Battle Athletes Victory Anime Review

Quick Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2006-08-16 (updated 2006-08-16)
• 2.5 stars out of 5 (?)

Battle Athletes Victory is a re-make of the OAV series with more action, more funny, and more stupid (and there's no continuity for those wondering).

At least judging from the early volumes in the series, Victory is more or less what the Battle Athletes OAVs looked like they were going to be but weren't: A lively comedy about a bunch of girls training for a bunch of sports involving ridiculous levels of skill. A little like those turn-of-the-millennium sports drink commercials with more anime girls. There's plenty of over-the-top action involving a variety of creative sports (3D bicycle racing, races through military-quality obstacle courses while dragging a steamroller, and so on), a lot of jokes based on the oddball personalities of the girls in training, and some good old-fashioned sappy "you can do it" drama.

On the down side, the characters don't seem to be nearly as deep as those in the OAVs, and there are a lot of ethnic jokes of... questionable quality. (I'd say it's not worth taking too seriously--this series makes fun of just about every country and ethnic group, including Japan.) As far as positive changes relative to the OAVs, Victory goes much farther with the super-sports theme and the series generally seems to be a lot more fun.

It probably waxes more serious later on (if you can sit through two seasons of it), but if you're in the mood for a light and wild sports-school-girl show, or liked the OAVs but thought they were too heavy, then Battle Athletes Victory is probably worth a look.