Project A-ko

Original Title: プロジャクトA子
Romanized: Project A-ko
Literal:

Plot Synopsis

Years ago, Graviton City was wiped out by a falling chunk of space debris. It has now been rebuilt into a bustling high-tech center. A-ko and her lifelong friend C-ko are new in town, and are trying to get used to life at their new high school. This is not as easy as it could be considering that A-ko is a chronic oversleeper and C-ko is an airhead on a scale that makes the people in Clueless look like MIT students. But a few personality quirks seem insignificant when compared to the real social difficulty facing A-ko and C-ko. Their problems are twofold: There is "D", a mysterious agent who is spying on the pair, but the more immediate problem is the alphabetically appropriate B-ko, who has her heart set upon C-ko, and is determined to win her. The only thing that stands in her way is A-ko, and she vows to employ her genius in robotics, her band of loyal schoolyard minions, and her vast family wealth to achieve A-ko's demise. Unfortunately for her, B-ko's undertaking does not prove to be as simple as it first appears, due to A-ko's superhuman strength and fighting skill. Things continue to escalate until it comes time for a showdown between the alphabetic trio, "D", and an alien army!

Review

Rating: 4.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2006-08-11

Project A-ko is everything cliche and classic you love about old-school anime compressed into 80 minutes of film. It's ostensibly a parody, but it also has something like a story, fun characters, and it's packed to the gills with action that won't stop. It's juvenile, it's empty, and if you ask me, it's more fun than a couple of action movies, at least two anime comedies, and a barrel of monkeys all rolled into one.

First and foremost, Project A-ko is a parody of almost every classic anime show you've seen, and probably a few you haven't. Just to name a few, the whole setup is a vague Macross parody. Then there's Mari, a 10-foot-tall schoolgirl straight out of Fist of the North Star and a movie-within-a-movie scene from Harmageddon, with the robot replaced by Colonel Sanders of fast chicken fame. The aliens send up Captain Harlock as well as Gall Force and every girls in space movie ever made.

Of course, the movie is from the late '80s, so there won't be parodies of anything new, but veterans of classic anime should find themselves smiling at nearly everything. If you haven't seen much anime, on the other hand, you're going to be missing a lot and it'll seem far weirder than it has reason to. But, whether you catch the take-offs or not, there is plenty of opportunity for laughs in the off-kilter sense of humor that kicks in after the movie gets going.

There's my one other warning: The first half is a bit slow. Give it time--that's just the warm up for the sheer madness that the second half holds. I consider this a good thing since instead of getting more serious toward the end, like many comedies, Project A-ko does just what I love: It builds to a chaotic crescendo. All the cliches set up in the first half come together in the second... and it turns out they aren't put together quite how they're supposed to be, with hilarious results.

But it takes more than just a long series of parodies to make a great comedy; if the plot is just a random assortment of scenes and the characters don't have any real personality, there's nothing to make a connection to. Fortunately, Project A-ko is on solid footing there, too--the characters are two-dimensional but can stand on their own, and the plot, bizarre though it may be, is also coherent. As with other good anime comedies, if you set up a functional reality populated by a really strange cast of characters, the bizarre situations will follow naturally, and will be all the funnier. None of this is to say that the plot or characters are either deep or original--they definitely aren't--but it's so much fun I didn't care. (A word of warning, though: C-ko is ditzy and annoying like nobody's business.)

Now, although Project A-ko will be much more enjoyable if you're familiar with anime in general (it is a parody after all), no matter what your anime background is, you'll probably be able to appreciate at least one thing about it: Over the top action. The first half of the movie is smattered with scenes that would make most anime look pretty good. Then the second half starts, and so does the real show. You've got: Space battles, air battles, ground battles, mecha battles, superhero-scale fistfights, martial arts, sword fighting, gunfighting, tank-throwing, school-wrecking, city destroying, spaceship crashing, and gratuitous use of the only wrist-mounted fully-automatic missile launcher ever to grace the animated screen. There's more action here than you can shake a battlesuit that looks like a bikini at. Add that to the rest of the film and you've got a movie that is (for those who enjoy this sort of thing) as much fun as any anime has a right to be.

Visually, Project A-ko is well above average, particularly for a movie of its age. The character designs are cute and classically styled, but a bit different from the norm, and the mecha are old school, of course--it's a parody, after all. The art in general is solid, the animation is smooth and definitely high budget--it's theatrical stuff--and the action (which, if I haven't already made that clear, is abundant), is impressively animated in every department--a spectacle to be sure.

