Battle Athletes OAV 4/10

Pioneer used to be famous for it's OAVs featuring lots of girls and onsens in order to sell expensive LaserDiscs and players to horny young men. This show is part of that once proud tradition.

Dating back to 1997-98 these 6 OAVs aren't of the quality I'd expect from that time but it's not a complete train wreck, it's just a little below average. The animation is alright but not super detailed, same goes for the backgrounds. The animation is consistent however and I like the character designs though some of the girls have enormous eyes at times that frightened me. I've never been a fan of the OP and ED for this series and the score isn't anything to wrote home about either. The VAs are OK but Akari the main character could shatter glass at times if I turned the sound up enough.

This story takes place in the far distant future after the Earth has won a war against aliens using an athletic competition since the battles were deadlocked. There are now 2 orbiting schools where boys and girls attend high school with an emphasis on athletics. This story focuses on the girl's school (natch) where each year there is a competition for the title of Cosmo Beauty.

Akari Kanzaki is the main character and the daughter of a former famous Cosmo Beauty. She's pretty whiny and clumsy in the beginning (they always are) and gets teamed up with a couple of other girls, Kris and Anna. Kris is a tall, athletic, and religious girl from the moon who's as good as the best athletes at the school and Anna is a little like Akari but shy and quiet.

The first couple of stories are about Akari gaining confidence with help from her friends and overcoming the somewhat baffling homicidal tricks by Mylandah the 2 time Cosmo Beauty runner-up. In the 3rd episode, after surviving a space station plummet into the atmosphere courtesy of Mylandah it's discovered that Anna is actually a boy during the Pioneer standard onsen scene. Hilarity ensues.

The next episode is the best of the lot, the 2 schools dock together so the boys can compete against the girls. The somewhat perverted headmaster of the girls school decides to dress Akari, Mylandah and Akari's friend Tanya in provocative outfits so they'll have a psychological advantage over the boys. Of course the headmaster of the boys team is smarter than this and gets two gay guys and Anna to compete on their team. Hilarity ensues.

The final 2 episodes are the competition for Cosmo Beauty with Akari and Kris in the finals with the 2 time champ Lahrri. These couple of shows have some pretty funny stuff but I think it wasn't intentional. In a couple of running events Mylandah and Kris get into accidents. Where in real life a runner who trips just falls over, Mylandah and Kris have crashes that would make Richard Petty proud. They leave huge trenches in the track, crash into the edge and smash the cement and they generate huge clouds of smoke. All that's missing is an explosion. It's pretty ridiculous.

This show has it's moments but it's not really great in any one area. I prefer the Battle Athletes Victory TV series so this is good if you've seen that and are interested in another take on it.