There are people - blisteringly stupid people, mostly on Twitter - who have somehow gotten it into their heads that men don't like strong female characters. That men are instinctively averse to women wielding anything deadlier than a wooden spoon and that they should stay in the relative comfort of their homes making sandwiches and shooting out babies while us men get on with being 97% of work place deaths. You know, as God intended.
But I can assure you that this is not the case. Contrary to popular belief, men like female action heroes. Men like - for example - the 'Alien' movies. They like 'Kill Bill'. 'Tomb Raider', 'Sailor Moo...' *ahem*... 'Xena: Warrior Princess'. Point is that men like women in action oriented roles. What they DON'T like is being undermined.
The issue with a lot of so called feminist fiction these days, particularly in comics and TV, is that not only do they go out of their way to remind you that their main character is a strong, capable woman held back by an oppressive patriarchy; they also frequently tear down any male characters in order to build up the female ones. They think that if the female characters are to be taken seriously in any way, then that must come at the expense of any male characters
Hell, it doesn't even have to be specifically the male characters. It could just be men in general. Some of the stuff I've seen from recent seasons of Doctor Who for example have been horrendous.
The issue with this of course is that the female characters don't earn much in the eyes of the audience. They tend to come off obnoxious and entitled. Like I'm supposed to just automatically like and respect them because of their genitals and not because of the things that they've done. And I doubt I'll have to remind you guys of the first 'Batwoman' teaser trailer in which Kate Kane seems to take credit for Bruce Wayne's work before her as if that's supposed to endear her to an audience.
But enough bitching and womanning about the state of modern TV. Today I'm here to show you feminists how it's done. Or more specifically Japan is here to show you how it's done. Yes, that Japan. The one with the vending machines that dispense used knickers.
I'm not exactly what you would call the most informed when it comes to anime, but I know what I like and the subject of today's review 'Sukeban Deka' translated literally as 'Delinquent Girl Detective' is probably now one of my favourite OVAs. I wont go too much into the history or backstory surrounding this franchise. For that I highly recommend Kenny Lauderdale's excellent videos on delinquent girl TV shows from Japan, which is where I found out about this OVA, for the record.
With that let's move into the review.
Sukeban Deka begins with our main character Saki Asamiya in jail for a crime she did not commit. Just what crime this was is left up to the audience and all the info we're really given is that Saki took the fall for someone else. She is then given a proposition by the authorities; become an undercover detective in schools across the country and not only will she be given her freedom, her mother (also in prison) will be taken off of Death Row.
Her first mission happens to be at her old school, Takanoha High, which has been entirely taken over by the three evil Mizuchi Sisters, Emi, Ayumi and Remi, whose powerful father uses his wealth and influence to further his daughter's criminal endeavours. With the help of her police mentor Jin, admirer Sanpei and ultimately the assistant principal of the school, it's up to Saki to end the Mizuchi Sister's reign of terror over the Takanoha high school.
This OVA is like if you took the writers room of the show '21 Jump Street' and made them watch samurai movies while snorting coke into the dead of night like Tony Montana. Let's break this down: You have a pink haired Japanese school girl who at one point was the terror of her entire school and with good fucking reason. She beats up entire rooms full of people, sometimes using only her fists, other times using her signature weapon, which is - wait for it - a yoyo.
No, I am not kidding. Her weapon of choice is a fucking yoyo. It just appears in her hand like magic and she throws it with such force that she can fracture people's skulls at a distance some paintball guns would be jealous of.
Although personally this doesn't surprise me much. Like everyone and his mother I used to do yoyo tricks, and those things could be deadly. A well placed Loop the Loop could efficiently take out your neighbour's cat and your grandmother who happened to be walking up behind you at the time. Fuck gun control, back in the day we needed fucking yoyo control. Gangs of school boys conducted bank robberies armed with these things and the local authorities could do nothing about it. Don't tell me you didn't try to do a spinner off of your brother's nutsack while he was asleep. I'll know you're lying.
At any rate, in the hands of a practitioner such as Saki from Sukeban Deka, the yoyo is an instrument of death to rival Zoe Quinn's Twitter feed. From the very moment Saki enters the Takanoha high school grounds she's set upon by Ayumi Mizuchi's band of unusually combat adept students; and despite this school being headed by the scariest motherfucker to ever fail to become a hardboiled detective and became an assistant school principal instead, the school just lets this happen.
The entire school is under the thrall of these three girls and it's all because their father is a big rich asshole. That's it. In fact this man is so rich, and such an asshole, that he has his daughters plant gas bombs under two school buses which causes them to drive off of a cliff, thereby killing over seventy teenage children. Seriously, that's more than the Columbine and Sandy Hook massacres combined and this happens at the start of the OVA. And he does this so that he can sell positions in the school to his rich friends so that their kids can go to this hell-prison of a school to be pushed around by his daughters and so that he can make more money when he presumably fucking yeets them off a cliff as well.
