Tatakae! Iczer-1

One of the most difficult things involving Anime is what to show someone who hasn't seen one before. Many suggestions come to mind, but most of those are probably dozens upon dozens of episodes long and most people don't have that kind of time and the shows themselves are usually genre specific. So, what can you show someone that more or less covers all the bases of Anime but is short enough to watch in one sitting? I submit "Fight!! Iczer-1"

Based off the manga "Golden Warrior Iczer-One" and brought to us by the studio AIC, known perhaps best for "Tenchi Muyou", this 3 act OVA has so many staples and tropes of Japanese Anime both of it's own 1980s origins and even the modern pieces of today, that it serves as a wonderful orientation for what to expect from the most popular animation in the world today. Even for those initiated already it's an enjoyable little title with some unique twists and turns and a retro charm.

The plot can be best boiled down to this: an alien being known as Iczer One has come to Earth and chosen a human girl named Nagisa to be her partner to fight an evil force known as Big Gold and the alien forces soon to arrive to take over the planet. It seems Nagisa is the key to powering Iczer One's counterpart Iczer Robo, a giant robot, with enough energy to successfully vanquish the foes they face. This leads to some wonderful action sequences involving mechs, monsters, hand-to-hand combat, laser sword combat, and some very unsuccessful assists from the Japanese military as they attempt to fight the invaders. If you've seen any Godzilla movie, you know how well that turns out.

The whole experience feels like a dozen episodes boiled down into 3. Meaning there is very little time for character development but it also doesn't dilly dally. Things move quickly and pretty well considering how many questions one probably has with so much going on. I'm not someone who needs to know why everything is happening and everyone's motivations, so I was more than keen to enjoy the show. Beyond featuring things similar to mechs, magical girls, and ecchi fan service, there are some genuinely creepy moments with monsters and lots of gore making it a mature experience and certainly not something for the kids and definitely NSFW.

Even though it's from the mid-1980s, the art itself isn't too bad. It's definitely got that VHS feel to it, but it holds up well and features a very brass-heavy soundtrack of uplifting heroic fight music that is indicative of the genre and the time. I was somewhat reminded of "Doctor Who" at times with the situation of an alien showing up to Earth and a poor innocent girl being snatched up into the chaos and adventure that is saving the world, but I think even The Doctor is more gentle than Iczer One in some cases. You definitely feel for Nagisa at times, though I can't help but think they did a better job giving depth to the bad guys than the heroes. The first two featured, Cobalt amd Sepia, are lovers and when the first one falls, the other is quite devastated and you feel sympathy for her. Something Anime is often good at, giving us villains with understandable motivations.

While "Fight!! Iczer-1" is a good bit of fun, it doesn't deliver anything ground breaking for the time or even since then. Having only seen the English dub, the voice acting leaves A LOT to be desired. Weak performances all around. Very Fox Kids quality. And just as your starting to enjoy yourself, the whole thing ends. Yet with an odd feeling of having had enough. That more would have been too much. I was happy that it ended sooner rather than later. This could have been a wonderful backdoor pilot for a longer series, but it works well as what it is. A modestly entertaining R-rated Anime. Quintessentially 80s with lots of gore, nudity, and mindless action but with enough care to the characters that it salvages itself from being mindless.

I recommend this to anyone interested in starting Japanese Anime but also for anyone just in the mood for an old-school bit of fun. A solid 6/10. Check it out. Cheers!

This is one of my favorite movies ever!

Now, I'm not such a big anime fan, but the compelling story is a masterpiece in and of itself. I think what a lot of anime fans don't like or seems to ordinary about the film is due to the fact that it was one of the first to be translated to English. As such, a lot of the elements in the movie are seen in other anime. The plot is something that would give Lovecraft nightmares (A lot of the bioweapon beasts are an homage to Lovecraft,IMHO)

The suspense and horror are nicely accentuated by the musical score.

But of course, I'm highly biased. I've dedicated my entire back, in the form of a tattoo, to this series :P

Great characters and kinetic action sequences make up for a ludicrous story in the classic OVA series Fight! Iczer-One. A race of alien lesbians has come to conquer Earth, and all that stand in their way are the elfin warrior Iczer-One and her schoolgirl partner, Nagisa. Iczer-One's evil sister, Iczer-Two, steals all of the scenes she's in.

In this series, the giant robots are powered by young girls who must enter the cockpits nude. Director Hirano used this idea again when he made the Rayearth OVAs.

Followed by the much cuter Adventure! Iczer-3 and Iczelion. The first series had a darker edge to it.

Iczer One was one of the very first anime I became aware of. In my early teen years I even bought a copy of it on laserdisk, even though there was no English track--just the original Japanese.

Watching it much later in English I came to love the mood and story of this underrated film. Ultimately Fight! Iczer One is about a self-fulfilling prophecy coming true. An all-female alien race known as the Cthuwulf search the stars in a sleeper ship made from the wreckage of their home world. Their matriarch, Violet sits at the command couch looking out at space. In that moment she thinks "...my children shall die out here in space, and never find a true home". Unbeknowst to her, her ship has passed into the influence of a massive machine built to grant the wishes of its users. Suddenly a strange creature appears, Big Gold, a golden child in a crystal orb with glowing red eyes. It tells Violet that her wish is granted, and she hopes this means her people will be given a new home.

The entity joins itself to the Cthuwulf ship, bonding its essence with everything in it. Violet becomes Sir Violet, now draped in ominous black robes, with the glowing red eyes and masculine voice of Big Gold, while the child manifestation of the machine gains a feminine aspect, growing long golden hair and a more girlish appearance. Likewise the vediim, creatures that have long lived alongside the Cthuwulf, have become horrible parasitic creatures, made wretched by the influence of Big Gold. Now bioweapons, the vidiim implant hosts with eggs laid by large green tipped ovipositor tentacles, from which the alien takes over the host body until the time is right and it rips its way horribly through the host's flesh.

Big Gold indeed takes the Cthuwulf to a new home world, Earth. The vidiim descend to decimate the populace, but in fulfillment of Violet's wish, her children are destined to die before they can inherit it. In the style of a Shakespearian tragedy the Cthuwulf reduce Earth to ashes, but then are stopped by another manifestation of the Machine, a Yin to the Yang of Big Gold--a golden haired warrior woman named Iczer-1. Unstoppable, she singlehandedly carries out the wish as Big Gold's opposite. As Big Gold joined with Violet as a synchronization partner, she seeks out a human girl named Nagisa Kanao--but the girl does not want to fight, and will not synchronize with Iczer-1.

Amidst giant mecha battles and huge scale lightsaber melees on the streets of post-apocalyptic Tokyo, the fate set in motion by Violet's wish counts down like a timer until Iczer-1 is brought into the presence of Big Gold and the truth of their co-joined purpose is finally revealed. A wonderful story.

The downsides? Well the music, for one is awful poppy electronic stuff. The "Iczer-2 theme" has a nice jazzy riff to it, but other than that it's just bad. Likewise the battle pacing is a bit cheesy. The monsters seem paralyzed in "menace the heroine" mode forever without actually -doing- anything, as if waiting for Iczer-1 to show up and kill them. Likewise the power scale is so ludicrous and Iczer-1 seems so unkillable for most of the show, that the Dragonball-esquire fighting makes it hard to really feel any tension. The English dubbing is likewise terrible, killing a lot of the emotion that drips from the voices in the Japanese and making some of the best scenes play a bit cheesy.

On the other hand, the mood of the story is unrelenting and awesomely bleak. The story is wonderful, though it takes watching the show several times before everything makes sense. The characters are deep and their losses are heart-wrenching. On the whole a really great story.