual techniques in order to solidify and express a needed emotion.

The constant array of action and events might have gotten tiresome it wasn't for the tricks they pull and the clever ways they are able to disguise the corners they cut, either by cutting away from the most laborious fight sequences with many characters by focusing on another character while we assume a battle takes place or by using eye-popping visuals to summarize events. You can tell, because of the fast pace, that this was a TV series or a long manga that had time for everything to take place before it became a 40 minute two-part OVA (80 minutes at most) but it all helps to give it some energy and make it consistently entertaining without losing the meat of the story.

A totally recommended OVA in every sense. It's quick and strong. Obligatory for all anime fans.

Danger Girl: Original run |Overview

Created by J. Scott Campbell and Andy Hartnell, this mashup of Indiana Jones, James Bond and Charlie's Angels delivers a great amount of action packed adventures with our leading ladies.

 

Gotta get this out of the way, I must say that this is mostly a comic with sexy female characters at the forefront and features a lot of elements typically enjoyed by male comic book readers. So don't really expect any subversion here, Danger Girl is pure fanservice fantasy for fanboys. In that sense, it does deliver. If you like that, then this is the comic for you, doesn't mean women can't enjoy it but it's clear who the target audience was. 

However, while sometimes sexualized, the main heroines aren't just empty-headed objects as the clever writing gives them the personalities and abilities necessary to stand out as people and not things to be looked at. So, in my opinion, it goes far beyond being another product for teen boys with sexy women on the cover and becomes iconic in an empowering way.   

The main trio of girls here are Abbey Chase, the main character, who is a potentially astounding agent but she's too raw and inexperienced to be such at the beginning of her arc, she eventually grows and becomes the "Lara Croft-like" heroine she appears to be by the end of the run.

We also have the Australian Sydney Savage, a skilled agent with a signature whip but perhaps too wild to be controlled. 

And finally there's the knife wielding Natalia Kassle, another international agent, this time from Russia who, predictably, isn't what she seems to be at first.

That's probably the iconic main trio of the franchise as a whole. All of them work for a retired british agent named Deuce, the Charlie-type character who leads them and there's also a nerdy tech girl named Silicon Valerie (mostly because of silicon valley, not the other type, well... maybe that one too) and sometimes this highly annoying guy named Johnny Barracuda shows up and serves as the “comedic relief” and sometimes love interest in the comics. Several changes are made to the roster as the plotlines advance but those are the basic ones.

In this first series simply titled Danger Girl, we see Abbey almost dying in one of her many missions as an agent before being saved by an unknown group, who we later find out is Deuce and the gals.

They dont waste time in low brow jokes about low blows.

It's also good to see that the comic has a sense of humour about the girls as well.

The saviors in question are known as Danger Girl, a group that does ultra secret missions around the world. They want Abbey to join them and become part of the operation due to her reputation as a proficient spy. She is reluctant at first and has some trouble fitting in since some of the others aren't too sure about her but Deuce has a private chat with her and things go slightly better after that.  

Having a chat with her new father figure.

What follows is a series of action set pieces (and excuses for the heroines to show off their bodies) such as a chase through the snow and a highway chase with explosions. We also get to see some of the big baddies: A huge nazi mechanical golem named Major Maxim, a sleazeball nicknamed The Peach and the mad doctor known as Kharnov Von Krippior. 

Maxim carrying Sydney.

Typical deranged scientist.

Abbey entertaining The Peach.

Abbey and Johnny.

Eventually, we reach the lowest point for the good guys, the villains are about to commit their evil deeds, the heroes have been captured and their headquarters was destroyed. Abbey is the only one who survives, only to be saved by a Diabolik-type ninja named Secret Agent Zero, the mysterious agent has info on Abbey and rescues her in order to ambush the bad guys and save the day. They eventually foil the villain's plans and save the day. 

The start of the amazing final battle between the traitor and Abbey.

The action is frequent, beautifully illustrated and dynamic, there's some room to breathe and to develop characters further after the fights and shootouts but even during the action set-pieces the characters show their personalities in the way they approach or respond to situations. They quip and fight, always ending the action scene in a very creative and fun way that makes you want to keep going, not to mention the enjoyable cliffhangers.

It's easy to see how Danger Girl won the hearts of so many comic book fans, it's the perfect digestible read with well drawn ladies, guns and explosions, add in the witty and funny lines, and you got a recipe for a successful comic book series. 

Danger Girl in its original series was short lived but calculated and perfected, soon, several sequels would follow, as well as a videogame. We will take a look at them some other time. For now, I recommend this action fueled rollercoaster of girls with guns and spy tropes executed in its most refined form. 

Was the videogame any good? We will find out.