Last, there's the acting, which is pretty darned good in the Japanese version. The casting is appropriately stereotypical and full of personality from the primaries right down to one-shots. I'd call the Captain's performance the most memorable--particularly funny toward the end. D also has some great moments (again, at the end in particular), and B-ko's refined, bossy menace is all kinds of fun. C-ko is so annoying it's hard to describe, but then she's supposed to be. The English version isn't so good, but it's not that bad, either, especially when compared to some of US Manga Corps' other old dubs. No standout performances, but the humor comes through pretty well--if you prefer English dialogue, you won't be missing much.

The largely American music production (Richie Zito, Joey Carbone, in addition to Toji Akasaka are credited with the music) is a bit of a surprise. The three vocal pieces, one theme for each character, are sung in English but have the right sound and feel for a classic anime movie. (And if you really must have J-pop, there are modernized Japanese versions of the three themes in one of the sequels). The non-vocal background music, though largely synthesized, is well done and fits the moods quite well. The action theme in particular is lively although a few of the action scenes had less music than I would have liked.

As a fan of classic anime I can't say enough about Project A-ko, and it's hard to top as an action-packed old-school anime parody. With a few clever (and lots more not so clever) send-ups, fun characters, a plot with just the right blend of serious and silly, and as much action as you're liable to find in one place, one word both describes and defines this film: Fun. Well, maybe three: Lots of fun.

Related Recommendations

If you're a fan of any of the classic anime parodied, you should find something to enjoy here. You'll find bits remarkably similar to, among others: Macross (Robotech), Gall Force, Outlanders, Fist of the North Star, Harmageddon, Captain Harlock, and just about anything that has a giant robot or superpowerful woman in it. As for similar comedies, the little-known Shinesman and The Ultimate Teacher are both worth a look as quality classic parodies, with the latter being closer in style and theme. The more modern Excel Saga is an even crazier sendup of absolutely everything, and I'll also mention Tenchi Muyo not as a parody, but for the vaguely similar epic-scale catfights.

Finally, there are of course three sequels, which are definitely worth trying out. The first of the three is the silliest and probably the worst (least good, I should say), the second is better, and the third very nearly lives up to the original. There is also a two-episode OAV series, Blue vs. Grey, but that is a very different sort of comedy, and basically just uses the same characters in different roles. It is also much worse in all respects.

US DVD Review

This was one of the first DVDs that US Manga Corps announced (back in May of 1998, if memory serves), and after over a year of delays, they finally managed to get it out the door. Taking that into account, the disc is a bit disappointing. It's the same as USM's other early theatrical DVDs done by Image, meaning that it's nicely done but minimal; there are no special features whatsoever, save a chapter index and the two audio tracks. There may not be any extras, but at least the foundation is solid. The audio transfer is very nice (surprisingly crisp coming from a film this old), and although there's some leftover hiss, the stereo actually sounds surprisingly good. The video transfer is great, too--beautifully bright and sharp. Almost too sharp, in fact. The grain stands out a bit (due to the older film print, I assume), which is fine, but throughout the movie you can see little hairline vertical scratches; it's an older film--and really is a film--so I suppose these physical scratches on the print shouldn't be surprising, but I guess the VHS version wasn't sharp enough for them to show up. It's not a severe problem, and to put a positive spin on it, it really makes you feel like you're watching a movie in a theater. In all, a very nice transfer, and definitely a worthwhile addition to a collection, but minimal as a DVD, and as expected, there is no Japanese cast.

There has since been a re-release of the disc with what claims to be a better video transfer.

Content Guide

US Manga Corps calls it 13-up, which is about right.

Violence: 2 - Loads of fighting, and certainly some deaths (a space station gets blown up), but nothing graphic at all.

Nudity: 2 - Two very brief scenes, and a lot of metal-bikini-clad fighting.

Sex/Mature Themes: 1 - There certainly seems to be something going on between the three girls, but it's only implied, and may be platonic.

Language: 1 - A few scattered bits of profanity.

Notes and Trivia

Ok, notes and trivia galore for this title.

To start with, Project A-ko is not based on anything, and while there are a variety of spin-off artbooks, soundtracks, CDs, and other advertising material, there is only one comic adaptation: A 2-issue mini series produced by CPM Manga in 1995 for the US market. It's all-color, drawn in anime cel style, and is a fairly straightforward adaptation of the movie.

It's worth mentioning that the names A-ko, B-ko, and C-ko are more than just the obvious alphabet parody: Nondescript characters in Japanese movies (like "Security Guard 1") are often referred to in the credits by letters (i.e. Security Guard A). More specifically, you frequently see "Girl A, Girl B...", which, in Japanese is "A ko, B ko..."