This is such silly shit and I have to say, I kind of love it. Contrary to what some might think, a movie doesn't need to make realistic sense for it to good. In fact often the opposite is true. Some movies and TV shows spend too much time justifying why certain things are happening instead of just getting on with the things happening.
With the Sukeban Deka OVA the plot is simple and easy to follow. It's only two 50 minute long episodes, adding up to the duration of a feature length movie when watched back to back. Any questions you might have about the more farfetched elements of the plot are countered by the use of likable characters and fast paced action scenes, which I may have already mentioned, involves a school girl wielding a yoyo as a lethal weapon. Don't ask me why Ayumi Mizuchi has a vault in the woods accessible by an electronic keypad installed in a tree. Why are you even asking these questions? What's wrong with you? Who hurt you?
Saki as a character is what you'd expect. She's a bit of a hardnosed Tsundere, especially when it comes to Sanpei whom, being the OVA's only main male student character, provides the comic relief with his simpish level of devotion to Saki.
"bUt GlEnN!" you vomit into my ears while buggering a racoon in a skip or whatever else it is you do when you aren't bothering me, "yOu SaId YoU dOn'T lIkE iT wHeN mAlE cHaRaCtErS aRe UnDeRmInEd!"
Exactly. Specifically when they are undermined with the intention of artificially propping up a weak female lead. This isn't what this is though. Not only is Saki an eminently strong lead for this action story, lacking a requirement for being propped up; Sanpei, despite being the comic relief, is not undermined. He is useful in the story and has many positive traits. In fact he even saves Saki's life at one point by shoulder-checking a shotgun wielding thot into the tarmac like a real man. He even has to be stopped from running into a burning building to try and save Saki again. In other words, he may be a simp, but he's a likable, committed and capable one, whom Saki warms up to over the course of the story.
Despite the ridiculous plot and action driven story the OVA is not without its drama. Saki and Sanpei befriend an orphaned teenage girl named Junko, whom Saki saves from being assaulted near the beginning. She's a talented artist and unfortunately this makes her a target for Emi Mizuchi, who steals her artwork to win a prestigious art contest. But it's what she does to Junko herself that ultimately becomes the impetus for Saki's campaign of revenge against the sisters later in the OVA. It adds an emotional element to the story that makes the climax all the more satisfying.
As for the sisters themselves, like the rest of the anime, there's little nuance here. The Mizuchi sisters are plain old scheming, conniving, evil bitches. Ayumi is a drug addict with an extreme love of money; Emi is an egomaniac whose sense of self worth far outstrips her actual talent as an artist; and Remi... well she uses computers to control people's minds and turn them into zombies to do her bidding. Hey, this is anime from the early 90s. You were expecting down to earth slice of life stuff here?
As for some other side characters you have Jin Kyoichiro, Saki's mentor, who is basically Japanese Dirty Harry and he has one of the best scenes in the entire OVA towards the end. I wont spoil it but it had me cheering in my seat and that's not something that normally happens.
On a technical level it's animated beautifully, with particular attention to be paid to the action scenes. I of course being the shameless Westerner that I am watched the dubbed version (available on YouTube) and yeah, some of the English voices are questionable to say the least, especially in regards to some of the minor characters. But the people voicing the main characters do a good job and yeah I'm sure it's better in the original Japanese, fuck off weeb.
Overall Quality Rating - 4/5
Formulaic? Maybe. But there's nothing wrong with that. Whilst the plot itself may not win any awards Sukeban Deka is filled with pulpy nonsense and oh so very Japanese ideas. In other words it's fun as hell. Saki is a genuinely strong female lead who doesn't need to tell you she's a strong woman. She just shows you by shattering your skull with a militarized children's toy. I know I said the idea of a girl going undercover to stop crime in a school reminded me of '21 Jump Street' but quite frankly Johnny Depp and Peter Deluise are a bundle of stick wrapped up in twine compared to Saki Asamiya. Did Deppo ever strangle a bitch with a steel yoyo string and then walk out of a blazing inferno without a scratch on him? No? I rest my case.
Idiot Rating - 4/5
Do I even need to tell you why this gets such a high idiot rating? School girls doing battle with kid's toys? Mind control zombies? Snake whip wielding commando blondes? Part of me is disappointed they didn't do any more of these OVAs but to be honest I'm not even sure what they'd do to follow this up. Saki takes on ISIS? Saki gets hired by Elon Musk to wipe out all life on Mars and make it safe for his self-governing Musk-topia?
Holy shit. Japan, get on this right now.
I'm DeadEye, genki ni shite kudasai.
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