The Genre: sci-fi/comedy

The Format: 13*26 minute TV series across 4 DVDs collected in a single “complete collection” box, released by ADV

The plot: Ready, aim, and fire up for another animated adventure with Team Warrior! Join rowdy Rio and her partners - the machine-gun maniac Maya, the lovely Lilica, tech talent Nanvel, guy Friday Yuji, and their boss Maki - as they take on their hottest cases ever! Mechanical insects, fire fighting jewel thieves, panty raiders, sexy sheiks, and fawning fathers - there's never a dull moment when the babes of Burn Up Excess are on the job!

Those who look on the front page of my site or in any way follow these reviews (I’m not sure quite why anyone would, but I guess somebody somewhere might) will have noticed that I’m working my way through the various incarnations of the Burn Series.

The basic premise of the Burn Ups has been that of Hot Girls with big guns (both in the literal and figurative sense) foiling terrorists and bad guys and jiggling as much as possible in the process. This sort of a show is pretty common in anime and they’re a pretty predictable lot.

There are definite, well-defined personality types, and you can mix and match them to make your team. The team in this case is called Warrior and they’re sort of like a special SWAT team in the police.

Warrior is made up of our main character, the gorgeous blonde Rio, who is “genki” – hyper-cative, basically so she does hand-to-hand combay – and is always pennyless because she spends too much money. Then we have Maya who is a full-on gun otaku.

In terms of these plots, let’s put it this way – if this were a modern anime you would definitely have a hot springs episode. But this show is from a slightly different era, when these weren’t as common as they in more recent shows.

The last ingreadiant to the cake then is Maki. Maki is the leader of the Warrior team and she assigns the various missions to the Warriors. She’s also a lady with a past. Not only because she’s the thread that binds the original Burn Up, Burn Up W and Burn Up Excess together.

Maki’s past is what forms the underlying through-story for Burn Up Excess, and it’s this that helps to seperate this show it from it’s peers. Whilst I’m not goign to pretend that the hidden secrets concept is knew or original, it is very well done.

When the underlying plot is revealed it’s possible to see how these were all planned, and not just randomely stitched together. It’s also nice that this follows a more perdictable path. In the previous Burn Up outings there was a tendancy for these underlying darkness to be both haphazard and badly executed.

They felt tacked on, un-neccessary and rather silly. But here, this forms a good solid core around which the humour, fan-service and action are hung.

Unlike previous outings the animation is also much better too, which is odd, as this was a tv series and the others were OAVs. It does tend to fall into having lots of repeated sequences, I will admit, but at least these are well animated in their own right. We also have a good, strong (if somewhat cheesey) soundtrack and both dub and sub are pretty excellent.

Something else which helps to really set Burn Up Excess apart is the way in which it handles the fan-service. In Burn Up Excess there’s a very large helping of “the knowing wink”.

A lot of fan service in Japanese anime is presented from one of two perspectives. It’s either shown with absolutely no internal referencing at all – so we get pany shots and jiggling boobs just because the camera happens to be where it is and none of the characters really refer to it as being un-usual. Or alternatively we get it presented in a slightly sinister “girls really like being leched over” way.

Burn Up excess takes a slighly different route and puts Yuji in the role of the king of ecchhi, always trying to sneak into the girls locker room and film them changing, or buy their panties or whatever. But this is shown as being something odd and unusual and it’s clear that th creators are giving us a knowing wink and saying “wouldn’t you like to be Yuji, huh?”.

As I think you can tell from the above tunrn around I like this version of Bun Up. It’s nothing new or original and if you want real depth in your anime you’re looking in the wrong place.

However, if you like fan service, don’t mind relatively predictable plots and want nicely executed humour with your action, then you should definitely check out Burn Up Excess.

Oh, and check out the jiggle counter. Until recently, extras on anime DVDs have been rather pathetic, featuring maybe an image gallery if you’re lucky and a few character bios. Here though we get something truly unique and different – I mean, it doesn’t really add anything, but it’s kinda humorous nonetheless, and it’s nice to see the US release being taken in the same tongue-in-cheek way as the original series.

Actually, before I go the last word has to be about the very end of Excess. It’s odd. The way it’s done smells very much like they were intending to a second series of Excess, but it never got made. However, the weird thing about it is how this is actually a continuing theme in all three releases up to this point – they all sort of end without really coming to a proper stop. Odd.

The Summary: Burn Up Excess cracks a nut – it’s a perfect distillation of a particular brand of fan-service heavy anime, and it does well for it.

The Score: 4/5

The Pictures:

(click for larger versions)