Plastic Little

The Adventures of Captain Tita

Review by Matthew Anderson

1 Shot OVA

Company: ADV Films

Running Time: 60 minutes (1 episode)

Region: 1

Rated: R (Violence, language and nudity)

EXTERNAL EXAM

Tita is the captain of the Cha Cha Maru, a pet shop hunter. With her motley crew, they search the seas for exotic pets and stick their noses in where they are not wanted.

On one such occasion, Tita has rescued a young woman named Elysse from sinister government forces. The frightened girl tells Tita that her father has developed a new gravity generator. If it is used for evil, it can destroy the world.

Not willing to let anyone harm her new friend, Tita and the crew wage war against the superior military forces of the evil Lord Guizel!

DVD VISION TEST

VIDEO: The quality is excellent. You can make out the details of every single lovely body in this anime. There are no pixels or errors noted. The colors are solid, and the motion, fluid.

AUDIO: The Japanese 2.0 and the English 2.0 are pretty evenly matched. There isn't a lot of directionality with most of the sound coming from the center speakers.

EDITS: The Japanese credits, with the exception of the main title, have been replaced with English credits.

EXTRAS: There is some storyboard and sketch artwork, and some trailers, but nothing to get really excited about. Well, except maybe the Jiggle Counter.

WIDESCREEN REVIEW

STORY: Do you like the old exploitation films of Andy Sidaris? Well then, Plastic Little will be right up your alley. The series planned by Masaki Sawanobori and Mitshisa Hida is nothing more than "tits and guns". Move along, there is no plot to be found here.

ACTING: The Japanese dub is decent. No one really stands out, but they all do their parts like you would imagine.

The English dub isn't much better. The only one who did a half way decent job was Spike Spencer. Amanda Winn, normally a solid actor, is a little weak in the delivery. Also, everyone's Russian or British accents keep slipping in and out.

FAN SERVICE: Tons. I would say about 25% of the movie is fan service, with bouncing bust lines, near total nudity, and panty clad asses. The fact that many of the ships are similar to ones in "Yamato" is incidental.

FINAL EXAM

"Plastic Little" is one of, if not the one that put ADV on the map back in the early days. Showing that animation was more than just "Mickey mouse" crap, Plastic Little went on to be a fan favorite, and will continue to be for many years to come.

It's too bad that it really doesn't deserve to be.

It's not that Plastic Little is bad, it's just not that good. With the exception of the high quality animation, and artistic designs of Satoshi Urushihara, there is noting new or original about this show. Back in the early 90's, sure it was new, even different. It fit right in with ADV's reputation of the best place to find "T&A Anime". Today, among the anime savvy (of which I count myself), this kind of pedestrian stuff doesn't make that much of a lasting impression. It's place in history is only solidified because of the large amount of fan service and that it was part of the "Golden Age" of anime.

Ahhh yes, the fan service. How lovely it is. You get to see both Tita and Elysse bare-assed neked! I wish all pointless exposition was done in the buff. Oh, we are being chased by the government. That's a perfect time to take a bath and compare boobs. If they had thrown in some lesbian action, we could have had one of the best hentai titles out there! Oh well.

While I get the reason why ADV released this title as part of "Essential Anime" collection, I really don't feel Plastic Little is that essential. Just because it has a 5.1 Dolby track of an okay English dub isn't a reason to pick it up. Even at the $20 MSRP, I would have a hard time picking this one up, now that I have seen it.

While the animation and character designs are excellent, there isn't really anything else about Plastic Little that excites me. With so many titles that are a hell of a lot more interesting, think long and hard about this one.

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