Figure 17: Tsubasa & Hikaru

Tsubasa Shiina is a 10-year-old girl who recently moved to Hokkaido to live with her father. In school, she is very quiet and unsociable with her classmates. Then one night, she witnesses a UFO crash in the forest near her home. She rushes to the scene and finds the pilot, codenamed "D.D.", in a barely stable condition. Also in the scene is a Maguar, a hideous alien that hatched aboard D.D.'s ship. As the Maguar is close to taking Tsubasa's life, an alien lifeform fuses with her body to form the Riberus battle armor Figure 17, which shortly destroys the alien threat. The life form takes the name Hikaru and turns into an identical twin of Tsubasa. As time passes, Tsubasa becomes more open to everyone around her, thanks to her new twin sister Hikaru. However, with Maguar eggs scattered all over Hokkaido, their ability to form Figure 17 is needed to eliminate all hatched Maguars until backup from D.D.'s home planet arrives on Earth.

(Source: ANN)

Shiina, Tsubasa Main

Yajima, Akiko Japanese

Shiina, Hikaru Main

Orikasa, Fumiko Japanese

Figure 17 Main

Yajima, Akiko Japanese

Domoto, Daisuke Main

Koyama, Rikiya Japanese

Oldina Supporting

Inoue, Kikuko Japanese

Karasawa, Asuka Supporting

Yuzuki, Ryouka Japanese

Hibino, Akiko Supporting

Katou, Yuuko Japanese

Ibaragi, Shinichi Supporting

Ookawa, Tooru Japanese

Sawada, Mina Supporting

Kugimiya, Rie Japanese

Tenmaru Supporting

Oosawa, Nobuhiro Producer

Nakamura, Naoki Producer

Takahashi, Naohito Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation, Chief Animation Director

Watanabe, Jun Sound Director

Reviews

Jan 19, 2026

zettai-jin-stray

Recommended

The overall story is as thin as a shoestring, and long like one too, with its belabored duration. Without checking who did series composition, it has the feel of being written by someone not accustomed to SF. When I look at the studio, director, and art director I can’t say SF is at all typical for them. But a lot of this anime is cozy Hokkaido farm town and school activities, greatly realized with Shichiro Kobayashi’s background paintings. While the SF side of the anime is lacking, other than the monster designs maybe, with not terribly interesting fights or characters (Daisuke and Oldina), there is ... a good pathos created from Tsubasa and Hikaru. It’s cozy not in a dissimilar way to ToHeart, the character designs sure look nice. The worst thing about this anime though is that it has probably five songs total in the soundtrack, and they’re repeated incessantly.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Oct 19, 2025

CosmicFusion

Recommended

Figure 17 is a hidden gem from the early 2000s that never got the recognition it deserved.

The story centers around a child Tsubasa Shiina who comes across a crashed alien spacecraft piloted by an injured spaceling named D.D. who was carrying creatures called Maguars. Tsubasa teams up with him along with her newly created clone "sister" of herself, Hikaru, to battle the remaining Maguars that have appeared on Earth. With that, Tsubasa now harnesses the power of titular 'Figure 17' with Hikaru. Just after that incident, Tsubasa now leads a double life, appearing as a regular grade schooler in public while secretly battling the Maguars ... behind the scenes. While Figure 17 comes across as mostly straightforward with its easy-to-follow story, it also handles timeless themes like coming-of-age, loss and tragedy, emotional connections, self-discovery, responsibilities, and searching for one's own identity very well.

Parallel to the title, Tsubasa and Hikaru are the focus and shocker, they're the best characters. The phrase "What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger" strongly reflects Tsubasa's journey and the trials and tribulations that she faces throughout the show. Tsubasa starts as a socially withdrawn, timid girl who's barely even able to communicate with her peers. Initially, her classmates also looked at her rather unfavorably as she's from the city who recently just moved. With Hikaru and their friends' support, she gradually becomes confident and independent. On the other hand, Hikaru is polar the opposite of Tsubasa. Extroverted, outgoing and more sociable, as compared to the introverted Tsubasa. Hikaru learns more about humanity and understand human emotion and bonds. Other supporting characters also take on respectable roles such as Mina and Asuka, and especially Shou who is crucial as a love interest for Tsubasa. Sakura gets an honorable mention toward both Tsubasa and Hikaru for showing a lesson on responsibility, despite her arc being relatively short. Meanwhile, D.D and Oldina are pivotal in the involvement of Tsubasa's darker side of life, sometimes helping them, giving instructions and providing technical know-hows to battle the invading aliens. Also, some of the characters names are like puns on itself, as if they were meant to serve a character's role. Tsubasa is often translated as 'wings' while Hikaru means 'light' in Japanese. So yeah, I'll let your imagination run wild with how you interpret their names here.

