 One of the best parody shows of recent years, Dokkoida!?, finally makes its DVD debut. You can guess from that sentence that I already love this show...
1 - Enter Dokkoida!
Tanpopo, hard-working employee of Otankonatsu Corporation, is on the
lookout for someone to trial her company's latest product - Powered
Suit Dokkoida, one of the lead runners for the new powered suit
contract for the Galaxy Federation Police. Some major toy revenue will
be up for grabs if they get the contract... Suzuo is the sucker she's
chosen for the job - he's been having a hard time getting a part-time
job, and he's just the right size for the suit. He's more than a bit
dubious about taking on the job, though - until Dr Marronflower,
Class-A Space Criminal, appears & quickly destroys every place poor
Suzuo had been due to call with about a job. With Tanpopo's the only
job left on offer, he finally agrees to wear her transformation belt -
and so begins his life as Dokkoida. Tanpopo's company isn't the only
one bidding for the contract, though, and they're soon joined by a
rival - Emerald Company's Neruloid Girl...
2 - Purple Hair, How Hip Can Ya Get!
With their first challenge having been disposed of fairly easily, it's
time for Suzuo to face his next challenge - Kosuzu's cooking. Being
alien, she hasn't really managed the art of edible food yet. After
that, the GFP's next challenge seems set to be harder than the last,
with two
Class-A Space Criminals for them to take care of this time - bondage
queen Hyacinth with her trademark hentai attack, and
butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth cutie Edelweiss, expert in the art of
Golem-making. Taking them on would be so much easier if they would just
stop fighting each other...
3 - Dokkoida Versus Edelweiss
Suzuo's lamenting his low pay & contemplating asking Kosuzu for a
raise when he meets young girl Ruri (Edelwiess's alter-ego), who has
just moved into Cosmos-sou with her family. Ruri seems to have a
mission in life - to properly peel an apple, without cutting herself.
Suzuo would be quite happy to show her how (in return for a bite of
said apple...), but Ruri's not the most approachable little girl. One
thing she is
good at, though, is creating her Golems, so she takes out her
frustrations with a little Golem-fuelled rampage through town.
Naturally, it's the rival powered suits, Neruloid Girl & Dokkoida,
who have to stop her...
4 - The Strange Neighbor, Sayuri
Cosmos-sou has another new resident, Sayuri (aka Hayacinth) - not that
the other residents realise she's moved in. All they know is that there
are some very strange sounds coming from an apartment that's meant to
be empty.... Meanwhile, Marronflower has a personal crisis when his
copy of Petite Princess
is sold off, and resorts to drastic measures to retrieve it from its
new owner - except everyone else seems to want to join in the fight as
well...
The lack of attention that Dokkoida!? got when it was on the
fansub circuit bordered on the criminal, if you ask me. The show takes
a stab at being a parody of the likes of Kamen Rider, and pulls
it off brilliantly - there are only a few recent comedy or parody shows
that have been able to consistently make me laugh, and this is the best
of them.
For these episodes, there is an ongoing plot of sorts, but you
really don't need to pay much attention to it - the fun is with the
dysfunctional characters, the situations they find themselves in, and
the ways they interact with each other, both in their 'human' forms
(where the show also manages to display a surprising knack at pulling
at the heartstrings), and in their transformed supervillian / superhero
personas (which is where most of the comedy comes from).
Even if you never really liked the sort of shows that Dokkoida!?
is poking fun at, there's enough here to make it worthwhile viewing -
all that's needed is a vague idea of anime conventions and clichés, and
you'll feel right at home. Volume 2 can't arrive quickly enough. |
