My Deer Friend Nokotan ep1
Seen some quite divided opinions on this one, but having gone into it with no great expectations, I thought it was endearingly (sorry) daft. There’s not much else this season that appeals to me, so I’ll likely stick with it.
Cleopatra DC (1989)
Not to be confused with Blaxploitation favourite
Cleopatra Jones (as I keep doing for some reason), this 3-part adaptation of a Kaoru Shintani manga sees the jetsetting young head of a multinational corporation using her power and influence to tackle various criminal misdeeds, all of which seem suspiciously linked to a rival company. Now that we have reached the terrifying future of 2024, it’s a little hard not to think that Cleo’s immense wealth and apparent sway with world powers puts her in much the same position as the baddies in a
Call of Duty game, but this is all quite genteel, and seems heavily influenced by glossy American adventure shows of the late 70s. The overall effect is a bit like someone spun Hideo Kojima around until he was dizzy, then got him to watch
Charlie’s Angels and
Hart to Hart on repeat.
It’s a little hard to know how seriously the show wants you to take it at times (attempts to build tension towards the high stakes finale in episode 3 are undercut by an admittedly very funny running gag, for example) and, in the pantheon of Shintani things which are not
Area 88, I liked this a little less than the grittier, tighter focused
Desert Rose, but it’s an appealing bit of escapist nonsense that doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Goku: Midnight Eye OVA
I think this is the first one where I didn’t enjoy it all that much.
I get that. Considering that it’s Kawajiri adapting a Buichi Terasawa manga, I was surprised at how middling the end result was. I did get a laugh out of the villains’ nefarious plan boiling down to ‘let’s give everyone bird flu’ though, and I think there’s a cheeky reference to what else was in production at Madhouse at the time, given that ‘808’ is displayed very prominently on a container in one shot…