Now the show is obviously far from perfect. One of my gripes with this show is the 'brainwashing' gimmick that was presented early in the story, which felt like a lazy copout. It's where D.D memory altered several people into believing that Hikaru was actually Tsubasa's real sister, which is probably just a cheap way to avoid confrontation. But I'd preferred to see Tsubasa's family and friends come to terms that aliens actually existed. Perhaps we could've seen the show take a vastly different route, where they needed to hide the truth of Maguars and aliens from the public. Personally, this approach may have enhanced the show's overall potential. I can only surmise the silver lining is that this only further proves that both Tsubasa and Hikaru are true unsung heroes, saving the world - perhaps even the entire human race from an alien invasion, all in secret, without recognition or a hero's welcome. Their secret was nearly uncovered later by one man who singlehandedly finding out about the Maguar and alien invasion with his sleuthing.

My second gripe is that....well, get your popcorn ready and make yourselves comfortable - because Figure 17 is a slow burn. Each episode closing in near an hour, the 13 episode series packs roughly the same runtime as one that has 26 episodes of bog-standard 20 minute duration. In addition, Figure 17 routinely follow a monster-of-the-week structure, where Tsubasa and Hikaru do the DBZ fusion dance and fight the various Maguars that appear throughout each episode.

Now don't get me wrong - the fight scenes are decent-to-solid, but oddly enough, the slice-of-life moments is a double-edged sword as its both its major strengths and weakness of Figure 17. We see Tsubasa, Hikaru and her friends create meaningful memories together where they go fishing, herding cows, being involved in a class play and other activities as they experience the day-to-day affairs of school life as well as the countryside. These moments tend to play out slow, and but these are actually some of the show's biggest strengths, highlighting Tsubasa and Hikaru's growth and bond, along with their friends. But in a show driven by character interactions, the drama flows along naturally and doesn’t feel forced. Later, there's a turning point in the story where Tsubasa doesn't see Hikaru as her real sister, since she isn't actually a "human". Technically both.

This raises the question of what defines a "real" relationship? Does it require emotional connections exclusively among humans? Anyway, I’ll leave that for you to reflect on.

From a technical standpoint, OLM done a solid job at what they had at the time. Sure, Figure 17 indeed looks dated especially when compared to current day standards. It may lack the attention-grabbing, flashy moments often employed in modern anime, somehow it stands out thanks to its timeless 2000s artstyle, a nostalgic reminder of a bygone era. This is courtesy of Yuriko Chiba, who lent her design talents to cult classics such as To Heart and Steel Angel Kurumi.

Both OP and EDs were mostly usual fare J-rock performed by a not-so-well-known group called The Alfee. Both songs were nothing overly groundbreaking though I liked the OP "Boy" slightly better. The BGM that plays during the action scenes were decent as well.

Overall, Figure 17 was an adorable, heartfelt, character-driven story revolving around Tsubasa and Hikaru. The show handled the aforementioned themes very well. Now as much as I loved it, its not necessarily free from issues. The pacing felt glacial at times and the alien 'memory alteration' schtick come across as a convenient plot device, but nevertheless witnessing some of the character's personal growth felt rewarding, leaving a lasting and meaningful impression on me and that ending was simply bittersweet.

I recommend this show for people seeking emotional storytelling over flashy action. Your patience might be tested at times, but the payoff was worth it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jul 24, 2023

CaptainKenshiro

Recommended

Figure 17 is the cute story about a little girl who gets parasitized by an alien who takes her form, stays on her house, eats part of her food, pretends to be her twin, is part of the brainwash of her father to make him think he always had two daughters, becomes better than her at everything at school while becoming more popular there, and makes her fight against horrible dangerous monsters.

