Miami Guns, this is a fairly recent anime police story. The background, which didn’t seem to have any influence on the first few shows, is that humanity on earth was wiped out in some sort of catastrophe; some escaped into space and when they returned they found a few survivors on the surface. Humanity then restablished themselves on earth and rebuilt. Miami is the name of the primary city but it doesn’t seem to have any relationship to any Miami you may have heard of. As I said, none of this background seems relevant to the series.

The primary characters are Yao and Lu. Yao is the spoiled rich girl that thinks the world revolves around her and that police work is exciting work because you get to blow up buildings. (There aren’t many complaints about this because Yao has her father buy the building before it gets blown up.) Yao is one wild and crazy girl who never plans ahead. Lu is the calm, level-headed one. She is also the Police Chief’s daughter, which is probably why she naturally went into police work.

As a buddy show, Lu doesn’t react against Yao enough. Lu goes with the flow and in the end, after Yao creates a catastrophe, Lu gets them out safely. The only time this went the other way was when Yao and Lu first met (flashback) and Yao saved the day, and Lu. What makes the “Lethal Weapon” movies work is that Glover’s character has emotional responses to Gibson’s character’s antics. Glover’s character is just restrained by his background from totally clocking Gibson’s character.

The Police force is a private contracting outfit? but everyone seems to treat it as a public service organization. All the male officers seem to be trigger-happy lechers. The only non trigger-happy officer on the whole force seems to be Lu, and maybe her father.

So this show is basicly a shoot’em-up with a jiggle factor. The story lines seems to be old and retreaded. The characters are standard and predictable. The artwork, for the most part, is pretty good. They are using a certain effect where the angry character is drawn in a juvenile style (I’m sure there is a name for it. I have seen it in other shows occasionally) and they use it a lot. I don’t care for that effect.

The one redeeming feature on this disk is that in the extras is an explanation for some of the cultural background of the dialogue and situations. They even try to explain the puns. Each episode seems to be a pastiche of previous anime series, and you might not realize the signficance of a Tofu delivery boy named Takumi in episode 4 unless you are familiar with “Initial D“. Personally, driving animes never really thrilled me.

Recap/Synopsis:

Episode 1: Bank Robber walks into bank with machine gun, all customers draw their own weapons, BR use explosive vest to take baby hostage, and escapes to upper floors of bank. Yao offers hostage swap, BR gets Yao to strip to bikini, keeps both hostages. Yao starts firefight with police below. Lu rescues BR and baby with tank, Yao accidently blows up the building but they all escape safely in tank.

Episode 2: A recap of all the previous episodes (a joke) that shows how Yao and Lu first met and how Yao decided to join the force.

Episode 3: Yao and Lu go under cover in a Girl’s School. Strange things are happpening.

Episode 4: A deranged driver is running street racers off the road and leaving blocks of tofu at the scene. Yao retrofits a car with the latest car gear, then, Yao and Lu go after the culprit.

I give this a 6 out of 10, so far. I think there are 3 more disks in the series but I won’t push them to the top of my queue for a while.

My two favorite Anime series of all time are: Cowboy Bebop and Rurouni Kenshin. Samurai Champloo manages to capture both of them quite nicely.

I’m not sure how to describe this show. It takes place in the mid-1700’s in Japan. The main protagonists are Mugen, Jin, and Foo. Mugen is a rather reckless swordsman who likes to test his skills against anyone with a sword. Jin is a more reserved samurai who doesn’t feel a need to prove himself. Fuu is a girl, looking for a samurai who smells like sunflowers. (I think that is Samurai Champloo).

Mugen and Jin first meet at Fuu’s restaurant. Mugen wants to face the governor’s highly skilled bodyguards, when Jin walks in and says he has already killed them. A fight commences, which ends when the restaurant burns down (caused by some of Mugen’s earlier activities.) Mugen and Jin are scheduled to be executed and Fuu gets their promise to help find her samurai, in exchange for her help to escape. They escape, wiping out the governor and his minions along the way. Fuu makes them delay their own duel until she finds her samurai. And the adventures begin.

The series is very humorous. Fuu keeps getting into awkward situations. Mugen and Jin keep rescuing her, unintentionally, since their personal problems always seem to involve the cause of Fuu’s problems.

