January 08, 2007

SKY GIRLS

I've got a bad feeling about this...

Dear Dad... So, here I am on my new ship, the secret vessel (censored by officials)!
The Good Ship (censored by officials).  That's me on the bridge, waving!!!

After The Worms attacked a few years back, and killed 70% of the world's military age males, it was pretty easy for me to sign up for navy duty. Sure, my job scraping the bilges isn't the greatest, but here's some of my shipmates:
I love 'Steel Beach' days...

They make it all worthwhile. Oh, them? They're the pilots, would you believe? Our future is in the hands of a bunch of teenage girls. Not much else the military could do, really, after The Worms ate everybody else, but still. At least they can be military when they have to.
They like pudding.  Buckets of pudding.  I'm not sure why.

I know, I know... "we're doomed." That's the usual reaction people have when they see them. And they might not be wrong, to be honest. We're not sure yet. See, they're the pilots, but they can only fly for 20 minutes or some special nano-doohicky they have to have applied (I volunteered for that job... Chief Nakajima made me look for his keys in the aft bilges. I think that meant 'no.') dissolves and exposes them to the elements. Or something. It's kinda vague. Anyway, the pilots fly these things called "Sonic Divers", but everybody calls 'em mecha. They're some of the most ridiculously spindly combat machines you've ever seen!
I took this picture when she flew over the ship.  We had seagull for dinner that night.

The pilot needs those nanodoohickies for protection, because it's pretty clear that the mecha doesn't stop much. I'd hate to fly through a squall in one of these!
Yeah, that's a sword she's carrying.  Multi-billion Yen combat vehicles, and we give her a sword to fight with.  No wonder half of Japan was eaten.

Of course, the things can convert to something called "A-mode." I'm not sure WHY they can convert, because they don't seem to gain anything from it... except now they're sitting down instead of dangling in the slipstream.
Chief Nakajima says it's like a La-Z-Boy.  No, wait, he was talking about me.  I'm not sure what he meant.

A few days ago, we were attacked by a Worm mass. After the attack, I'm sure that our military was led by idiots back when the Worms first showed up. All the Worms did was shoot harpoony spikes at the ship. Yeah, it took out one of the ship-borne cannons, but really, we weren't in any danger.
I took this during the battle.  I was scraping barnacles when the Worms showed up, which explains the point-of-view.

So the Sonic Divers launched, fought The Worms, and won! Yay us!

Later, I was walking by the Squadron Ready Room and overheard this:
Oh, yes... yes they will!  Homina.

...then Chief Nakajima made me clean the Captain's head. The Captain left his PDA in there, and I found out the names of Our Heroes:
They don't look sixteen.

I suppose I shouldn't've done that, but what are they gonna do to? With most of the world's population eaten, they can't spare me... someone's gotta clean the bilges, right?

Well, I hope the family is doing well. Give my love to Mom and The Brat. I dunno when I'll next get leave; the bilges here REALLY need to be cleaned. Says a lot about our Sky Girls, I guess.

Love,
Your Son.

PS: Our communications chief is a little odd... she's got a hamster as a pet and keeps yelling weird things at it:
Go for the eyes, Boo!  Go for the eyes!!!  Terrible hamster justice will be wreaked upon you all!!!
I swear, I'm the only sane one here.
-me.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 07:35 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 498 words, total size 5 kb.

1 There was only one half-hour episode made of this? That's really weird.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 08, 2007 08:38 PM (+rSRq)

2 The Worms ate the animators.

Posted by: Wonderduck at January 08, 2007 08:47 PM (0Co69)

3 They must have!

Even "Dragon Half" and "Hyperdoll" went 2 episodes before dying, and they both stunk.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 09, 2007 02:44 AM (+rSRq)

4 I had watched this on a whim a while back and found it exceedingly dull. Somehow assumed it was based on a video game, given the production company (Konami). Making a one-shot OVA to capitalize on a game's popularity isn't exactly unusual (FF7: Advent Children, anyone?), though I'd never heard of any game called "Sky Girls".

After reading this post, I took a look at the official site and found that there is no such game. Sky Girls is an original video animation in the fullest sense--it's not adapted from anything. There's a credit for gen'an (original concept/idea), but none for gensaku (original work, where you'd normally find the manga-ka, light novel author, etc.); it would seem that some Konami bigwig had an idea one day and decided to have an anime made from it.

I'm guessing that one episode was the planned length; it minimizes the required outlay while still allowing the production of plenty of tie-in merchandise for otaku to spend their parents' money on.

The soundtrack I can understand, but does a self-contained half-hour OVA episode really merit its own artbook and light novel?

Posted by: Andrew F. at January 09, 2007 10:59 AM (SARav)

5 When it's Sky Girls, ANYthing is merited!!!

Okay, shoot me now.

My guess is that it was made to try and capitalize on the whole 'mecha musume' thing (and a quick check of the Wikipedia site for 'mecha musume' shows a link to the Sky Girls website), maybe beat Strike Witches (which I'm looking forward to) to the punch.

I'd post some mecha musume art, but I'm not currently using Chiyo-chan; I had dinner with the Momzerduck, I'm using her system right now.

Posted by: Wonderduck at January 09, 2007 02:34 PM (YadGF)

6 The mecha musume connection occurred to me, but Sky Girls doesn't have any mecha musume; it just has musume with mechas.

Strike Witches does, but it's only nine minutes long. They share the same original character designer, Fumikane Shimada, who also designed the original mecha musume trading figures.

Posted by: Andrew F. at January 09, 2007 03:50 PM (SARav)

7 Yeah, I KNOW that Sky Girls isn't mecha musume... but it IS trying to cash in on the, oh, let's call it a fetish shall we? It's pretty clear what's going on, after all.

NINE minutes? An OAV that's nine minutes long? You sure you aren't just talking about the trailer?

Posted by: Wonderduck at January 09, 2007 03:59 PM (Eodj2)

8 Strike Witches appears to be a teaser for a toy line. It may be that the DVD will only be included with toys; that's happened before.

I don't remember the exact case of it; it was something I saw on one of the blogs I follow that are about statuettes. My memory is quite hazy but what I think I remember is that the toys were based on a successful manga, and two short anime episodes were created from the manga which were released on DVDs which were only available as inserts with statuettes from the series.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 09, 2007 08:36 PM (+rSRq)

9 Strike Witches appears to be a teaser for a toy line. It may be that the DVD will only be included with toys; that's happened before.

Indeed, the nine-minute OVA is currently only available bundled with a figure and artbook. The official website refers to it as a "promotion" DVD; I guess that means it's a promotion for the toys.

Posted by: Andrew F. at January 10, 2007 12:40 PM (SARav)

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