There’s this little precious Tsubasa Shiina, a shy and rather quiet girl with clear problems to socialize and lack of self-esteem partly because of the loss of her mother, her dad being away almost ... all day at work and almost absent for her, and because she recently moved on to a new place and school. She bumps into a crashed spaceship where some eggs of extraterrestrial monsters hatch and scatter over Hokkaido, they fed off of it and evolve that way. At the same time she accidentally fuses with an alien weapon/battle armor/life form thing to fight them, which out of battle takes her form, and thus she begins to live on her house as her new twin sister, Hikaru.

How is any of that cute you may ask? Because of the way it’s presented. Let’s clarify that this show is a cutesy and relaxing slice of life and coming of age story first, and a sci-fi action monster of the week series after. The focus is clearly placed on how Tsubasa no longer feels lonely thanks to her new more optimistic, energetic and extrovert sister who is always by her side, cares for her and encourages her to talk to others, get new friends, try more things, and be more confident with herself, while also fights alongside her and protects her from the aliens they face. Since their father is a baker and they live in a farm, the first thing they learn together is to make some breads and cakes and all that stuff, while also stuff about different animals, particularly cows. Then at school they go to class together, practice and compete in sports together, and rehearse and later star on a stage play together, that kind of usual stuff.

As the series goes on, however, after a tragic event, where the more cynical view of the situation which I began this review with gets acknowledged and addressed, and with the acknowledgment of their inevitable parting once all the monsters are defeated, both girls will be a little more apart of each other and Tsubasa will effectively learn to be more sufficient by herself and less dependent of Hikaru.

But how does the action sci-fi part of the show fits in? Well that’s the thing, initially it doesn’t, it feels tacked on and it even drops the overall quality of the show actually, since those monsters are just horrible things with zero dimensions of personality to them, which exist just to be killed on each episode. Not only that but the fights, despite having some battle choreography and strategies to them, usually start with alien policeman D.D getting defeated, and get resolved by Hikaru convincing Tsubasa to not be scared of the opponents, and they defeat them with one punch, even when the more experienced characters couldn’t win.

Fortunately this appear to have been realized on the writing room at some point, and as the show goes on, the monsters keep evolving and sharing information with the others, gaining new characteristics and forcing the heroes to face them together, form new strategies and use new weapons in order to win, by the end of the show no alien can be defeated by the girls all by themselves, they have to fight alongside the two veteran space police officers in order to win, even survive.

But that’s just an improvement action wise, how it ends up connecting with the main plot? Well, first, by having D.D and the later introduced other officer Oldina have a little, but very little, lives on Earth on their own as well while they gather information about their enemies. Second, by having them changing a little from their cold initial attitude to be more comprehensible and respectful of the things the two sisters go through the show, even letting them out of a few fights and having a few instances where they take the monsters on their own. Although short lived, it was a very welcomed change to have the two veteran space police officers be the ones to kill the aliens. Third, since the majority of the series is dedicated to the slice of life moments on Hokkaido, having all of the characters the girls interact with at stake as the show goes on, makes the following fights to be and feel important. And fourth, part of the growth Tsubasa goes through ends up playing a part as well, since it leads to an improvement on their way of fighting, and she even gets to save Hikaru at some point, an even more welcomed change.

Another way the writing tried to connect the two plot points with each other was with the presence of an investigator who realizes weird stuff is happening in the environment of Hokkaido, even appearing in the final battle. Although this portion of the show is necessary to understand the actual effects that the monsters have, it is universally considered filler, and to be honest everything regarding this character feel as such. Which is a shame since it is something very easy to solve, just have D.D and Oldina be the ones to investigate this stuff, they already use some pseudo-science to learn more stuff about their enemies, might as well have them look into what those monsters are doing to the Earth, that would help them in their own investigation, and give them more screen time to have a little more lives on their own on our planet, and thus have a bit more presence and character outside the action bits. Eventually this investigator ends up getting a catharsis, but like I said, everything about this character feels unnecessary and tacked on.

Another thing worth mentioning is the unexpected but welcomed lack of plot armor, especially with how many times D.D could have died but didn’t in the initial episodes. This I find to be positive, since despite being primarily a slice of life show, Figure 17 still has stakes, and having important characters dying permanently is the proper way to make said stakes feel real and their consequences important for not being taken away. And is not like the deaths come out of nowhere for shock effect, they are properly anticipated and it’s great that the series does not chickens out with them, even leading to a somewhat bittersweet ending.

