Year: 1993
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Genre: Action, Drama, Science fiction,
Episodes: 2
Country: Japan
Audio: Japanese, English
Subtitles: English
Battle Angel, known in Japan as Gunnm, is an original video animation based on the Battle Angel Alita manga by Yukito Kishiro. The OVA comprises two episodes, Rusty Angel and Tears Sign.
Doc Ido, a doctor and mechanic who lives and works in the hellish, postapocalyptic "Scrapyard", finds the miraculously preserved remains of a female cyborg in a junk heap. After he revives and rebuilds her, the preternaturally strong, amnesiac "Gally" begins to forge a life for herself in a world where every day can bring a fight for life.
Format: Matroska at 1 387 Kbps
Length : 258 MiB for 26mn 1s 228ms
Video : MPEG-4 Visual at 975 Kbps
Aspect : 720 x 480 (1.500) at 23.976 fps
Audio : AC-3 at 192 Kbps
Infos : 2 channels, 48.0 KHz
Language : ja
Audio : AC-3 at 192 Kbps
Infos : 2 channels, 48.0 KHz
in Japan by similarly nostalgic middle-aged directors, is that, instead of trying idealize his youthful self (or rather his fictional stand-in), Taguchi gives us a hero who is dopey, gawky and sex-besotted in the extreme. At the same time, this hero, Jun (Watanabe Daichi), is not a comic caricature, though his adventures, including the romantic and erotic, are mostly played for laughs. He is rather an average middle-class kid in whom many a male audience member will see his idiotic adolescent self, whether he wants to admit it or not. Jun attends a Buddhist high school, which may sound New Age-y, but the black- uniformed student body is universally bored by the chanting and other religious rigamarole that is being crammed down their throats. Instead, Jun and two of his pals become obsessed with a plan for vacationing on an island known for its "free sex". But when they finally arrive for their three-day stay (all they can evidently afford), they find themselves in an ordinary youth hostel, managed by a welcoming, worldly-wise hippie who calls himself Hige Godzilla (Bearded Godzilla, Mineta Kazunobu). Promisingly, though, one of their fellow guests is the sweet, curvy, easy-going Olive (Usuda Asami) - or "free sex" personified. When she learns that Jun is a guitar player and song writer - and asks him to sing and write something for her - his hopes soar. Oh, My Buddha! wouldn't be a comedy if Jun's hopes weren't dashed (though not completely). It also wouldn't be a seishun eiga if he didn't also find himself attracted to Kyoko (Ishibashi Anna), his pretty, virginal classmate since childhood, to whom he can barely speak: pure-hearted puppy love of this sort is a genre staple. The film, though, is light on cliches, dense with close, funny observations about its period and characters. You don't have to be a Japanese of Taguchi's generation to understand Jun's growing pains, which are universal. It may make you wish, though, that you had taken up the guitar, a peerless seduction tool, even in the hands of a teenage goof.
