Today's Mystery Meat is "Melty Lancer". I downloaded it to get bonus points.

Turns out to be a science fiction series from Gonzo with lots of combat by six super-powerful women. They were some sort of special combat unit, or law enforcement unit, or something but the unit was disbanded a year previously. Now there's some sort of major threat.

A guy named Collins is pulled out of a cell in a high security prison by three political bigwigs who tell him they'll release him, if he takes command of a reunited Melty Lancer for one mission. Having nothing better to do, he accepts, but other than that he isn't really a factor in the first episode.

He's assigned an aide, a wimpy guy (you can tell because he's wearing glasses) who has been sent out to collect all the women who are scattered hell-and-gone around the galaxy. And he manages to do so early enough in the episode so that there's time for them to engage in a major battle.

I'm sure that the wimp has the same voice actor as Pyoro in Vandread, but it's not listed in that seiyuu's CV on ANN. It would help if I knew what the wimp's name was but I don't think they ever said.

Collins has the same voice as Samson in Banner of the Stars. I didn't really recognize any of the women's voices, though.

The art was mediocre and the animation pretty standard. Little or no fan service that I noticed. The voice acting was a bit over the top. Generally pretty forgettable and after one ep I am not really tempted to watch any more of it, even though there's a loli mahoutsukai and a loli catgirl in the group.

I guess there's a reason few people are seeding this one. Right now there are only two of us.

UPDATE: Today's series was going to be "Girl from Phantasia", but damn. I got five minutes into it and couldn't force myself to watch any more. The pain...

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Mystery Meat at 05:22 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 Girl from Phantasia was the pilot for a TV series that never eventuated.  Now you know why.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 11, 2009 11:28 PM (PiXy!)

2 Oh, brother, do I. Even just in those five minutes, I could tell that it was completely derivative. There wasn't anything original about it at all.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 12, 2009 03:24 AM (+rSRq)

3 I watched a couple of episodes of Melty Lancer back in 2001 or so. It was sort of amusing and I was open to continue. But it was before the strict no-GONZO policy.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at October 18, 2009 05:30 PM (/ppBw)

4 By the way, I'm 100% ok with derivative shows. The real fault line is in the show's quality, and not being derivative. For all that's said about RahXephon being a clone of EVA, I found it much better made and far more enjoyable.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at October 18, 2009 07:31 PM (/ppBw)

5 I tried watching RahXephon for more or less that reason.  Found I lost all interest after two eps.  I suspect this was because I was more in a TTGL, Nanoha mood, as far as my anime tastes went.  Maybe I'll give it a try sometime.

Or maybe I'll just rewatch Nanoha. 

Posted by: metaphysician at October 18, 2009 07:45 PM (M5Kik)

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