To continue with the positives, I was surprised by the visual quality of the show, since it is a rather minor production from 2001. There are quality drops and characters go off model when seen from afar, and the designs are simple and generic, even very lookalike to what the designer would do later on Planetes, for example, but still the visuals are usually very good, very good special effects, very little and well rendered CGI for its time, in turn well mixed with the rest, and some of the most beautiful hand drawn backgrounds you’ll get to see on anime. The motions, though not always, are usually pretty good as well, and even the slice of life bits have vivid enough body language to not feel those bits as visually inferior.

As for the sound, the children sound very cute and convincing, every voice fits perfectly and is well performed. The adults however, partially because of their part on the show, sound a bit more typical, not bad, just not special in any way. The background music is good, composed of cute and relaxing themes for the slice of life portion of the series, and heavy rockers for the sci-fi half of it. With that said, the soundtrack ends up coming off as repetitive because some themes have many different versions and are reused in the exact same way every time in similar scenes. The opening is also a cool rock track, and the base for some tracks of the soundtrack, but it almost does not feel like the overall vibe of the show, luckily the more relaxing ending song fits better, and compliments it well, just like the two different genres don’t fit together at first but end up making a proper whole later on. The sound effects are nothing special but they are fine.

And now for the issues of the show, aside from the ones I already mentioned.

-Brainwashing is one of the laziest plot devices to use in writing regardless of what it is used for, thus it is an issue here.

-Although somewhat explained, having just one human notice what’s happening it’s impossible to buy, another major flaw and another reason to get rid of that investigator.

-By the end of the show all memory and track of what happened is erased, except for Tsubasa’s, this way it does not takes away the most relevant aspect of the show, but still makes the ending to feel like very little mattered in the end.

-The sisters are away of all the people they live and interact with everyday every time they get called to fight, and no one notices them going away to fight and get back to their house late at night at times, how convenient.

Despite the minuses, I still found it to be a pretty good slice of life and action hybrid, each genre is ok by itself at first, and they get tied together properly as the series goes on. Plus, it’s a slice of life show with plot continuity, stakes, permanent consequences and actual character growth by the end of it, quite rare within this medium, and somewhat valuable and memorable because of it. It is also one of the atypical and unusual oddities coming from OLM, the Pokémon studio, worthy to check out when they make something outside their comfort zone, like this, or Odd Taxi, or Berserk, to name a few. Still, with each episode being 45 minutes long, the simplicity of its plot and how it takes a while for its two genres to feel like they belong in the same series, I don’t find rewatch value in here, but for a one time experience, it is a good choice.

For similar stuff, there are actually way too many options, but just to name a few:

For the slice of life portion of it

-Gin no Saji, a coming of age series about high school students from the countryside.

-NieA_7, a slice of life comedy about a woman living with an alien.

-Hinamatsuri, a slice of life dramedy about alien girls living on Japan.

For the sci-fi action bit of it

-The Guyver action franchise, about a guy who accidentally fuses with a bio-organic alien armor to fight against extraterrestrial monsters invading Earth.

-Brigadoon, a science fantasy action romance dramedy about a girl being protected by a bio-organic extraterrestrial being from other soldiers like him, as well as many other monsters.

-The Tetsuwan Birdy action franchise, about a guy who for plot reasons shares body with a female space police officer who captures space criminals.

And more, there are a bunch more similar titles out there, damn. Another title that it’s usually recommended along this one is Blue Drop, but as I will explain next time, it’s best to stay far away from it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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	Poll: Figure 17: Tsubasa & Hikaru Episode 13 Discussion Cratex - Dec 30, 2014	13 replies	by zitronentee »» Feb 10, 2:24 PM
	Poll: Figure 17: Tsubasa & Hikaru Episode 10 Discussion Cratex - Dec 29, 2014	7 replies	by zitronentee »» Feb 5, 1:08 PM
	Poll: Figure 17: Tsubasa & Hikaru Episode 9 Discussion Cratex - Dec 29, 2014	9 replies	by zitronentee »» Feb 1, 12:00 PM
	Poll: Figure 17 Episode 5 Discussion Sasuke10271994 - Feb 20, 2012	13 replies	by zitronentee »» Jan 30, 12:00 PM
	Poll: Figure 17 Episode 3 Discussion KitaTsuki - May 2, 2013	8 replies	by zitronentee »» Jan 28, 9:03 AM