I'm entering into a genre I don't know particularly well with a series I've never seen before.
Now I'll try to relate the story as best I can
A spaceship making an interplanetary Journey explodes in the middle of space. The International Community perceives this as foul play. Not only is it highly suspicious that a ship of it's size containing 300 people should mysteriously disappear while on such a routine trip, but all the family members associated with the flight haven't made any efforts to claim insurance for damage done.
An organisation known as ''World Welfare Work Association" or 3WA* is assigned the case to investigate the problem.
The agents chosen for this operation are Kei and Yuri. Collectively known as the ''Dirty-Pair'' by the community-at-large. They seem to be quite popular, as just stating their presence has everyone on alarm or in some cases excited.
They wear very scantily clad uniforms while on duty. Not entirely sure of the reason. Maybe they like swimming, or maybe that's just the attire for the very particular unit of Agents.**
I'll give the animators credit they have quite the assortment of clothing wen off duty. it's funny to think they dress far more modestly when in civilian clothing.
They're sent out to two planetary bodies to acquire passenger logs for flight 005 and to find specific information on a man named Dornenstern. He creates this strange liquid chemical that can be used for reactor cores.
Like any entertaining story the cases start to escalate as both the missing person and the explosion behind the ship become inter-woven and complicated with interplanetary politics, organised crime and multiple kidnappings. Turns out this scientist guy was kidnapped to make the specialised fuel for this one particular warlord, so he could use it to build a criminal Empire. I think he wanted to conquer one of the planets or possibly both. He already had connection to one of the planets but I guess that's just not enough for him.
The girls start getting outside help from a mysterious stranger known as Dick. Who's feeding them information on a secret police agency whose both aiding and obstructing the Dirty-Pair at the same time.
The weird thing about this movie it's both simple and convoluted at the same time. Best thing to do is just focus on the girls main case of trying to find this strange scientist and leave all the space politics to the side. It just adds as world-building as far as I'm concerned.
It doesn't add anything to the direct story.
There's also this weird dog creature called Mughi who I guess is supposed to be the pet of the Dirty-Pair. But he can also fly the spaceship from time to time and ends up saving the girls more than once.So I don't know, maybe he's part of the crew officially.
So I wrote this whole three paragraph statement about how I didn't think one of the scenes made any sense. It had to do with an explosion that happened around the girls while in investigating this old warehouse. At the end of it all only Kei emerges from the wreckage. She goes to a bar, distraught because her partner is perceived as dead. Kei later survives an assassination attempt by the bartender who was shot in the head by Yuri on her return.
I had wanted to bad-mouth this whole scene for not explaining how Yuri made it back. But there's a one off line at the end where Yuri is belittling Kei for not to apprehending the bartender and thus wasting their charade.
However I still feel as if this whole scene was poorly executed. I only caught that line of dialogue on a second viewing. So originally I was just left incredibly confused.
In fact I thought the entire scene would go in a very different direction. The bartender slips a pill into Kei drink. I'm thinking it was a type of roofie that's going to knock her out. She would wake up captive in some hotel or basement having to answer questions to one of the criminal groups. But it turns out the pill was a mini explosive that blows up one's head when they drink it. Luckily for Kei this other guy concerned that she was drowning herself in alcohol, took the drink and chugged it down, thus killing himself unknowingly. This is the reason why Kei didn't try to catch the bartender to begin with. She was in the stage of shock after watching a fellow officer died because of her ''perceived'' alcoholism.
The whole movie ends with a rescue operation. And for such a fun little space adventure it ends on a very sour tone. Several important characters are killed and we're left on this slightly sad pop song as pictures of the deceased appear on screen. Seems a bit strange given that the entire film is supposed to be this funny go lucky space adventure.
Still I'd recommend the film. It's a fun space adventure with some surprisingly detailed environments. The stories nothing fantastic, but it's fun enough and the characters are simple but not completely one-dimensional. We also don't get bogs down in lame back story or pointless drama. It's a breath of incredibly fresh air, I wish modern science fiction would adopt a little more.
I'm also surprised at the lack of cheesecake in this film.
What do I mean by cheesecake?
It's a term I used to describe any form of fanservice where a woman (sometimes a man) is doing something silly / sexy with no bearing on the plot*⁴. This film doesn't really go down that road too much. Their costumes are naturally seductive, but they don't go overboard with it. The closest thing we get are the two girls going goo-goo over a guy(s) they think are cute or the one time Yuri nuzzles up to Kei's face in a kind of puppy dog expression begging her to do a favour. But otherwise it's kind of modest. Sailor Moon had more cheesecake than this.
The technical side:
Animation is quite simplistic. Sometimes it's literally just a still image that they moved the camera through to give it to perception of a living environment. All the action is very straight and minimal with high circular explosions and bright beams of light to distract you.
Not that there's anything wrong with the animation here. It does its job, tells the story. It's oddly detailed in points, a lot of the background drawing is colourful and intriguing. The animation right after the explosion at the warehouse is surprisingly detailed. Where the character move a lot smoother than they do anywhere else in the film, It's actually a little distracting.
As for the voice acting... let's just say you should stick with the Japanese language and English subtitles.
Now apparently there are two English translations of this film. The one I saw I'm pretty sure is from 95 and it is absolutely awful. The voice of Kei is so monotone and boring. They have no Direction and no ambition put into any of their lines and it becomes almost unwatchable*³.
*Well that's a tongue and a half to say and talk about an obscure agency. I thought Johnny Dollar was bad with his insurance company back in the 1940s but these two girls might just take the cake. There's a crossover for the ages ''Johnny Dollar'' meats ''Dirty Pair'' there would be so much flirting it would go over the wall. I doubt any of them would get anything done.
**Of course we know the real reason. It's just a combination of fanservice and fun cosmetics.
And I'm all the more happy for it.
When it comes to space exploration stories I find costumes to go in one of two directions. Either they should be as boring and drab such as: Star Trek Generations, the original ''Alien'' (where everyone's a trucker.) Or they should be over the top and fun as possible with wacky designs and fun colours.
*³Now I don't want to bad-mouth the person who did the voice of Kie she might have had to do 20 different shows in a single day and probably for small pay. But it still isn't very good.
It be one thing if she was a one-off side character. But she's literally has the most lines in the entire film. She is for all intensive purposes the main protagonist, even more so than Yuri. And the idea of having to listen to that stagnant voice for an hour is just haunting.
It's like listening to an audio clip from the Roosevelt house somewhere down in New York. But at least with them they're usually talking about complex or interesting subjects. This is just a silly piece of animated entertainment.
*⁴Think Sailor Mars whenever she does a fire move attack and the shot that use is focused up her skirt.
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