Read or Die (R.O.D.) 10/10

Before R.O.D. The TV there was R.O.D. and before there were the paper sisters there was The Paper.

In recent years OAVs have fallen out of fashion, with the continuing recession in Japan there hasn't been the spare disposable income among the populace to support the $50 price tag an average 30 min. The sad part about this is that OAVs had become the traditional home to experimentation, where unusual plots are given a change to be animated and if things don't go well they can just stop making the shows. Some become hits that spawn TV series such as Magic Users Club and Bubblegum Crisis but most fall by the wayside, hopefully lending their creators valuable experience for future projects. R.O.D. is one of the few recent OAVs produced and eventually fell into the former category. From what I understand R.O.D. is actually based on novels of the same name and the story told is an original one with characters from the books.

To get technical, I liked everything about this set of 3 OAVs. The art is fantastic and very detailed as expected for an OAV. The music is really great and of course the characters are quite good. The VA for Yomiko is especially a favourite of mine with her constant eeks and yelps as she fights. I always laugh. These 3 episodes were released in 2001 & 2002.

The plot is strange yet great. There is an underground organization known as the British Parliamentary Library (BL). While the organization exists publicly it has a secret operations division that performs missions geared at protecting the UK from it's enemies. This protection seems to revolve around the control of information as the library part of things seems to be the real focus.

We meet our bookish heroine Yomiko Readman, a young woman living in Japan who works as agent "The Paper" for the BL. James Bond she is not. She's a bibliomaniac. LOVES books, reads them all the time, this means she hasn't much time for anything else. Why an agent then? She can also control paper, form it into shapes and moving it around. She blocks bullets, sword fights and flies on a massive paper plane. Over the course of the OAVs she is sent on missions to recover books of interest to the BL and teams up with a busty agent known as "The Deep" who can go through solid objects and an American mercenary known as Drake. The villains are famous figures that have been cloned by an organization to take over the world (naturally) and the story ultimately leads to the big showdown to foil the evil plan.

I really loved the idea of a secret agent who from all outwards appearances is nothing more than a librarian. Better yet, even when she IS a secret agent she acts like a librarian, a very ditzy one. Partly goofy but pretty action-packed I really enjoyed this OAV and hope they make more.

Highly recommended.