In addition, the character for "ko" is frequently found at the end of female names, and in fact, Eiko, Biko, and Shiiko (which are pronounced the same as A B and C -ko in Japanese) all have "official" kanji writings. Eiko (英子), meaning roughly "English Girl," is a real (and relatively common) name, though it is more often written with another, similar-looking character. Biko (美子), meaning "beautiful girl," is also a real name, though it's properly pronounced "Yoshiko." Shiiko (詩子), roughly meaning "song girl," can also be a real name (albeit an uncommon one), though again it's properly pronounced "Utako." Note, however, that the title of the film itself is written with the Roman character "A" (A子), in a reference to the 1983 Jackie Chan film "Project A."

Writer-director Katsuhiko Nishijima is, perhaps, better known for high-quality mild hentai anime. Specifically, underwear fetish anime: He is responsible for both the underwear fetish action series Agent Aika and the (admittedly very funny) underwear fetish screwball comedy Labyrinth of Flames.

On that note, Project A-ko was originally intended to be a short in the erotic Cream Lemon series; a book that includes a short comic, character designs, and even storyboards was even produced. For whatever reason, it was re-cast as a drastically cleaner (and more substantive) parody for a mainstream audience and a larger budget theatrical production. This origin is likely where the rather ambiguous nature of the three girls' relationship comes from; the original was not at all ambiguous (explicitly so). Based on this, one could infer that the implied relationship(s) in this film (drawn into question in the 2nd sequel and then implied all over again at the end) are indeed what they seem.

Many of the designs for the film came from this original concept, including the look (and names) of A-ko, B-ko, and Miss Ayumi, as well as the Akagiyama 23. C-ko, however, looked totally different, and Miss Ayumi was originally also skimpy-battlesuit-equipped (plus the school turned into a giant robot in a riff on the SDF-1 in Macross).

Elsewhere in the staff are the non-Japanese names that show up in the musical credits. Richie Zito is an acclaimed session guitarist and music writer-producer who has worked in one role or another with acts from Elton John to Art Garfunkel to Cheap Trick. Joey Carbone, on the other hand, while LA-based and at one time the music director for Star Search, is probably best known for his Japanese connections; he claims to have worked with acts as big as SMAP and Max, and is credited with music for some other anime as well, including Rayearth and Child's Toy. Samantha Newark, who sings B-ko's theme, does occasional voice work, but her biggest role was the title character in the classic saturday morning cartoon Jem... and ironically, she did not supply Jem's singing voice.

The movie is loaded with references, but in addition to the rather obvious Macross, Harlock, Harmageddon, and Fist of the North Star nods mentioned in the review, here are a few more: Miss Ayumi, the teacher, probably not coincidentally looks almost exactly like the title character of Creamy Mami, popular around the time the film was made. A-ko herself may be an indirect reference to the pre-Dragonball Akira Toriyama comic and anime Dr. Slump, also popular in the early '80s. The main character of that series is a superpowered schoolgirl robot who looks nothing like A-ko, but Aoi Kimidori, another character, has a nearly identical hairstyle and the odd little critter Gacchan superficially looks rather like C-ko. As for B-ko, her hairstyle looks quite a bit like Minmay's (from Macross).

On a more subtle note, during the flashes or other effects associated with explosions or punches, a word (in English) pops onscreen for a single frame; this is probably just goofing around, but I suppose it could be a nod to the comic book history of the eventual "ultimate joke" about the source of A-ko's powers at the end of the film. Likewise, in a scene where missiles are being launched at the space battleship from a fighter, about every 6th one looks like a Pepsi can. On that note, the can kicked in the movie-within-a-movie is labeled "Dr. Bepper."

As for things that didn't make it into the film, the storyboards were released in book form in Japan, and you can see from the originals that A-ko's destructive shortcut to school through several people's houses was intended to be repeated several times. All but the initial run-through was cut. The early scene where A-ko stretches in front of a window was also intended to have her shirt transparent in front of the bright light, and this shot was actually animated, but a nudity-free version was re-done for the released film (the cut scene is included as an extra with one of the later movies by USM).

On a completely random note Project A-ko was one of U.S. Manga Corp's first releases, and in early VHS versions they boasted of it being in "Mangarama," meaning that the film is shown letterboxed, but rather than being evenly spaced, the black bar at the bottom is much larger, and the subtitles all show up down there, so they don't overlap the picture. Anamorphic DVDs have rendered this impossible, but it's a solution that I wish had been more common when feasible.

A final note: If you can't get enough A-ko, there are three direct sequels, all of which are at least amusing, and each of which does something different with the characters and style. The two Blue vs. Grey OAVs, however, are totally unrelated story-wise, and I wouldn't recommend them at all.

Availability

Available in the US from US Manga Corps on remastered hybrid DVD that includes the soundtrack CD, or as part of a 3-disc set that includes all the sequels and spin-offs, as well as the soundtrack. Was previously available on a more minimal hybrid DVD, now out of print, and before that on more than one subtitled and dubbed VHS version.

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