Battle Athletes Victory #5: No Looking Back Pioneer 65 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 09/14/1999

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You know, maybe I'm looking too deep into things here, but I think this show might have just a BIT too much of an obsession with the idea of Zero-G sports. Like, sure, I understand that you're in space so it's only natural to throw a few in here or there, but sometimes you just have to take a break and put in something normal (Please note: "Bowling Billards" is NOT normal!) I find it hard to believe that I could overly stress that point. By strange coincidence, the last episode of this disc features soccer. Just soccer. I think this speaks volumes for the sport: it's hard enough as it is without requiring your competitors to wear hundred pound leg weights. It's soccer, for Christ's sake! When it came down to it, I had a choice to make regarding the pictures of this disc. Do I go with Lahrri, returning Cosmo Beauty champion, or Mylandah, crazy woman who spends most of her time in a cage, on suspension, doing pull ups while (inexplicably) naked? It was about this point that I realized I had no choice at all when Mylandah's feral attitude is compared to Lahrri's... amazonian one. Let's just say that this disc taught me "Cosmo Beauty" is not a term to be applied literally. So, here's another angry chick off center for you, which is awesome. While she only gets about two minutes of screen time in all these three episodes, half of it is spent throwing annoying girls into walls and growling, so I can certainly think of worse ways to spend my time.

 

Unfortunately, now that we've been introduced to Mylandah, everything else seems to pale in comparision, and possibly with good reason. The same plot of "I hate you guys, you don't do any work" "we're trying to do some work!" "BITCH MAKE ME A SANDWICH!" is still there and still plugging along and my chocolate eating hero (pictured later) Mister Miracle (BEST NAME EVAR!) is still conniving his way around and secretly making the girls work together by, you know, putting them in life or death situations. The next time I see Jerry and Skabs argue, I'm going to try his philosophy. So into the broken elevator they go, but oops! I forgot the sugar for my coffee, I better leave the emergency stop button unattended. Final result? Jerry and Skabs smash to their doom, and I inherit Skab's powers through the noble precedent set by our beloved Highlander series (mostly The Raven, because I like girls with bleached hair). Mister Miracle's got something there, I think. 'But Dave', you'll say, 'You don't take sugar with your coffee'. No, good reader, no I don't. Enough of me babbling about my future plans, there's much to discuss here. Jessie totally pussies out for no reason and goes home. Where is home? AMERICA! Do you know what every woman wears in America? Leather pants and low slung heels! Or, at least, I would imagine that this is what John Q. Tanaka thinks in Japan, because it's rare to see an American woman in anything else (barring the inclusion of a revealing two piece swimsuit). When (yeah right, don't get your hopes up) I make an anime, it's going to be all women and they're all going to be wearing business casual and sensible shoes. Except for Skabs, he can be in it... in a DRESS! Die Skabs! Give me my eight dollars!

 

Enough of that, again. In America we also learn that rapists wait for you around every corner, which is probably closer to the truth than not, but I am not a woman and can not confirm this (nor would I want to). Here we find out that Jessie had a sister at one point, this sister got very sick and died. Now, I'm no authority on cleanliness, but I would imagine that your sister wouldn't get so sick if you weren't feeding her ROTTEN VEGETABLES all the time. Obviously young Jessie has the perspicacity to acquire (steal) bread on a daily basis. Why not steal a side of beef instead of rooting around for the left over meat stuffs behind Jerry's restaurant? I bet you didn't know Jerry ran a restaurant in New York, but he does. You know who else inhabit New York? Black people! But only one, and he's a priest... a BADASS PRIEST. "Hello little girl, stop messing up my church. Oh wait, I don't exactly have time to talk now. I have to stop being a servant of God so I can go RACE MY ASS OFF FOR NO REASON against the very hot cosmo beauty." Whatever church he's running, sign me up. The man sheds his priestly raiment like Superman emerging from the phonebooth and all of a sudden he's some sort of Kenya super-runner. I don't know how the transformation took place so quickly, and I don't care to know. Fact is: Kenyan Super-priest = Awesome.

 

The last six episodes of this show seem almost like a repeat of the previous six, but I'm not going to argue with them anyway,except on the topic of Zero-G Lacrosse, which is only slightly less interesting than -real- lacrosse. Subdued violin songs are abound in the 65 minutes we share with Akari Kanzaki and her team as they battle their way (somehow scoring 128 goals in 30 minutes of play time) back to the top of the rankings and into the Great Competition. I love this show more than I'm comfortable admitting in polite company, provided I'm given my fair amount of weird shopping montages and little girls crying in bathrooms for no real reason whatsoever. So, through the course of this, I've told you about the three coolest character aspects of this show. 1) (sexy) beast women who beat people up for no reason. 2) Drugged up physical trainers who wear giant bicycle helmets and gorge themselves on chocolate and finally 3) Kenyan super-priests who say stuff like "I kick ass for the lord" (not a direct quote). If you weren't convinced by now that Battle Athletes Victory is a show that you should pick up, I'm going to have to start questioning your devotion to the awesomeness of Kenyan super-priests.

Taking a cue from the Pokemon, I've decided to spice up these reviews for the reader back home. So, enjoy the "incomprehensible athletic maneuver" of every disc of Battle Athletes Victory with me, and enjoy it in style! IAM #5: Tanya Natdhipytadd's "Redneck Styling" Those that know me understand my proclivity to go into nonsense when I'm excited by something, literally pounding on the keyboard to the tune of "bapgleaegpealgeagea!!!!1111!!!oneonene!!!!1". However, such is not the case here and the mishmash of letters you'll find floating just above here to form the last name of the African athlete are indeed their proper configuration, or as proper as anyone could expect of me anyway. Here we see that Tanya is not above the simple joys of the "world's strongest man" competition, though one wonders how an 89 pound girl can muscle a ton or two of raw metal in any direction. Such are the wonders of anime physics.