Ah, Kei and Yuri… the original and quintessential anime “girls with guns.” And bikinis. God, those bikinis. There has always been something appealing about attractive girls with guns, and the Lovely Angels -better known as the Dirty Pair- have a lot of appeal. Kei and Yuki are best described as intergalactic private eyes working for the World Welfare Works Association. Their codename is “Lovely Angels” but the rest of the galaxy refers to them as the “Dirty Pair.” You see, their job is to resolve intergalactic problems that the WWWA assigns them. This doesn’t tend to be a problem. The reason they are known as the “Dirty Pair” is because what generally follows in one of the “successful” missions is that the problem is resolved but more often than not their is some catastrophe that occurs through… questionable coincidences and happenstance. Because of these coincidences, the team’s catch phrase is always “It’s not our fault!” and thus they are known galaxy wide as the “Dirty Pair.”
I have the original Dirty Angels: Girls With Guns (old but watchable) and Dirty Pair Flash: Angels at Worlds End and these are all prime-time series anime specializing in a new-situation-each-episode themes. They aren’t fabulous but not terrible either. In Random Angels (for example) Kei rescues a rich hier-to-a-fortune baby in snowy mountain terrain (and being female has a natural pacifier when it’s bottle runs dry), Yuri and Kei are targets of a teenage assassin who uses toys (Yuri’s top is popped when Kei grabs her to keep her from falling in a swimming pool of acid – and their cutey-girl assassin transforms ala “Sailor Moon” into a cutey-vixen there is a hint of nipples), the girls show lots of slinky skin when they train for a beach ball competition to nab a criminal, a criminal bent on vengence wreaks havock with the 3WA building and they save their boss (robotic armor and chaos and dang-nab the paperwork), and the episode I haven’t watched has Kei falling for a guy who actually obsessed with her to the point of making a robot of her. (Saving it for later.) The girls sometimes cause more destruction than they avert; fans who have never tried Hyper Dolls should give that a whirl, too. Since mayhem flashes to being when the girls get going.
There is a slight amount of nudity (real R-rated nudity: you get glimpses of both girls nipples once each, but only once), there is profanity and there is violence: but overall, this is aimed at a more mature young-adult evening audience, with slight humor and tame theme mainly concentrating on suspenseful action. It isn’t chocked full of sex, nudity, blood gushing violence (although there is real killing going on), etc., it’s just another sci-fi anime of trouble-shooters for a quasi-police organization. For example, the assassin girl drives a mono-bike (a true monbike where the rider sits in the center and the wheel runs around them) and has robotic dive-bombing birds, and yet retreats to a castle to engage the girls. Old and new mix. I’d rate it PG-13 or such mainly because it is not a show for pre-schoolers. (Less your pre-schoolers are quiet mature). Technically, while a casual fan I find the voices of the girls a little annoying; maybe the sound quality isn’t that great, but they sound like they suffer a severe case of smokers-throat. And thus, I like the shows but I’m not blind to their faults. Overall, the art is pretty decent but not dazzling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imNTRdDpUWg
Dirty pair was one of the first anime series I bought back in the late 90′s and even tough it’s quite dated, it’s a whole lot of fun. There’s nothing deep about this anime, but the fun factor is high enough to not require much of a story. I think this anime is a good price and would recommend it to any serious anime fan. If you’re not an otaku you may want to watch the AMV included above on YouTube before you buy. There are plenty of way better animes out there, but Dirty Pair is a lot of fun.
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