Debutante Detective Corps Anime Review

Quick Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2005-01-28 (updated 2012-10-01)
• 2 stars out of 5 (?)

Debutante Detective Corps is somewhere between an unoriginal super schoolgirl story with everything on it, and a parody of that genre not quite clever enough to really work. It looks nice enough, there are some worthwhile over-the-top action scenes, and it does manage to pull off a few good gags, and that's the sum total of the content. It looks like it might've been the set-up for a series, but it's empty and silly enough that even people who enjoy it aren't likely to be disappointed that this is all there is.

Fans of this sort of silly, exaggerated action may love it, it might be worth a rental for others, but for most it's probably too short and not creative enough to be worth the time.

Read the full-length review...

Full Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2005-01-28 (updated 2012-10-01)
• 2 stars out of 5 (?)

Debutante Detective Corps is about as short, pointless, silly, and mindlessly entertaining as they come, but it is fun for as long as it lasts.

It looks like it might be the setup for an ongoing series detailing the over-the-top hijinks of the titular Corps, and it does do a reasonable job of introducing us to the crew. But, since this is the one and only 35 minute episode ever made, an introduction is all you'll get. Not that it matters--the story is self-contained, it's hardly supposed to be deep, and the characters are so silly I doubt you'll get attached to any of them.

The generic cast--yet another rich bunch of girls with major martial arts/combat/technical/psychic skills running amok and causing havoc on a school campus--hasn't seen any new ground to break in a long time. It does, however, take everything so far overboard that it ends up being a sort-of-parody of itself. Why just get to school by jumping out of a helicopter when it can explode afterward for no reason? Why a police escort when every cop in the prefecture can be there? It doesn't seem quite self-aware enough to qualify as a full-on parody, but a send-up of its own genre is obviously part of the intent.

It's too bad it didn't take the overkill farther, really--I usually prefer somewhat solid reality to all-out silly and self-referential humor, but in this case it's already far enough gone that pulling out all the stops would have helped. Anyway, I wouldn't personally call it hilarious, but the situations were generally amusing enough to keep my attention, and I found a few of the gags (both mildly clever and blunt) pretty darned funny.

Otherwise, though, there's really nothing here. Once you get past a few super-schoolgirl parodies, a couple of funny situations, and some old-fashioned slapstick comedy, all you're left with is a silly plot, a setting without an ounce of solidity, and characters so over the top that I didn't really care much about them one way or another (it says something that I'm not the least bit disappointed it ends abruptly after one episode). The action is worth something, but basically if the super-schoolgirls-taken-too-far thing doesn't sound like your cup of tea, don't even consider wasting your time.

The one strength Debutante Detective Corps has is the technical end of the production; fortunate, because it would seem pretty barren if it didn't look good. The character designs are unremarkable (if attractive), but the character art is generally quite good. The character animation is also fairly good, with particularly good action scenes--silly, but smoothly animated, very exaggerated (to add to the humor), and reasonably well choreographed. The backgrounds are a little sparse, but not too bad either. It's not pretty enough to watch for the visuals alone, but they do hold up their end.

The voice acting in Japanese is also solid, though as unremarkable as the rest of the production. About the only notable performance is Aono Takeshi as a police detective; he doesn't do that much, but is funny as always, and I just like hearing him do his "trying to be cool, but mostly just beleaguered" thing.

Takefumi Haketa's music is properly overdramatic, but not noteworthy otherwise, with a peppy, uninteresting end theme.

In all, Debutante Detective Corps is two things: A super schoolgirl story with everything on it, and a halfway parody of that genre. It's effective if unoriginal as the former and not quite clever enough to succeed at the latter, which overall adds up to a mildly entertaining waste of time. Fans of this sort of thing may love it, it might be worth a rental for others, but for most it's probably too short and not creative enough to be worth the time.

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Project A-ko did the same thing, and did it a whole lot better. And, of course, it has something in common with Urusei Yatsura and every other super schoolgirl show ever made.