Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko details the exploits of none other than Yamamoto Yohko, a Japanese schoolgirl who?s busy being the tyrant of her prefecture. Most of the series takes place not in present-day Earth, however, but far into the future. The worlds of Terra and Ness are at war, but in the future, war is conducted in a wholly unique manner, one that will seem alien to those of us who can still remember the Desert Shield affair.
See, in the future, mankind has become civilized. Control of various resources in the galaxy is determined by combat, but instead of thousands of lives being lost, none are. The battles are conducted by young women who pilot massive starships in an attempt to win races or obliterate their opponents. Even when things go wrong, however, the pilots don?t die - there?s a built-in teleportation field that whisks them away to safety even as their ship gets destroyed. This way no one gets hurt, and each side can choose participants to represent them as best they can. Think of it as a futuristic Olympics with much more dire consequences.
Well, the head engineer of the Terran fleet invents a device that lets him travel through time, and using it, he recruits three Japanese schoolgirls from our present day. One of these, of course, is Yamamoto Yohko. She ends up piloting the super bad-ass spaceship, as one would expect, and much butt is kicked in the series as the ships duel.
As far as I could tell, Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko was purely cel animation - if there were any CG effects, which I doubt, they were very understated. Because of this, the series doesn?t have the visual glitz of more modern productions, and because of its episodic nature, it reminded me more of Transformers from Saturday morning cartoons than, say, Mononoke Hime. Of course, Transformers never had nudity, so that?s one place that Yamamoto Yohko wins out.
The three episodes run the gamut, from straight-on battle episodes to the requisite weird past-revealing episode, and even a surreal one where our intrepid heroes find themselves inside a seemingly-haunted castle, and everything that Yohko says should happen, does. Yohko herself is very much a child of the 90s, and with constant references to video games and her incessant devouring of Pocky, there?s enough pop culture references to amuse anyone. The characters are also mockeries of typical anime characters - you?ve got the dumb female, only now she?s really dumb, you?ve got the perpetually-angry friend, you?ve even got the super-emotional one who breaks down and cries at the drop of a hat.
The six episodes are definitely worth watching, and any fan of this sort of subtle mockery should find a lot to like. Unfortunately, some of the extras are definitely lacking. The outtakes last only a minute or two. The English voice-acting is also not as good as I hoped; I found myself switching to Japanese with English subtitles soon after starting the DVD up. I also wish that there had been chapters inside of each episode, to allow for easy navigation between scenes.
As it stands, though, Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko is an entertaining romp through a slightly off-kilter universe. It won?t wow anyone with special effects or even major originality, but it?s got a charm all its own, and I found myself smirking a lot and even laughing out loud throughout the episodes. You may be able to do better when it comes to anime, but you could certainly do a lot worse as well.
