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R4 DVD Reviews
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Friday, 14 January 2005 13:16 |
 One of these days I'm going to have to pick up the Galaxy Angel manga -
apparently it has this thing called a 'story' that seems to have been
lost by the anime. For watching the DVD, though, it's a case of
leaving your brain safely at home. Sadly, though, even though it's a one-trick comedy vehicle, GA doesn't always manage to get it right...
15 - Lost Item Pot au Feu
Vanilla's on a repentance fast, seeking forgiveness for having lost
something very precious. If she doesn't eat soon, she'll die, so
the rest of the Angel Brigade decide to try and find her lost treasure
for her. Problem is, nobody knows what it is, so they're left relying on
the fortune-telling skills of Mother Milky Way (aka Ranpha, in a
disguise that fools no-one except Milfeulle). Vanilla's
doomed...
16 - Grilled Girl in a Box
When Ranpha goes out of her way to meet up with Forte after a long
mission, Forte knows something is up. Seems Ranpha needed an excuse to get out of a date - and all she could think of
at short notice was a funeral she needed to go to. Forte's
funeral, as it happens. Now, Ranpha needs Forte to do a proper
stint in a coffin to make the excuse believable...
17 - Canned Angel with Gun Turret
Here's the news, brought to you by the Digi Charat crowd - a tank has
gone missing from a top-secret research lab, and the Angel Brigade are
on the case. As if that's not enough of a pointer that chaos will
soon follow, no sooner have Mint and Milfeulle tracked down the tank,
than it goes on an auto-pilot rampage across town. Seems the rest
of the gang will have to clean up the mess. And just whose idea
was a tank with warp drive!?
18 - Monkey Salvage Combo
Forte really needs to learn to go a little easier on her spacecraft's
engine - she's just had a new one fitted, and she's already blown
it. Fortunately there's a station nearby, so the gang head there
in hope of getting some spare parts - but something strange appears to
have happened on the station. For a start, there are no humans,
only monkeys... It seems a virus experiment went wrong, turning
all the station's inhabitants into monkeys - and guess who's just been
infected..?
19 - Angel Kiss Gateau de Milfeulle
It's Milfeulle's day off - and for some reason she's decided to go on a
date with Normad. Things don't go quite according to plan, though
- the lure of chocolate cake kills all plans of dinner at a posh
restaurant. The cake stand seems to have the 'legendary lost
recipe' to a cake that hasn't been seen in over a hundred years -
Milfeulle wants the recipe, but the robot that has it is on the
run. Can she get the recipe before the robot is caught..?
20 - Special Survival Combo
Forte, and Mint are stranded on an uninhabited island - or at least
they think it's uninhabited, until the local lunatic turns up. He
claims he's a police officer, stranded on the island for the past six
months (it's his overpowered SOS transmitter that brought their plane
down in the first place...), but he may just be a violent escaped
prisoner. Will our heroes ever make it back to civilisation?
Story-less anime has one real advantage: it makes writing the review
very quick & painless. With each episode being 10 minutes of
one-gag comedy, what's to write about? The only place where
Galaxy Angel can really fall down is by stretching out each gag a
little too much - which sadly, they do manage to do on occasion.
From the six episodes here, three pressed the right buttons for me and
three didn't. 16, 17 & 20 are the good ones, with the tank
episode being my own pick for best of the disc. The other three
stories felt too stretched - in each case I lost interest partway
through, with a lot of gags being repeated. And repeated.
Still very much a hit-and-miss series, GA wins points for not really
pretending to by anything it isn't - you know what you're getting when
you put the disc on, and a lot of the appeal is in the characters
themselves rather than the story, I can't help but wish the
comedy was a bit more consistent (as in consistently good),
though. Rent-before-you-buy.
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