 The ROSSMAN's R.O.DThey got it right for the TV series. R.O.D
TV is everything that Read
or Die the OVA hoped to be. It's epic,
it's got a great cast of very detailed and flushed out characters,
it's got some twists and turns that would make Space Mountain
proud, and it's really really fun. Not that Read or
Die didn't
get some of those points right. I mean, it was fun, it had
some great action... but plot and characters were sacrificed
for a quick buck. Never a good thing.
Read or Dream (to be refered
to as R.O.D
TV for
the rest of this review) has a lot more characters to work
with, a much bigger and more involving story, and most importantly
it makes the Read or Die OVA a better series
by explaining all of the hubbub that was going on in that
short little order,
and by making
it
directly responsible for the events that take place in the
new series. Got that? Understando? See, my main gripe with
the original OVA was the fact that the bad guys just seemed
to be bad for no real reason. Yeah, it was cool to see their
super
powers
in action against the British Library agents, but there was
nothing solid there for the action to fall back on. R.O.D
TV takes the whole OVA story, and
makes you see WHY it happened, and HOW it is incredibly relevant
to the new events that are now taking place. Think of it this
way. Say you just watched Debbie Does Dallas.
You're entertained (who wouldn't be?). But you thought the
whole thing was kind
of thin. You wondered WHY Debbie actually did do Dallas. You
wonder what drove her to it and why it had to be Dallas she
did in the first place. But then, let's say, a sequel was made.
Let's say that Debbie Does America is produced.
It's bigger, it's got more of what you loved about Dallas in
it, and it actually tells you Debbie's backstory and the reason
that she
felt that she had to do Dallas in the first place, but then
realized that Dallas just wasn't enough! No, now Debbie had
to do ALL
OF
AMERICA.
See? That's kind of what R.O.D TV is to the OVA.
Bigger, more of the good stuff and explanations.
Let me reeeeeewind a bit. R.O.D TV takes
place some years after the OVA took place.
Nenene (Yomiko Readman's best friend [the person who left all
the money and sticky-notes
all over Yomiko's apartment in the first OVA episode])
is looking for "The Paper" (aka Yomiko), as it seems
she's disappeared without a trace five years before. Since
then, Nenene's been
in kind
of a funk and hasn't been able to write anything since the
loss of her pal (Nenene being a famous author and all, this
is a bad bad thing). Nenene's editor is very concerned for
her and sets her up with three new paper users (the Paper Sisters:
oldest blonde Michelle, tall and quiet Maggie, and pink-haired
Anita) as bodyguards for her as she visits Hong Kong for a
book signing. Well, shit goes South fast and the tres hermanas
save Nenene's butt several times in a row. Thereafter they
move in with the author in her Japanese apartment, and quickly
make themselves at home. For a while they try to get used to
their new lives (Michelle and Maggie go on book-buying sprees
seeing as they're just as book-crazy as Yomiko was, and Anita
starts going to school and making new friends, one of whom
is the mysterious, blue-haired Junior), while still accepting
special "retrieval"
jobs from their old bosses in Hong Kong, who run the organization
known as Dokusensha. It's these missions that keep the feel
and
the action of the
original
OVAs flowing into R.O.D TV for the first half
of its lifespan. Soon though, bigger and badder things are
revealed to be going
on behind the scenes. It seems that Joker and Wendy are still
alive and not pleased at all with the swan dive that the British
Empire has taken in the last half-decade. But is Joker a bad
guy? What does Junior have to do with any of this? Are the
Paper Sisters related to Yomiko? Why the shit are "paper
powers"
popping out of the woodwork all of a sudden? What does that
pigeon, John Woo, have to do with anything and everything?
Just what the hell happened to Yomiko's old boyfriend, Donny?
Will Nancy ever remember the bad shit she did in her former
life? Will we ever get to see Drake's daughter? Is all the
crap that's happening really what the Gentleman would have
wanted? Why the fuckadoodle do the Japanese get such a kick
out of watching a US President pee his pants all the time?
Will the British Library's plans really be as beneficial as
Joker hopes they'll be? And what does that wolf at the end
of episode 26 do to Joker? Seriously, that was just weird.
Lots of questions there. And, for the most part,
R.O.D. TV provides lots of answers... But
unfortunately it doesn't provide us with all of them. The show
starts with a
bang, slows down a bit for some much needed people development,
picks up the pace with a great middle and then never slows
down until the finale. The trip is long and very twisty turny.
There are so many cliffhangers peppered throughout, and so
many revelations that I began to think that the R.O.D people
finally made their wish come true and were able to produce
a "new Giant
Robo" of their very own. But the best part about Robo (i.e.
the ending), turned out to be the weakest thing about
R.O.D TV. R.O.D TV rocketed
to the 26th episode on a Tokyo bullet train (hypothetically
of course since the finale takes
place in London), but then it sputtered. It lost its momentum
in the last 20 minutes and kind of forgot what the whole crazy
trip was about. Even the original OVA Read or Die had
a really strong ending (sacrifices everywhere and yet hope
for redemption),
but R.O.D TV just forgot what it was trying
to say. I actually might get kind of spoilerific here,
so skip to the next parragraph if you want to go in blind.....
Ready? I was most disappointed
that there was no heroic sacrifice in the TV series. At several
points it looked like there might be some (like the tease of
Junior's condition and Anita's blackout), but sadly not even
the bad guys suffered much in the end. Yeah, their goals were
shot to hell, but it seems like they were allowed to go free
with no major repurcussions. In other words, the end kind of
fizzled like an open bottle of Coke slowly losing it's carbonation
in the fridge.
End of spoilers.
But,
despite that, R.O.D.
TV has plenty more good stuff to
make up for the ending. It has pretty good animation (which
the animators actually drastically
improved from the TV broadcast version for the DVD release),
nice, jazzy muzak, and a mysterious overall mood that served
it well without being overly mysterious (like, they
laid out a giant puzzle of a naked woman, but kept feeding
you the finished picture piece
by piece, just enough to keep you hanging on, but not enough
to blow all of the surprises at once. Like part of a breast,
then some leg, and OH, a nipple!, then an eye, etc.). Plus
we got to see Nancy in full Ms. Deep bodysuit again. That
made up for a lot. But, I must say, overall I truly liked what
I saw.
R.O.D TV made up for its predesecor, and kicked
some pretty good global ass all its own. And any show that
has a pink-haired
schoolgirl jumping all around a fully armed SWAT team like
a crack monkey, while slicing them all up with a single sheet
of razor paper is alright by me. Little monkey girls are awesome.
What did
I think of R.O.D TV? After all is
said and done I find that I must give The Paper Sisters and
crew a 62.4438 out of 67
Pages
of Progress. It was much more fun than I had originally
thought it would be, and its sense of style and its art designs
were original enough that it was a nice breath of fresh air
in the cookie-cutter mold that the anime industry has recently
found itself in yet again (has it ever really fallen out of
the cookie-cutter mold? [does this make any kind of sense whatsoever?]).
Go watch Read or Die the OVA, then check out R.O.D
TV. Good stuff.
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