December 26, 2009

Mystery Meat -- Ultimate Girls

Man, there have been some utterly shitty anime produced based on low "high concepts", you know that? Today's mystery meat is "Ultimate Girls", and the pitch went this way:

"It's a show about three gorgeous high school girls who become super heroes and can grow to giant size to fight monsters like Godzilla, only we can't use Godzilla because it's trademarked, so we'll create our own. After twenty or thirty seconds of becoming giants, the girls' costumes start dissolving, right in front of the entire city of Tokyo."

OK, that's good for 12 15-minute episodes, right? WRONG!

I tell you, the first episode of that was painful to watch. The hook is that Tokyo is constantly being invaded by giant creatures, and it has been defended by a giant called UFO Man. In response to the latest attacker, which looks like Godzilla's retarded younger brother, he flies in. And accidentally lands on the three girls, killing them.

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Well, can't have that. He manages to retrieve their souls, somehow or other, and transfers most of his own power into them, restoring them to life. Sounds like Birdy the Mighty, doesn't it? Or UFO Princess Valkyrie, for that matter.

When he did that, he himself lost the ability to become a giant. So the girls have to take over defending the city.

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I say "girls"; in the first episode it was only Silk who did it. And indeed eventually her entire costume melted away, leaving her stark naked. At which point she started screaming, and a bright glow covered her, struck the Godzilla-alike, and broke it into pieces. Then she shrunk. Her original clothes didn't reappear, either, having been ripped to shreds when she grew. Fortunately, one of her friends happened to have just bought a cosplay costume and had it with her, so Silk was able to wear that.

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The show is loaded with Freudian symbols. After the three girls come back to life, the way that Silk grows to a giant is to grab a phallic looking appendage coming out of the bottom of UFO-man's itty bitty ship. And when she does, he flies above her and drips a whole bunch of glowing white energy on her, and I do mean "drips". Once she's entirely covered, it soaks into her and the henshin sequence begins. Eeew!

I'm not even slightly curious about the rest of it. One episode was enough!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Mystery Meat at 09:21 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 405 words, total size 3 kb.

1 I got through two or three episodes.  It doesn't improve.

I have no problem with the basic concept, but the execution was lacking in every respect.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at December 26, 2009 11:02 PM (PiXy!)

2 I just looked it up, and it's the same director as "Green Green".

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 26, 2009 11:22 PM (+rSRq)

3 Ah.  We need to set up an anti-recommendation system.  If you loathed Show X, you will probably also hate...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at December 26, 2009 11:26 PM (PiXy!)

4 The phallic imagery in Sorakake was what I thought somewhat heavy-handed, but this is on a different level. Look at the mud-colored guy from the back.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at December 27, 2009 10:46 AM (/ppBw)

5 I don't want to!!!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 27, 2009 01:15 PM (+rSRq)

6 Look at the Godzilla-clone in the 3rd pic.... where is he pointing that tusk?

Posted by: ubu at December 27, 2009 06:23 PM (ne7wq)

7

'Fraid not. The still frame is deceptive; in action there's a camera move that makes clear that he's a long way away and isn't looking at her.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 27, 2009 08:58 PM (+rSRq)

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