El Cosmico here, with the final anime review of the week...probably. HEY! It's review week here on Coaxial! Coming up later this week...my review of the Sci-Fi Channel's upcoming (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) UK miniseries, ULTRAVIOLET! Whee!!! Stay tuned!
Okay, let's talk about Amazing Nurse Nanako, which is being released this week. Let me start with the text on the case:
ADVENTURE! ROMANCE! COMEDY! MEDICAL EXPERIMENTATION?!
"I am Dr. Kyoji Ogami, the world's leading surgeon, scientist, and bio-engineer. The young lady that you see here is Nanako Shichigusa. She works for me as a nurse, housekeeper, and addle-minded troublemaker. But I am about to achieve my greatest triumph when I transplant Nanako's brain into the body of my ultimate cybernetic combat robot, the Venus 2000! But first, I must deal with Nanako's resistance to my grand designs and a global conspiracy of the world superpowers. Do they want to get me because they fear my brilliant intellect, or could it be Nanako that they are after? What could they possibly want with a brainless girl like her? Or rather, a soon-to-be-brainless girl, once my revolutionary operation is complete."
Uh...yeah. Right. Now, I actually popped this disc in before I read the text on the case, and, well, I wish I'd read the case first, because then I might have known what was going on. Truth is, it still doesn't make sense to me. Of course, I've only seen two episodes of this series, so it's probably safe to say that there's more explanation later on. I just could have used some a little sooner.
Basically, Nanako mood-shifts between ultra-serious scientists, corporate interests, and, seemingly, a plot by members of the Catholic church, and light-hearted vignettes with Nanako, who, poor thing, is always getting into trouble, a constant screw up. Oh, and by the way, she has enormous, constantly bouncing breasts.
Right. Nanako is a likeable enough character, and most surprisingly, I not only liked her Japanese voice, I really enjoyed the English dub voice of Mariah Martin in the role. At moments, I even liked Ms. Martin's voice more than the original Japanese. Now, coming from me, the world's biggest dub-hater, that's saying a lot. Although it's not as over-the-top, Martin's voice frequently reminded me of Arleen Sorkin's excellent voicing of Harley Quinn in the Batman animated series, and if that's not a compliment, I don't know what is.
Unfortunately, I found myself feeling sorry for Nanako throughout the first two episodes, because her boss, Dr. Kyoji, is, well, such a jerk. Really, a total bastard to her. Not a pleasant character. I mean, ideally, the audience should be able to like SOMETHING about a character, even the evil ones, but I couldn't find anything I liked about Dr. Kyoji at all, and while I hope it changes further down the series, it certainly bothered me during these first two episodes.
A lot of things also don't make sense in Nanako. Again, maybe they will later, but they sure didn't in what I saw. For example, the description says Dr. Kyoji is going to transplant Nanako's brain into his robot experiment. Yet, Dr. Kyoji can't berate Nanako's brain enough...so why would he want to use it? Couple this with the fact that Dr. Kyoji constantly insists that Nanako engage in rigorous physical exercise (and no, not while he watches), and one must come away thinking...Okay, so he's getting her body, which he's going to throw away, in good shape, and he's going to use her brain, which he can't say enough bad things about? Weird.
So, while I tried to enjoy this title more, I just found that there wasn't enough focus on Nanako's humorous presence, which is really the most redeeming thing about this title. I'm also not sure exactly why Nanako is so amazing. I mean, is this a reference to her breasts? Surely there's something more here, but I can't imagine what it is. So, unfortunately, I don't think this title will have a lot of appeal outside the hard-core anime fan base, and I can't really recommend it as a title. I would, though, recommend that anime production companies give Mariah Martin more work.
Of course, with any DVD, there are two major questions. The first must be about the featured content itself. The second, of course, is the production of the disc. Fortunately, while I found the feature somewhat lacking, the production of Amazing Nurse Nanako was well above par. Ranging from very good to excellent.
The video and audio transfers were excellent. The menus were very well done too, featuring character designs and the commercials for the series that were shown in Japan, as well as information advertising the production company, a bit of a video, and dvd credits. The scene access menus were quite good as well. All around, an interesting and cool interface. Pioneer tends to do an excellent job with disc production, and this disc is no exception. In fact, the more content I see from Pioneer, the happier I am that they're going to be producing next year's Akira DVD. I know they use different facilities for different titles, but if they get either the people who did Nanako or the folks who did Serial Experiments: Lain (also a Pioneer title), I think it's safe to say that anime fans everywhere will be thrilled with the results.
And now, you know the rest of the story.
-El Cosmico
Meeru o dase! elcosmico@aintitcool.com
