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!"

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 well paced, remarkably un-annoying despite the rapid-fire humor, and manages a few fairly amusing jabs at its own genre.

Since it's produced in part by NHK (the Japanese equivalent of the BBC), I was expecting a clean and solidly-built production, and Isami doesn't disappoint. The show pulls off a good combination of high-energy directing and even writing; the simple storyline gets moving quickly, and the episodes cruise along at a brisk pace without getting confusing or feeling hurried. There's plenty of light and smoothly-written banter and a fairly constant stream of cartoony gags and offhanded humor to keep the monster-of-the-week episodes interesting, but there's also something of an ongoing storyline to at least loosely tie things together.

I was quite fond of the characters; the heroes (Isami in particular) were loaded with spunk and quite likable. The gung-ho Isami was tough and smart enough to be a good role model without being at all cheesy, and Soshi, the smooth-talking adolescent player, made for an amusing counterpoint to the hotheaded and more standard Toshi. The three of them were acted very well in Japanese, and their antagonistic (but still friendly) banter went a long way toward giving the whole series its light, fun feel. There's also Soshi's tag-along little brother, who was cute and didn't give me an urge to do bad things to him, so I'll credit him as a successful tyke character in comparison to most.

To throw just a bit of maturity into the mix, the trio's ditzy homeroom teacher and the jaded but not particularly competent cop they turn to for official assistance have a bit of a budding romance, which is effectively played for laughs once in a while. And there's the villains, who at least early in the series are far more funny than frightening, but aren't entirely incompetent, either, so they're still effective adversaries for the heroes.

For those wondering, looked at from the perspective of an anime fan quite a bit older than its target audience, I can't say that Isami has a whole lot going for it. The storyline is very basic, the main characters are quite young, most of the jokes are broad and simple, and the whole production feels very lightweight and fairly cartoony. That said, the characters were likable, it poked fun at itself (and superhero shows in general) enough to get a few chuckles out of this reviewer, and I never found it annoying (a valuable feature for parents)--just simple and obviously targeted at a young age group.

The visuals in the production are anime-standard, but generally quite good. The character designs are all very cute (both the kids and adults) and unlike a lot of series (particularly those targeted at older viewers), the kids don't look or act unrealistically mature. The art is straightforward but nice enough, the backgrounds don't stand out but are actually fairly well-drawn, and the animation is consistent.

The acting, depending on which language you go for, is either surprisingly good or surprising... but not so good. The Japanese version featured a variety of colorful and extremely lively performances, and I liked the flow of the dialogue.

The dub, on the other hand, was inconsistent. Most of the acting, though broad, was reasonably good, and they actually did a decent job of pronouncing the Japanese names correctly (shocking!). The timing wasn't too bad, although the lip flap wasn't matched all that well (considering the quick pace they didn't do too badly) and the dialogue, though accurate, was a bit stiff. Unfortunately, the casting was off; Toshi was plenty lively, but didn't sound like an 11-year-old, and Soshi sounded both too old and sort of sleepy. Rumiko Varnes's Isami mostly made up for it, though--she was an impressively lively match for the original Japanese version.

The background music was cheesy, but functional. The opening theme, on the other hand, was a classic and catchy old-school anime rock intro, and the end theme was funkier and more modern, lively, and fun--the singer sounds like she's really enjoying herself, a must in that kind of song.

In all, Soar High! Isami looks to be a quality kids show--it's fun, well done, and very lively without being annoying. 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, so it might even be worth a look if your tastes are simple. I'd rather my kids were watching this than Medabots, and in the end I didn't mind watching it, either.

Related Recommendations

Though it shares some elements with kids' shows like Medabots, Pokemon, and the like, it's a superhero show not a marketing gimmick, and as a result frequently better. The most similar action-comedy I can think of is Jubei-chan the Ninja Girl, though that's much funkier and weirder. Others in the same general vein include Brigadoon (a bit more mature and much more unusual), Sailor Moon (more melodramatic), and a variety of Magical Girl shows, most of which are... well, more magical girl-y.

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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