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The Genre: Action/Comedy

The Format: 5+ volumes of manga available from Tokyopop

The plot: Something horrendously complicated about ancient chinese fighters possesing some earrings, and fan-service. Mainly fan-service.

Panties.

Or rather knickers. It’s a very American word is “panties”. It kind of has a harsh, masculine feel to it, whereas knickers sounds much more like something a girl would actually wear.

Japan is a land of many amazing things. Not least of which are the great and varied array of fetishes that have made it into what might be thought of as “the mainstream”.

For those that don’t know, Japanese culture has always erred on the side of catharsis. What this essentially means is that people's perversions are, shall we say, “vented” through fantasy. The idea is that by engaging in ones perversions in a safe, harmless way like fantasy people are less likely to actually act them out.

Now in the west, the opposite tack is taken. We tend to think more in terms of completely preventing people from being exposed to perversions in order that they don’t act them out. It’s essentially the idea of complete abstinence. The inference is that the thing itself corrupts and pervert those it comes into contact with.

The star of the piece is one Hakufu Sonsaku, who is about as near to the definition of bimbo as you’re ever likely to get. Blonde, enormous breasts, tight body and not much going on inside the head.

Which isn’t to say that she stands out particularly. If it wasn’t for the male characters telling us she has the biggest rack they’ve ever seen, you’d be hard pushed to decide which of the characters is the best endowed. They’re almost all well equipped on the flotation device front, and have tight as you like bods.

Which, as I say, is sort of the whole point of the manga :).

It’s kinda refreshing for it to be so blatantly done as well. The manga clearly makes no pretence as to being anything other than wet-dream material, and it does well for it.

There are some male characters, but unlike the girls, who really take centre stage, they fall into two simple categories. The majority are just pieces of meat for the main characters to beat senseless, and get naked while doing so. The rest are important 'plot' characters whose role it is to either be some form of love interest, or object of desire for the female characters, or to beat them senseless.

The knicker shots and bouncing boobs are all suspended from a plot that revolves around a set of enchanted beads (magatamas) that have been handed down from ancient times. Each bead contains the spirit of a dead fighter from this period, which then amplifies the wearers fighting abilities. These beads are worn as earrings and also change colour as the fighters (toushis) relative rank increases from E up to A.

The catch is that the fate of that fighter is also sealed within the bead, and so generations of Japanese kids essentially replay a chunk of Ancient Chinese history (the legend of the three kingodms in actuality) over and over again. As to why the beads are in Japan, or how this whole thing got started is kinda unexplained.

Which is really a hallmark of the entire series.

There is a really rather complicated story going on somewhere in the background, but partly because of the whole focus on panties, and partly because of the p.o.v. of how the story is being told, it’s very confusing for the reader. All of the other characters in the story know all of the history side of it, but Hakufu doesn’t but because she’s a) dim and b) doesn’t care anyway, so not much is actually explained to us, the reader.

There are also a lot of very similar sounding names, and there’s a great habit of referring to characters repeatedly that we’ve never actually met. And there are a lot of characters in Battle Vixens. A hell of a lot of them.

With repeated readings of multiple volumes things do become a bit clearer. And it also helps that in later volumes chapters are finished with a little biog for some of the historical characters. But still, you’ll end up finishing some volumes going “huh?”

Now for me personally, I think it’s an improvement. A lot of the language in the original kinda follows that whole Japanese thing of being polite and well spoken, despite the fact that these are clearly meant to be street punks. I mean, it may technically be set in Japan, but the characters are all more like American stereotypes than anything that actually exists in the land of the rising sun.

The whole translation ethos is one of mucking about, though. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was with the endorsement of the original manga-ka, but it sometimes does make you wonder.

I mean, I’m not fussed, but if you’re one of those uber-purist types you may want to stay away from the official release, as you know you’ll just get your knickers in a twist.

Overall then, I’m really rather enjoying Battle Vixens. It’s more than a little easy on the eye, has lots of violent fight scenes, and an interesting, if somewhat confusing plot.

Oh, and there’s also an anime version available, which is rather good to watch if you want to know what the plot is roughly about, though it’s not generally as good as the manga. Review of that in the manga section.

The Summary: This is definitely one for those of us who like a good bit of fan service with our stories (or, more accurately, stories with our fan service).

The Score: 4/5

The Pictures:

(click for larger versions)