Okay, let’s see if we can make some sense of this:
A-Ko and C-Ko are best buds, while their fellow student B-Ko lusts after C-Ko. This naturally takes us into the familiar territory of all those little school girl triangle animes out there. I have to confess that I’ve never really appreciated the Japanese sense of humor on these things which is A.) exaggerated, and B.) funny only on a very stupid slap-sticky sort of level. But then, humor is one of those things that just doesn’t translate well from one culture or period of time to another.
Meanwhile, A-Ko has superpowers of some sort — super speed, super strength and so on — so the only way that B-Ko can hope to pry C-Ko away from her is to send an increasingly ridiculous series of attackers against A-Ko, including a brutish “girl” who looks like a gorilla with a shave, and killer robots. Lots of killer robots.
This, needless to say, leads to B-Ko finally going head to head against A-Ko while wearing one of these typical anime super bikinis.
Which, you’ll concede, is also familiar.
But where it goes completely off the rails is when the alien fleet shows up, leading to space battles, a huge invasion, and the mother of all mother ships.
Right.
Clearly, I’m not the intended audience for this thing. I’m not sure who is, other than perhaps Japanese schoolgirls.
Which makes A-ko’s bare breasts rather curious, really.
But then, I’ve heard that, in Japan, the market for those buxom super-powered girl animes is actually tired middle-aged men who dream of the sort of freedom only women have in Japanese society these days.
Which, would, yes, explain A-ko’s boobs. And B-Ko’s sudsy bathtub scene. And her superpowered bikini suit.
At any rate, this must have pleased someone as there were three sequels, a TV series and who knows what else.
I watched this one because someone mentioned it as one of the classic movies of the early, hand-drawn Eighties anime era, alongside such familiar films as Akira and Venus Wars. And it is true that the space scenes are truly awe-inspiring when you remember that they were hand drawn in the era before computers made this sort of thing so much simpler — and yet so much less, somehow or other.
It’s just the rest of the film that’s the problem.
But by now you surely know whether this is your sort of film or not. If it is, then by all means watch it.
Particularly if you are an aging salary man dreaming of the sort of freedom only A-Ko can experience.
rivets on the poster 
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