The writers keep throwing current lingo and music into the show rather than trying to keep it all historical. It gives everything a slight edginess. The Rapping Samurai, with his home-boy back-up group, is going a bit over the top. In the opening they flashback 24 hours and you are looking at a modern-day-minus-one Tokyo street scene. Oops, jump back to feudal Japan.

There are 26 episodes in the series. I am on the second disk, up through Episode 8. I am enjoying the writing, the storyline, the production values, and the characters. I hope they can hold up throughout the series. And maybe, we’ll find out what the sunflowers are all about.

Maybe I should give some brief episode summaries to provide a flavor of the series.

First two episodes involve meeting, escaping execution and its aftermath.

Next two episodes: Mugen and Jin join opposite sides of a gang war, Fuu has to work off a debt (incurred by cheating) in a brothel.

Fifth episode – to get travelling money, Fuu works as a model only to be captured and delivered to the Western sailing ships in the harbor, Jin plays chess and Mugen mugs muggers (who are also the ones that captured Fuu). I almost forgot, the ukiyo-e artist Fuu models for is credited with inspiring Van Gogh to paint sunflowers.

Sixth Episode. – The group guides a gay Dutchman around Edo. He is so glad to find a place that doesn’t condemn his lifestyle. Unfortunately, Japanese don’t like foreigners.

Seventh Episode- Fuu’s wallet, with everyone’s money in it, gets picked. She finds the pickpocket’s mother and takes pity on him while the cops and yakusa are after him for another pickpocket job. He dies. Fuu’s sad.

Eighth Episode – A rapping Samurai, trying to make his reputation by killing the samurai with glasses (Jin), hits on Fuu. Jin has pawned his glasses for the the money and so isn’t easily picked out as a target (glasses are rare in 1700’s Japan). Samurai’s wife comes back to claim him after rolling Mugen and Jin following a night of drinking and empty promises.

8/10 for now.

I am up to Season 4 in Red Dwarf. RD was a BBC SF show that started in the late 80’s and it is hilarious.

The basic premise is that Lister, a complete slacker, is the last surviving human in the Universe. He was put in statis by the ship’s (Red Dwarf’s) captain for bringing a cat on board. He stayed in stasis for 3 million years after a radiation leak killed the ship’s crew and the ship’s AI didn’t let him out until the the radiation levels were back to normal. The cat was saved from the radiation by virtue of being in the protected ship’s hold at the time of the leak. The cat was pregnant. And three million years later, Lister’s only living companion is an evolved descendant of the Cat.

Lister’s other companions are: a hologram of his old roommate, Rimmer, a total git that Lister can’t abide; Kryten, an Android that the ship rescues along the way; and Holly, the Ship’s AI. (Holly thought that having Rimmer as a companion would help Lister keep his sanity by allowing Lister to plan all sorts of torments to inflict upon him. He/She might have been right.) Oh yes, all the other cats left the ship in a religious schism over what color hat they should wear at the sacred curry stand; and Lister is their God. The Cat left on board is apparently areligious and believes that if anyone is God, it is he.

Rimmer is one of those characters that believes he is intelligent and competent despite all evidence to the contrary. Rimmer is also the one who caused the radiation leak that killed the crew.

So far the Red Dwarf has visited parallel dimensions, been visited by evil aliens, stumbled across garbage pods and criminal transport vessels, found GELFs and left GELFS, and have found a number of ways to cross time. Holly, with an IQ of 6000, has tried to invent the Holly Hop Drive. He actually did invent something but there was a question as to whether it was a hop or a skip. Lister is the proud mother of twins and he witnessed Winnie the Pooh executed by a Fascist Firing Squad.

Not only are the weekly situations more than a little twisted, but the ongoing relationships between the characters makes the show so enjoyable. (The actor who plays Cat has captured the essence of cats.)

There are 8 seasons to the show, so far. Each season is 6 half- hour episodes. So far, only the first 6 seasons are on disk. The cast has added commentary to each disk. I guess that they hadn’t seen some of these episodes since they were broadcast the first time. The commentaries are quite interesting as well, especially choice comments about some fans who really need to get a life.

I understand a movie is on its way and if the movie is a success, the series may continue.

8/10 with touches of 9.