Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Project A-Ko 3

August 30, 2004 on 10:23 pm | In Plastic Little | Comments Off on Project A-Ko 3

This is better. It’s not hilarious, but it’s kind of nice to watch.
Project A-ko 3 is about A-ko taking a job in order to pay off C-ko’s debts over the holidays, or something like that, and falling in love with a biker who actually loves C-ko. Of course, because A-ko loves this guy, Kei, B-ko has to have a piece of him, too. That’s all this is about, but the key is that it doesn’t aim too high.

Firstly, there’s some stunning originality here: for the first time in what seems like forever, the burger place does not in any way look like McDonald’s. The intro is a totally unexpected sepia toned pool tournament which turns out to be both quite stylish and also C-ko’s ultimate fantasy. I suppose there’s got to be something to the girl. There’s also a funny but ultimately pointless mobilisation sequence. It’s more than forgiveable by virtue of its coolness and the sapphic nudity encountered along the way (at this point, you may curse this DVD’s uncappable nature). B-ko’s mission makes some sense, and the treatment of her gang was actually pretty cool this time around. Hayashibara Megumi even gets a couple of grunts out of her role as fat girl Ume.
The true highlight is A-ko’s fashion show, which shows some rare visual creativity.

The production values are significantly better than its predecessor, employing actual colours, and containing an insert song performed by the A-ko, B-ko and C-ko trio. The ED song (which might not be an ED at all, as it was set to footage of from Project A-ko 2) fares less well as it’s an English language song by Bébe. Hot Hot Hurricane and so on. It doesn’t make much sense and isn’t very eighties. The rest of the music was mercifully recycled from Project A-ko or was simply not bad at all.
The translation isn’t perfect, in one major regard that I could see. Firstly it translated “cola” as “coke”. The important part was that it made a joke less funny, translating B-ko’s “My first man” into “My first love“. B-ko is at her most “sexual” in this OVA, which admittedly isn’t very sexual but the strongest admission of her leanings you’re ever likely to find.

After Project A-ko 3 came, unsurprisingly, Project A-ko 4 – but thereafter came Project A-ko the Versus: an alternate reality series about bounty hunters. Yes, this series quite clearly lasted forever. This effort may be light, but at least it’s there.