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trismugistus.com
and digital-bondage.net
are my web sites.
trismugistus.com
is where I upload my anime, manga and tv&film reviews,
and also where I occasionally post short stories and
longer works I've written.
digital-bondage.net
is my wallpaper site and provides anime, manga and other
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have some psds for you to download.
I also run a site called scan-city.org,
which provides some scans for you to download and use
in your wallpapers.
You can also read my blog here
or check out my anime list here.
I also have pages on devart here
and urbis here. |
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| details |
| The Genre: Sci-Fi |
| The Format: 3 DVD set from Bandai |
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| The plot: School is finally out for the summer
and Yukari Morita has big plans this season. It's
off to the Solomon Islands for her, in search
of her long-lost father. Unfortunately, the archipelago
stretches over 28,000 square kilometres and boasts
a population of about 500,000 people. With odds
like that, what's a girl to do? Luckily for Yukari,
the local Solomon Space Agency is in desperate
need of a new astronaut. With their promise to
help find her father, Yukari begins her part-time
job as an astronaut!
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| opinion
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| Y'know, generally with anime the titles fall
in to one of two camps. They're either bizarrely,
abstractly ambiguous or they're so on the nose
it almost hurts.
An example of the former would be something like
the old show Bubblegum Crisis - I mean what the
heck does that have to do with the show itself?
Nothing. Rocket Girls is an example of the latter.
It's got girls in it.
And they fly in Rockets.
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Now the tricky part is that if you're
an anime viewer you'll instantly be thinking
this is a series akin to something like
the Dirty Pair or Kiddy Grade. If you're
not an anime viewer I'm slightly puzzled
as to why you're reading this far, but you're
more than welcome to stay. Just don't put
your feet up on the coffee table.
Where as I?
Oh, yeah, girls in rockets, or Rocket Girls,
if you will.
See, what Rocket Girls is is kinda difficult
to pin down in a few brief sentences, because
although it's not like Dirty Pair or Kiddy
Grade it also is exactly like them.
Look, what I'm fumbling around at is that
in Dirty Pair and shows of that ilk things
like Space Travel and Space ships are effectively
common-place. They involve inter-stellar
travel by hot young girls wearing very tight
clothes and jiggling a lot while they shoot
guns.
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Not that I'm complaining you understand, but
the point is that Rocket Girls has some of those
things, but not all. It has hot young girls and
tight costumes with a modicum amount of jiggle,
but there are no guns. Also the spaceships aren't
futuristic spaceships they're much more realistic
- the ship the girls travel in is modelled after
the modules used at the beginning of the Space
Race for example.
Plus the show features NASA's space shuttle.
There's also weightlessness, although there does
seem to be sound in space, which is technically
wrong, but has become kinda a standard thing so
it's excusable.
The reason I'm struggling is I keep wanting to
say Rocket Girls is "more realistic".
The problem is it isn't. Really, it's just as
fantastical as the like of Dirty Pair, but the
fantasy is a different one. The clever part is
that it's not as far-fetched as you might think.
In Rocket Girls the idea is that it's about Japan
setting up a manned space programme by a bunch
of misfits and oddballs on a shoestring budget.
The types of Rocket they use and their goals are
actually quite realistic.
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The girls come in because, well, girls (we're
talking high-school age) are much, much lighter
than men, and weight is of vital importance when
you're blasting things into space. Also, interestingly,
when NASA was first prepping to go into space
and to the moon they actually discovered that
women were much better suited to the weightless
environment, it's just that politically they decided
not to send women.
The reason they're better suited is all to do
with power-to-mass ratios. In space, large muscle
mass and the bulk it means is kinda irrelevant
and in some ways detrimental. This means a woman's
frame is much better suited to the weightlessness
environment.
So you see there's this veneer of reality to
Rocket Girls that sort of makes you like it more.
Although they have less success when it comes
to explaining why the girls where skin-tight costumes.
The problem comes in that things get a little
stretched. For example, later on the girls have
to go into space to essentially help NASA launch
a satellite. This whole plot, although entertaining,
is just a bit too silly for its own good.
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However, what it does give a tremendous
sense of wonder and joy to the whole business
space flight. It's almost poetic.
The other real strength of the series is
in the characters. As I said, the people
working on the project are all oddballs,
but they have that uniquely Japanese trait
of all aiming for the same goal and divesting
their full energies towards it. They, as
a group, strive to put people into space,
it's just some of the ways they go about
it are a little bonkers.
My only real criticism on this front is
that some of the secondary characters could
do with a lot more fleshing out. To some
extent, that's a problem of the length of
the show - were it a full 24 episode series
we'd probably get that, but with only 12
episodes there's a lot of plot to cover
and besides, the focus is on the girls.
The girls are much better realised, especially
the main character, Yukari. We get a real
sense of her personality and her feelings.
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I think you can tell I liked this show a great
deal. Overall, Rocket Girls retains a level of
likeability that transcends the problems it has.
The release is in a minimalist style - the 12
eps are spread across 3 discs all in the one box
set. There's no dub track and the extras are all
on the last disk.
Speaking of extras - one of them is actually
a pilot animation for the show. The pilot was
made several years before the show itself and
interestingly is in a very different style. The
character designs in the pilot are much more realistic
- the girls especially.
It's kinda strange watching it - you sort of
wonder whether that would have been a better direction
to go or not. I'm thinking not, but it's interesting
nonetheless. |
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| summary |
| The Summary: It does occasionally slip the
bounds of credulity, but Rocket Girls is a thoroughly
enjoyable series. |
| The Score: 5/5 |
| The Pictures:
(click for larger versions) |
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