Animu Review: Outlaw star
I've owned Outlaw Star for god knows how long, but i didn't even open the 3rd disc until last week. Due to my immense amount of free time at work, i decided to give it another shot.
I have a very mixed opinion on this series. It had a lot of potential but fails to meet a lot of it. Outlaw Star came out around the same time as Bebop, and thus, would have been it's major competitor. Their animation is very similar, but bebop's is more consistent. The character "Suzuka" sometimes goes from the best looking female character to the one that looks most like a man. This usually happens when characters are shown on screen, but aren't the main focus.
The series's fatal flaw lies in it's biggest driving force. It's main character, Gene Starwind. There is a lot wrong with the character. For starters, he's the most homosexual 'ladies man' i've ever seen in an anime. The way his character acts, his body language, and his looks would all say that he's meant to be a gay dude, but he's not. He's supposedly straight. This leads him to hit on every female in the series (very badly i might add. All his pick up lines are one liners that make you want to punch yourself in the face after hearing them). He takes out his homosexualness by trying to convince the viewer that he sleeps with bitches all the time. But what really happens, is just complete awkwardness. It's facepalm worthy.
This isn't his most glaring fault (honestly, him being gay would have made the series better, and made more sense). The biggest fault i find with Gene, is his disposition to everything around him. "Everything is going to be okay." What kind of shit is that? He blatantly states that he doesn't make plans because everything works out in the end regardless. So what's the point of watching the anime any more if you already know everything is going to be okay? It just blew my mind.
The supporting characters are what makes this anime decent. They are all original, but they all also lack depth. It's like the creators came up with these really cool ideas for a supporting cast, drew them up in concept art, then never gave them a biography. Gene's partner, Jim, is a 11 year old hacker who's dad was like the greatest hacker ever. But it never goes into how he started working for Gene, or what happened to his dad. You're just left to assume he's just always been there. Suzuka was an assassin hired to kill Gene's employer Fred. Gene prevents this and Suzuka ends up joining his crew. After that, nothing else develops with the character until the very end the of series.
Melfina is the series main source of plot. She's some lady that gene finds naked in a suitcase, whom turns out she's an android who's also the navigator for their spaceship, the outlaw star. Throughout the series they are trying to find a way to the Galactic Leyline which is some mystery of the universe. At the end of the series you find out that the galactic Leyline is actually some sort of "God-Machine" that grants wishes but it needs melfina to start it. At the end there is a huge clusterfuck of characters that appeared throughout the series, and they all want the Galactic Leyline for whatever their own reasons are. Most of everyone ends up dying and Gene wishes Melfina to come back to be with him. They make out in cyberspace then head back to the ship to fight some dude who wished for unlimited power.
At the series wind down you seen Gene with a new shorter (more butch) hair cut and Melfina sporting a red dragon kimono type thing. At this point you assume they are supposed to be lovers (mainly because Gene wished to be with her, Melfina wished to be with him, and they made out in cyberspace), but they actually act like brother and sister. Which leads to more awkwardness (mostly because like i said, Gene is gay.) Everyone goes back to their separate ways with Gene, Jim, and Melfina going back out into space together. But then the other 2 characters show up on the ship with a corny LOL I GUESS I'LL STICK AROUND type moment.
2 More things that bother me.
The easy one, is, the Cat girl in the series, Aisha, probably qualifies as one of the most annoying characters in anime ever. You have to do real bad to fuck up cat girls, but it happened.
The 2nd. I think Outlaw Star was originally supposed to be a Mecha anime. I say this because their ship, and other ships like it, are called "grappler ships", and are basically normal looking type space ships with arms. These arms do what normal arms do, ie, hold stuff. The Outlaw Star itself has 2 arms, one holds a pistol and the other holds an axe. My theory is further proven true because in 'grappler mode', the ship flies in all directions and throws forward propulsion physics out the window.
With a ship shaped like this:
Which direction would you think it flies in? The answer, any direction it wants to in grappler mode. So i'm pretty sure the series was supposed to have mecha in it, along with space ships. Or at least space ships that turned into Mecha.
So yes. This series is mostly bad. Lots of potential that was just never used. A full cast of great characters but with no depth. And a plot that didn't know whether or not it wanted to be taken seriously.
I would say avoid this anime, unless you are very strongly curious. But there is a reason this anime couldn't keep up with Cowboy Bebop, and that's because it pales in comparison.
There is however a small spin off serious of Outlaw Star called Angel links;
Which takes place in the same universe as Outlaw Star, but it's based off of a security company that helps repel pirate invasions. It sounds somewhat interesting, but i don't know if i'm going to pursue it or not. Probably not unless it's on youtube or something, i'm definitely not going to buy it.
I should also mention this series (outlaw star) has a large amount of fan service and brief nudity. Typically i'm all about it, but for some reason i had a rather bland reaction to it. It neither helped nor detracted from my review, but i just wanted to say it's there.
There is one more thing. The episode "Cats and Girls and Spaceships" is by far one of the best episodes i have ever seen in an anime series ever. The plot goes like this. The outlaw star is ambushed by this other ship, they fight to a stalemate and both escape. The Outlaw star goes to this docking community for repairs. While the ship is getting fixed up, Jim, the young boy hacker, decides to go take a walk to destress him. He comes across a little girl with 2 cats and takes a fancy to her. They later go out on a date and get all cute and puppy lovey for each other. They plan a date for the next day then leave.
The outlaw star departs the next day however to find the ship that ambushed them. They find it, they fight again, and it turns out that the little girl and her 2 cats are the pilots. Jim blows the shit out of the other ship with missiles, and they go back to the dock colony. Jim goes back to the park to meet the girl again for their date. He gets dejected and leaves after she doesn't show up, completely oblivious to the fact the he killed her in their previous fight.
My jaw dropped when i saw that episode. I was like, HOLY SHIT! JIM JUST BLEW THE SHIT OUT OF HIS LITTLE GIRLFRIEND! OMG!
It was good writing, it was fucking intense, and it was probably one of the reason i want to say this anime was at least decent. It was just a damn good episode.