| By | Mark Simmons (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews |
Okay...where should I start? Well, let's get this over and done with. Panties. Yes, there's lots of them, and as other reviewers have mentioned, if you are likely to be offended by (or feel uncomfortable viewing) a seemingly endless number of shots of white panty covered crotches, skip this and move on. There's a lot. More than a lot, actually. There's tons of them. Trust me.
However, it's worth saying that all this gratuity doesn't spoil Aika in any way. It's not a randomly tacked on interest grabbing ploy. It's an fundamental part of the whole deal. If you're going to view it as a full-on action based story, and that alone, then you will probably be quite disappointed. But, if you accept it for what it really is - a pervy, sleazed-up, cheesy parody with a Bond style plot skimming along behind it all - then you'll be just fine.
You're certainly not going to be buying this for just the story. You buy it for the whole package. Panties and all...
Oh, there is also some nudity as well, but it's nothing to get flustered about. All pretty basic really. And anyway, the impact of what little there is gets pretty much overridden by a continual stream of white-knickered nether regions; and that's far more rude.
Moving on though, the art is well above average and cleanly and crisply executed. Colours are good and well chosen. The character animation is pretty much without fault, very funny in places (particularly facial expressions) and is generally very slick, especially (as you would expect and hope) during fight scenes. My only concerns lay with some of the English voice acting, and I mean some. Most of it is just fine and well matched. Especially Gusto. The English voice dub really made that character for me. Unexpected and very funny. However, Rion's English voice actor did manage to miss the mark in a few places, and there were a couple of occasions where she really didn't match the emotion of the character's visuals. Saying that though, the original Japanese voice actor missed the mark as well on occasions, so I won't hold that against her too much.
As for the music... Well, I didn't notice a huge amount of it during any of the episodes, but it never seemed absent. So, I guess it worked okay. The opening theme (extended for the included music 'video') rocked though. Very upbeat with enough electric guitar work to keep the whole thing moving along nice and slickly. Good work there. Unlike a lot of anime titles, it actually added to the feel of the whole work, rather than just plodding along with it.
Overall, this is sexy and kooky enough to be a worthwhile purchase with plenty of good set-piece scenes to boost its replay value. Whether you like it or not isn't going to be down to how easily you're offended. Most anime fans, whether they be male or female, accept that fan service, in varying degrees, is pretty much always going to be part of the deal. The deciding factor is going to be your overall expectations of the whole thing.
As it is, it's a cleanly executed, humourous, gratuitous panty shot filled Bond style satire with both serious and fun characters and a reasonably tight plot holding it all together. See it as that and buy it as that and you'll be more than happy.
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