Soar High! Isami

Original Title: 飛べ！イサミ
Romanized: Tobe! Isami
Literal: Fly! Isami

Plot Synopsis

Isami Hanaoka is pretty much your average fifth grader; she just moved from the US back to her dad's hometown in Japan, where she and her newscaster mom are living with Isami's expert-cook/swordsman grandfather, while her dad is a famous scientist who disappeared mysteriously years ago, apparently on the run from a powerful evil organization. Isami still believes that he lurks in the shadows somewhere nearby, but in any case the strain of having a mom who's never around, an absentee dad, and starting life in a new town aren't anything she can't handle. Things get interesting, though, when Isami and two of her classmates--the smooth-talking Soshi Yukimi and hotheaded Toshi Tsukikage--stumble into an old cache of amazing weapons in Isami's basement. It seems that they're all related to the famous Shinsengumi, and their ancestors left them a message that they're not going to have much choice but follow through on: "Fight the evil Kurotengu organization!"

Quick Review

Rating: 3.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2003-10-11

Soar High! Isami is an all-around solid kids' action-comedy. It doesn't feature anything unusual or much that will appeal to a more mature audience, but it's got a high-energy pace, is remarkably un-annoying despite the rapid-fire humor, and manages a few fairly amusing jabs at its own genre. The spunk-filled Japanese acting makes it that much more fun, and although two of the three leads weren't well cast in the English version, the great performance behind Isami makes up for it.

I wouldn't say it's a first choice for older anime fans, but still comes out ahead of a lot of shows with a similar age target thanks mostly to some all-ages humor--an all around quality kids show.

US DVD Review

The DVDs (or at least the first one of the series) are a bit odd. To its credit, the video looks nice, the mono Japanese and stereo English audio tracks sound fine, the episodes have chapter stops in the usual locations (allowing for easy song-skipping), and they actually included the Japanese version which isn't usually the case with kids' series. The disc skips the menu, launching straight into the dubbed version of the program, but the menu is there and it provides complete chapter access as well as language control, although there are no special features.

The funky part is the subtitles; although they're accurate, they're done in a monospaced font (every character width is the same, making wide letters look crowded and 'i's and 'l's look lonely), and they're left justified (lined up on the left), which I've never seen on a professional sub before--it looks strange, particularly since the text occasionally extends to three rows. Still, a weird subbed version is better than nothing. They also didn't translate the songs, which was too bad (we did the opening for you, if you're interested). I was, however, pleased to note that the credits include a full translation of the cast in both languages (in an odd side note it appears as if the titles and credits are actually done as a soft-subtitle track, though there's no way to turn it off... strange).

Despite all the funk, my biggest complaint about the DVDs is that they only have 3 episodes each (even the first one), which seems very skimpy by modern standards.

Content Guide

There's a lot of fighting and one accidental-chest-grabbing joke early on, but it's a very clean series.

Violence: 1 - Quite a bit of fighting, but it's bloodless and not terribly serious.

Nudity: 0 - Absolutely nothing.

Sex/Mature Themes: 1 - One very mild accidental-chest-grabbing joke in the first episode.

Language: 0 - Clean.

Notes and Trivia

The Shinsen-gumi were a real organization, and have appeared in several anime series as well as an upcoming Playstation 2 game. They were a sort of brutal police organization loyal to the Shoguns that operated in Kyoto in the wake of Commodore Perry's opening of Japan to the outside world in the mid-1800s, a period of internal turmoil in Japan. The group was founded by Kondou Isami, figuratively the ancestor of the Isami of this show, with two other members, Hijikata Toshizou and Okita Souji, being the basis for the other two heroes.

This is one of only two series released on DVD by Hirameki International, a small company that now specializes in anime "visual novels." They never finished translating it.

Availability

Available in the US from Hirameki International on hybrid DVD, three episodes per disc. Only the first three volumes were released, as far as I can identify, and they are now out of print. You can, however, still get them new or used from Amazon: Isami DVDs.

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