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SUMMARY

Earth has been invaded by another race of mysterious aliens.  To avoid the wholesale slaughter, mankind has built underwater cities to regroup and come up with a plan.  Now, 100 years after the appearance of the Space Emigrants, humans are running out of DNA, options, and worst of all, people.  Now the fate of the world rests on the outcome of the Angel Project.

Dr. Crimpt’s inventions, the Angels are the only weapons that may have any success against the Space Emigrants and their robot army hordes.  For Voogie, being built for combat is just fine. Along with Rebecca, Shiori, Merrybell, and Midi, Voogie will lead her Angels and defeat the aliens and reclaim the Earth. But can Voogie’s Angels defeat the technologically superior Space Emigrants?  Strap into the hyper combat vehicle Strikemyer and get ready for some of the most exciting immigration and naturalization action the world has ever seen. Got your green card?

DVD VISION TEST

VIDEO: The video is good with no color bleeds or aliasing noted.  Originally produced in 1997, Voogie’s Angel is basically all cell animation.  There were only a few scenes that used early CG, although you’d have to be watching for it to notice.  The only thing I found lacking in the video was how dark the underwater battle scenes are, but that’s more from the original animation versus the video transfer.

AUDIO:  Both language tracks sound good.  The English track sounds crisper and has more dynamic volume than the Japanese track; however, this is sometimes not a good thing.  The English track also had more stereo separation than the Japanese track, which was basically all center channel.  Neither track is listed as Dolby, but either track sounds good, and that’s what counts.

EDITS: The Japanese opening and closing titles have been replaced with English titles, as have the episode titles.  The ending credits have been omitted on episodes 1, 3, and 5, just like the VHS release.  No edits to the episodes have been noted.

EXTRAS: I look at bonus or omake content as additional information from the main story.  Sadly, there is no omake content on this DVD, clean opening and closing segments would have sufficed quite well.  There are trailers for other titles, but they don’t count.

WIDESCREEN REVIEW
STORY: Aliens attack the Earth simply to extinguish the vile existence of man, because man cannot keep things clean.  Gather five heroines and save the world.

Stereotypical, trite, in Voogie’s Angel you have both and some nagging mystery (read this as lots of unanswered questions).  

The interestingly sad thing about Voogie’s Angel is that it was originally a radio drama spanning 23 episodes.  If you had listened to the radio dramas, the story would make a lot more sense, and there wouldn’t be so many nagging questions.  You would also understand each character more, and have a deeper understanding of their personalities. 

ACTING:  The seiyuu in Voogie’s should be familiar to most fans of original language anime.  One might even call Voogie’s a Ah Megami-sama reunion…  In the role of Voogie is Hisakawa Aya, better known as Skuld.  Voicing the role of Shiori is Inoue Kikuko, who you may recall voicing Belldandy.  Teddy is voiced by Touma Yumi, better known as Urd.  These seiyuu do a fine job voicing their roles, as one may expect; however, even with veteran seiyuu Mitsuishi Kotono (Sailor Moon), the acting in Voogie’s isn’t enough to make up for the rest of the shows shortfalls.

The English cast does a fair job in Voogie’s; however, given the script they had to work with, each actor never had a chance to grasp their character.  The big disappointment was Voogie’s voice actor, Amy Tipton, who always seemed to be growling from her throat.  But the worst part of the dub was Rick Forrester as the voice of Strikemyer.  I’m not saying that Mr. Forrester did a bad job, but his lines coupled with his characterization of the ship was something that had me cringing.

FAN SERVICE: There is fan service in Voogie’s once you make your way past episode 2.  However, even episode 3 flashes through a lot of information very quickly, and leaves you with too many questions.

Basically the compression of the story into only 3 episodes means that if you’ve seen a lot of anime, you can predict the next scene. 

Ecchi:  Now there is plenty of ecchi content in Voogie’s.  Remember, too much clothing only slows you down in fights.

CONCLUSION:

Visually speaking, I liked Voogie’s Angel.  The cell animation was nice to watch amidst today’s CG heavy productions.  But beyond enjoying the cell animation, sitting back and watching these three episodes had me asking a lot of questions.  It was painfully apparent that there was something missing from the story.  Basically any real background information at all.  Sure you had the narration in the beginning of episode 1 explaining the arrival of the Space Emigrants, and the fate of the human race, but who is Dr. Crimpt?  And who are the Angels?  Sure, you know their names, you recognize each one’s stereotypical personality, but there’s no depth.  No, it’s not that I didn’t like Voogie’s Angel per se, it was just a very frustrating show to watch.  It reminded me too much of watching Burn Up W, and was disappointing because there wasn’t a series to look forward to, like Burn Up Excess. 

You know I don’t like to spoil.  If you’re going to watch Voogie’s, here’s a few things you should know.  Voogie is 15 years old.  Simply knowing this fact explains her willful and energetic personality.  Rebecca, the heavy hitter of the group is 19, and has the most cybernetic enhancements.  This is why Rebecca can wield a weapon twice her height!  Shiori is 17, explaining why she’s more mature than Voogie or 16 year old Merrybell.  Now you may be wondering about the Hyper Combat Vehicle Strikemyer.  One thing that was never explained in the OAV’s is that Strikemyer’s affinity for Voogie comes from his personality, which is his human core, Myer.  Think of Strikemyer as a really big and oddly shaped cyborg, like Voogie and the girls, and it’ll start to make sense.

The first two episodes of Voogie’s are pretty standard fare; however, the third episode is actually very good.  Aside from reusing “black and white” flashbacks, and the typical ending, episode three illustrates just how good Voogie’s could have been.  It is dramatic, has plenty of fan service information, and is quite worth waiting to see.  I will mention here that in episode three there are scenes that some people may find rather disturbing.  The reason I’ve bumped the rating up to 16+ is because of episode three.  But even with everything right in episode three, time takes it’s toll and the episode hurries to a predictable conclusion.  

Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of Voogie’s Angel is that it seems to illustrate just why anime has gone from cell to CG.  With such a huge cast, I can’t help thinking that budget constraints are what limited Voogie’s to only three episodes.  Even one more episode would have allowed much needed character and story development.  

The acting in the show was excellent; however, the best part of the production is the opening theme, More and More It’s a Radical Fight, performed by the main seiyuu, and the closing theme for episode 2, Five Seconds Before the Tears, performed by Midi’s seiyuu, Tange Sakura. 

All in all, after doing some research to fill some of the empty spaces created by the OAV, I liked Voogie’s Angel.  Voogie’s is definitely not complete as an OAV, and the DVD is sorely lacking any information at all to help alleviate this.  But as a die-hard fan of anime, Voogie’s Angel passes muster, barely.  At least for Voogie, one out of three is enough.  

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