Ayane's High Kick

Original Title: 綾音ちゃんハイキック！
Romanized: Ayane-chan Haikikku!
Literal: High Kick, Ayane!

Plot Synopsis

Ayane Mitsui is your average high school girl; she's pretty, athletic, a little lazy on the studying, and dreams of becoming a pro wrestler some day. Ok, so she isn't so average, but she's got knockout legs (literally), and lots of drive. She's even got a mask. Only problem is, she's not too good at impressing the judges (then there's her school's policy about having a part time job).

Things change when Ayane runs into a shady looking fellow impressed by her legs (no, not like that) who offers to become her coach. He may not have the facilities, but he does seem to know what he's doing, so all's well until Ayane finds out it's not wrestling, but kickboxing he's been training her for...

Quick Review

Rating: 3 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2004-10-28

If Rocky were middle class, you replace Sylvester Stallone with a cute Japanese High School girl, and you change boxing to kickboxing, you've got Ayane's High Kick. Yes, it's a pretty silly premise, and though it obviously doesn't amount to much in terms of depth or realism, combined with surprisingly hard-hitting, realistic (at least relative to the premise) action and some fun characters, this partially-finished OAV series turns out to be a fun diversion. Toss in decent art and a worthwhile voice cast to round out the picture.

An anime-weird plot and fun characters combined with semi-realistic fight scenes make Ayane's High Kick lots of fun, and worth watching for fans of either action comedy or just good silly fun.

US DVD Review

The DVD includes the English and Japanese stereo soundtracks, and an English subtitle track. The disc is about the same as USMC's other releases; it has an illustrated (but slow-navigating) menu that provides access to a chapter index, character introductions with links to appropriate introductory scenes, language controls, and cuts of just the action stuff (sadly dubbed only). As with other early USMC releases, the transfer is decent, and the color and sharpness are quite nice on this title. On the down side, also as with other early releases, there are no Japanese cast credits on the disc. It comes in a plastic keepcase with notes on the back of the jacket insert.

Content Guide

Nothing other than some in-the-ring-brutality to find offensive. Probably in the 10-up range.

Violence: 2 - Nobody dies, but people get beat up pretty realistically.

Nudity: 1 - Just wrestling outfits.

Sex/Mature Themes: 0 - Zip.

Language: 1 - Nothing of note.

Notes and Trivia

It's worth mentioning that the Japanese Pro Wrestling scene is a little different from the one in the States. Pro Wrestling, at least the women's version, is relatively popular, and has a little more validity than the American version--it's not a given that the whole thing is (to quote Minnesota's Governor Jessie "the Governing Body" Ventura) "Ballet with violence." Of course, a lot of it is every bit as over the top as the WWF, and this is also not to say that all high school girls aspire to be the next masked queen of the ring; most of the champs look more like somebody who should be named "Helga the Destroyer" than a Japanese school girl. Women's Kickboxing, on the other hand, is not (to my knowledge, anyway) so well known.

Availability

Available in the US from USM on a single hybrid DVD, and was also available on subtitled or dubbed VHS.

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