Dirty Pair: Project Eden ADV 90 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 09/09/2003

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You should be aware that, while I try my hardest to avoid reviews from Animejump (lest my own stuff be colored by their (superior) opinions), sometimes it's just too damn hard to do. So please believe me that I'm doing my very best to avoid cribbing off another man's hard written prose and, because of this, I'm going to be talking about some very off the wall topics. In fact, I don't really intend to address things like plot or characterization at all. This shouldn't be a surprise to you, though, as I don't think I do it anywhere else either. Briefly, Dirty Pair: Project Eden is about the two 'Lovely Angels' Kei and Yuri being sent to... do something... with the space fuel called Vizorium. Through a variety of trials they meet up with the roguish Carson D. Carson (his real name!) who looks like a petty thief but actually turns out to be a standup guy (surprise surprise). Together the three of them overthrow the insane Dr. Wattsman and his space-butler Bruno and ride off into the sunset. I'm going to spoil it for you right here. When Carson seems to be dead, he's not. If you for even a short moment might've thought they'd actually kill him then I don't think you've seen a single movie from the entire 80s.

And yes, this is an actual movie, not an OVA. Sometimes, and its probably just me, I have a hard time telling. That's because apparently it's okay for a major motion picture in Japan to be 60 minutes long and totally crap. That kind of stuff wouldn't fly over here, where movies like Darkness Falls have 11 minute credit rolls appended to them so they're long enough for theatrical release. Yes, Americans know how to do it the right way and Japan is once again left in the gutter to steal from their own works. It's a vicious cycle, don't I know it, but they're the ones who have to learn how to stop with that crap. And maids too, that stuff is just plain weird. A bit surprisingly, though, Project Eden cleverly avoids all the cul-de-sacs I would normally associate with a movie release of a TV show. It's sort of a funny singularity in anime because, to me, Project Eden is one of the few "TV to movies" that actually feels like a movie to me. Dirty Pair, in itself, is such a simple affair that backstory is hardly necessary. I can sum it up for you in two sentences, though if you've been an anime fan for any length of time you'd probably be able to recite it with me like some cultic oath. Kei and Yuri are agents of the 3WA, code-named 'Lovely Angels', though more commonly referred to as the 'Dirty Pair'. This is because they have a peculiar ability to wreak accidental havoc on anything they touch while still getting the job done.

I've always liked that, that 'Dirty Pair' doesn't refer to the size of their gazongas or anything. Don't get me wrong, Dirty Pair is not lacking in the fan-service department, but it isn't copiously over flowing with it either. As I said to Evan, this is about as much fan-service as a guy like me can stand, which is good, because I'd really hate to hate anything related to Dirty Pair. Anything made prior to the late 90s, anyway. It's heartening to know that when the angels are stripped to little more than their skivves, so is Carson. They didn't forget the ladies either, crazy old doctor fan-service was included. I don't know if that's your thing, it probably shouldn't be, but if it is... here you go!  And I think you know what my thing is. No, it's not space-butlery, though Bruno does perform with a stunning variety of Samurai moves and cool flips. No, my interests lie in the area of Music Over Action and Project Eden probably has the best soundtrack in the series (aside from the TV show's Russian Roulette) The opening, Safari Eyes could be best explained as a combination of a Bond theme and the opening animation to Ghost in the Shell ** and, let's be frank here, it makes me quiver like a young girl under her lascivious math teacher's eyes. When the tune is basically reprised as Over the Top as the girls slice and shoot their way through aliens, that's okay too. Far and above that though is probably one of my top five favorite sequences in anime. A weird sequence during the downtime as the girls fly to the planet in question. Yuri dances to the surprisingly good ('good' being used in an entirely relative context), English, Matters to Me. She gets too into it, loses control of the ship, hilarity ensues!

My rampant fanboyism aside, Project Eden is a perfectly feasible movie. It ends when you think it should end, to the all too standard catastrophic destruction. What's funny is that all this occurs as the now-in-love Kei and Carson stare into each other's eyes while flying away from the exploding planet. But the icing on the cake of hilarity is the song that plays during this. It's an effusively sappy saxophone theme called, appropriately, Love Theme from Dirty Pair. For your more discerning anime patron Dirty Pair can be tough to like, but I'd like to consider myself one of those people and it still always gets to me pretty hard every time. When you watch it you'll have to pour a 40 out on the curb for another Streamline dub lost, but expect that to be the only tears shed through the 80 minutes or so.  If I was allowed one vice in anime well, let's be serious, it'd be Bubblegum Crisis. BUT, if I were to be allowed to have just one more vice in the realm of anime, then I think that honor would have to go to the inimitable Dirty Pair, of which Project Eden is a story from the lives of. Generally, I know, you think I run the straight and narrow when it comes to anime. So, were you to watch something Dirty Pair-related you would see a sequence of gaffs and hypocrisies that would basically lay out to dry whatever credibility I had managed to scrounge up. I'd like to explain this to you, but I can't. There's just something in Dirty Pair that makes me enjoy it when I'd hate anything else of the sort. Maybe it's just the 80s style, or maybe there's something buried deep down inside. Take with a grain of salt? You know, I don't think a single grain's gonna be enough. Be aware that Dirty Pair isn't necessarily better than anything else from its time period, but it sure feels like it to me.

**If there's one thing I like, it's saying something is like a movie that came out eight years afterwards.