Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko – Episodes one to three

April 9, 2004 on 11:15 pm | In Yamamoto Yohko | Comments Off on Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko – Episodes one to three

I’m growing tired of silly OVAs. This is the second OVA starring Hayashibara Megumi to have disappointed me in a row.

Basically, for reasons inexplicable an engineer travels 1000 years into the past to pick up high school girls to fly ships to compete for mining contracts. In the first episode they pick the fourth girl for the squadron, then in the second they have reached the end of their season and decide that they deserve a break. In the third, something kind of good happens, but why?

Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko is totally without substance. It’s true that there have been other things to lack substance before this, but some of them had redeeming features. This OVA gave me nothing to think about or to enjoy – the space dogfights were essentially all the same and animated in a way that suggested inertia. Although that’s not terribly accurate: there was essentially one fight and nineteen that were alluded to – all of them glorious victories!
There was no threat of anything, the characterisation was almost non-existent (and poor Hayashibara Megumi played the fall girl) and the fan service was weak. Very weak.
It’s a shame that Shake It, one of Okui Masami’s greatest songs, was wasted on this. The third episode had some kind of good content, but it sprang from nowhere. Just roses in space.

There are another three episodes on the disc – Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko II – which seems to be an alternate universe retelling. They say it’s better. And it would have to be. Yamamoto Yohko was a lame series with no reason behind it and one truly hilarious joke.