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BIRDY THE MIGHTY

Distributed by U.S. Manga Corps.

Rated: likely middle to hard PG-13

Release Date: 1998

 

I saw this little four episode Manga lying on a discount table, and I said to myself, “Hmmm, an anime.  An anime called Birdy.  An anime called Birdy with a cute chick on the front.” I’ll tell you that I didn’t even read the review on the back, which is interesting for me.  I just made a leap on it, since it was cheap enough, and thankfully I was not completely disappointed.

Birdy the Mighty, as it is technically called, begins as a young college kid named Tsutomu is dragged along for a run through Tokyo streets with some half crazy guy who says that he’s being followed.  Halfheartedly the kid lets himself get pulled through streets and alleys, and until he realizes that his life is in danger does he actually show any concern, but by that time it’s too late.  A strange but beautiful girl comes at the runaway guy from nowhere and tries to shoot him with some energy blast, only to hit Tsutomu and end up killing him.

Or…does she?  As it turns out, and this is where the show goes Ranma ½ meets Nuku Nuku the Cat Girl, the boy’s dead body is joined with that of the woman, who is really an alien from another universe named Birdy.  She’s basically some kind of intergalactic police officer, and she’s hot on the trail of this evil babe named Miss Revi.

Obviously we get into some humorous situations with Tsutomu discovering that he can transform into a girl and she into him when she desires to, but since the alternative was death he doesn’t have too many complaints with the deal at the present time.  But once Miss Revi’s evil psychic monsters start running loose, Tsutomu suddenly discovers that death is a more appeasing option.  These beasts come in the form of monster slime dogs that attack in the garbage and are allergic to dish washer fluid, man like robots called Arkazoids that kick serious booty, a wiggy frog-like guy who’s really human, and so on.  All of these are pretty short work for Birdy who is nothing short of Supergirl, but even she needs some assistance and advice from Tsutomu from time to time, and in her own stubborn way grows to like and accept him for it.

The show tries really hard to have a balance of humor between all of the action, which is nice though it doesn’t always work.  The funniest elements of the show are Tsutomu’s family who are just plain silly and actually are quite funny in their believability, and some of the aspects of Birdy and Tsutomu’s character.  Birdy plays tricks on him, like controlling his body to make him hug a girl he likes though he’s too shy.  Mostly they just heckle each other, which is funny often, at least it is in the Japanese version which is the only version I own.

This show would have worked nicely into a longer series to give it more time to develop these characters and the events that take place within the story, but unfortunately this is only a four part OAV, which basically makes it seem like a 2 hour movie.  There’s a lot that is left out in the open and unanswered, there are story plots that had potential to go places and obviously were designed to should a sequel have been produced, but one never was to my knowledge, so for me there are still many questions that linger in my head when I see it.

We are led to believe in the form of flashbacks that the evil Revi is responsible for the death of someone very dear to Birdy, but who the person is, why they’re important to Birdy and even how they died exactly are left unexplained, and it’s the things like that that make Birdy somewhat frustrating to watch if you actually care about storyline.

There’s a reason I would rate this a hard PG-13, though the American distributor did not have a rating for this.  The language is actually the least thing of concern from what I recall, though from time to time something slips in.  The real reason is violence and nudity.  The violence gets a bit on the extreme side in some rare cases, though not in actual physical harm to Birdy or Tsutomu. All of Birdy’s action could be recycled from every episode of Sailor Moon and Ultraman you’ve ever seen, with just about as much hurt to her as in those shows.  Mostly it comes from gross images like morphing monsters, humans turning into terrible creatures and getting REALLY funky in the process.

From memory, I recall a man turning into a bug in a brief flashback and his brain explodes for all to see.  Brief, but one of those “EW!” moments.  The main male bad buy through the series gets buffed up, and similarly his body freaks out over it and he bulges into something of a tamer standard I imagine to Akira, where his body is globular and splurting blood all over the place.  Scenes like that are what make the violence factor one serious to consider, though thankfully they are few and far between.

As for nudity, there is no male nudity save for some close cut-arounds early on and one butt shot of Tsutomu running from the shower.  Birdy, however, get plenty of butt looking, though strangely less boob. In the first two episodes she gets naked quite a bit here and there, but after that it disappears to practically nil if anything at all.  Not a bad factor in this series, but they play her up as the scantily clad heroine she is.  The worst sex factor is this perv at Tsutomu’s school who brings hentai magazines with him EVERY DAY to show the kid, and ALL feature a hot momma touching her own exposed privates that he tries to push on our hero.  Thankfully Tsutomu proves to be a little above that, but probably only because he wants to be boyfriend to a shy girl in his class.

That, and he DOES have a woman living in his body, who sees everything he does.  That might cause anybody to change their behavior, I suppose!

In all, this anime was enjoyable and fun to watch, but it just left you feeling incomplete in the end, like it could have gone places but was not given enough of a chance.  Other than that it had a fair balance between light and dark moments, though supremely it was meant to be dark and action oriented.  The creative talents on this title were Yoshiaki Kawajiri, the creator of Demon City and Ninja Scroll, Yutaka Izubiki of Record of Lodoss War, and others.  Having seen Demon City and hated it, and having heard Ninja Scroll was an abomination, I rather feared this would be a MUCH blacker feature when I popped it in the old VCR later at home.  Lodoss War I liked, but it was still dark.  This four episode OAV was NO WHERE near as bad as Demon City Shinjuku, and it’s a credit to the team that collaborated on it.  It has some dark moments similar to those others, but nowhere near as graphic or mentally scarring.

Not a great title by any means, especially since it’s just recycling the old “gender switching superhero” idea, but if you’re bored and want a decent action anime with just a little humor and no overboard objectionable stuff, this is not your worst choice.