Now that I am finished with finals, I have no excuse to not trudge through my backlog of unwatched and unread anime and manga. The first of these is Moeyo Ken OVA, released in January 2005 by ADV Films. I bought this DVD in Japantown during the Cherry Blossom Festival in April for 5 bucks from a video store that was selling off previously rented anime. I bought it and figured I would give it a shot. I finally got around to watching it this past week.
The story involves the Mobile Shinsengumi protecting the Kyoto area from disruptive spirits in the early part of the Meiji Restoration. The three girls who comprise this force - chief Kondou Yuuko, Hijikata Toshie, and Okita Kaoru - each have their own quirks and collectively are hated by the villagers for damaging their town while protecting them. They also have a reputation for excessive spending including Kondou’s collection of katanas.
The first three episodes of this four-episode OVA series deal with the girls handling a particular demon spirit and build up toward the final episode and a confrontation with Shutendouji. Most of the creatures are based in Japanese folklore and are explained in the DVD insert. The meddling group that is behind the spike in bad spirit activity is the Tsubame-gumi and their aim is to return the area to what it was before the Reformation by opening the spirit world and raising chaos.
I personally liked the comic interactions between the lead characters more than the action, which was almost the same each time they were sent out. (The fight music sounded like it was made on a Casio.) The red haired Kondou loves taking morning baths, is generally easy-going, and is afraid of frogs. Light violet haired Hijikata is much more reserved than Kondou and loathes Kondou. Blue haired Okita can summon miniature gods, is possessive about her manjuu, and releases her anger as an explosion of electricity. Some of Hijikata’s and Okita’s pasts are revealed in their own episodes but not much is given about Kondou’s origins except that her mother runs the whole operation. It also seems that all three are the fictional daughters of actual members of the Shinsengumi: Kondō Isami, Hijikata Toshizō, and Okita Sōji.
Also, I wanted to note that there were a number of wood- and electricity-based inventions that I believe fit into the technological development of the time period. However, I definitely doubt that jet-powered cars were available back then.
Overall, Moeyo Ken was fine for some laughs but the story came off as flat. The recurring joke of the fat Tsubame-gumi member bringing up the topic of Chinese cabbage wasn’t funny the first time nor was it any of the latter times. I did like the cultural elements of the demons and summonings but the technological anachronisms irked me. I’m glad I only paid five bucks because although it wasn’t totally crap (Rumiko Takahashi did the character designs and Yuuko shared a voice actress with Tenchi Muyo’s Ryoko), it wasn’t anything to write home about either. It didn’t particularly inspire me to seek out the 13-episode TV series and watch that.
P.S. One of my complaints about the DVD itself was that you couldn’t access particular chapters through a chapter selection screen. Instead, you had to pick an episode from the main menu and then skip forward through it. A separate screen from which viewers can select chapters is standard in almost every other anime DVD I have ever seen so I don’t understand why ADV chose not to include it on this disc. Sigh…I guess this is just another knock on the disc, although it is one that the original creators didn’t intend.
P.P.S. There is an excellent English fandub of Moeyo Ken TV Episode 1 that is worth checking out even if you never intend to watch either the OVA or the TV series.
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