Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Project A-Ko 2

August 19, 2004 on 6:29 pm | In Project A-Ko | Comments Off on Project A-Ko 2

Let us, for one moment, attempt a metaphor: Consider an orange. Run this orange through a juicer – what you get is the nourishing juice, and the empty, soulless remains of the orange. Project A-Ko 2 is that orange. After the slightly tart fun of the first film, comes the first of three yearly OVA sequels. It’s not bad, it’s just not anything.

Three weeks or so after the events of the first OVA, the aliens have turned their crashed ship into a luxury spot to pay for repairs to return to their home planet. Meanwhile, B-ko’s father is hired by the government to destroy the ship, while he wants to claim the technology for himself. Incidentally, A-ko, B-ko and C-ko are there. Then it ends in exactly the same way as the original, despite not having had any of the character experience to bring it there.

Project A-ko feels like a blank fifty minutes. There are a few surprise cameos by characters from Wings of Honneamise and a few other projects, but there are no real visual gags, A-ko, B-ko and C-ko don’t actually get to do anything. Mari sadly gets no dialogue, which was what made her a complete character originally, and D and the Captain wear dresses, which just isn’t funny.
Also, there’s no American eighties pop soundtrack. On the plus side, the ED song is pretty good and has some creditable English rhymes (“Baby, feel my inspiration/and baby, take my invitation”)

It’s hard to criticise something that’s neither fun or painful. Project A-ko 2 is an unworthy successor to the measured insanity of the original. Director Moriyama took the interestingly crumpled shirt of Project A-ko and ironed it.
Final analogy: It’s like someone took the Shroud of Turin and decided to clean it up. Project A-ko 2 isn’t bland simply by comparison to its predecessor; it’s just bland in general.