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Title (English) Alien 9
Title (Japanese) Alien 9
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book cover

Fantasy Novel

Notes 4 OVA episodes.
Bandai/JC Staff OAV, "Alien 9", region 2 DVD, #BCBA-0802, 5800 Yen, released June 25, 2001
Classification -
Synopsis "Alien 9" starts out strange and keeps on getting odder as it goes along. In some near future, a 6th grade girl named Yuri is cringing as she is about to "win" a class election, because she is being elected to be an alien fighter for her school. Yuri joins two other 6th graders, Kumi and Kasumi who have been chosen from other classes and gets introduced to "her" alien partner, Bouga. Bouga looks like a football-sized frog with wings and he sits on top of Yuri's head like a helmet. The other girls also get Bougas, and we find out a little while later that the Bougas are sentient and somewhat parasitic. But the Bouga's big white feathers can turn into extensible drill-like appendages which can help the girls stop or capture the various grotesque alien creatures that are popping up all around.
There is one problem, however, Yuri is scared to death of the aliens, including Bouga, and in addition finds Bouga exceedingly repulsive. So Yuri is not particularly helpful at capturing the aliens, even the relatively harmless ones that are being set loose for training. Kumi is not scared of the aliens but isn't really keen on this chore. Kasumi, on the other hand, is a rich kid overachiever who thinks the whole thing is a blast and loves the risks and adventure. And their teacher/leader, Megumi, is obviously a lot stranger than first glance indicates.
Review The first episode was fast paced, well animated, had a good musical score, excellent voice acting and a nicely different plot set-up. Several other animation studios are credited along with JC Staff, including Gainax, who might very well be responsible for the telephone poll backgrounds in some scenes. (g) The character designs are quite modern and there is a certain similarity to the character designs in ""Furi Kuri". The show is humorous, but it isn't a slapstick by any means.
Along with the episode the DVD contains previews for a number of other new OAV's, as well as mention of a sound track. The official web site : www.alien-nine.com , is interesting, although not the most intuitive to navigate around. You can see the character designs and some descriptions there if you dig into the "item" pages. The manga covers are also shown, along with a couple of manga pages.
All-in-all, I really enjoyed this nicely done and fresh look at an old anime theme, and I'm really looking forward to the rest of the series.

Whoa - "Alien 9" episode 4 ought to have a warning along the lines of "don't watch this while imbibing in recreational substances". Actually, the entire OAV series ought to have this warning. In addition, now having seen the whole thing, I would definitely recommend that you watch all 4 episodes in a row, rather than spacing them out over a number of months as the Japanese R2 release did. "Alien 9" is one of the recent short OAV series that has received a cable or satellite release in Japan somewhat concurrent with the video release. My friend in Japan doesn't receive the channel that carried the broadcast of "Alien 9", so I bought the R2 DVDs. It was definitely worth the expense, but it is a very, very strange trip. And episode 4 only brings us to the early parts of the second manga collection - the story gets even stranger afterwards in the manga. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure what anyone will make of the epilogue to episode 4 if they haven't read the manga.
In any event, if you want to see something very odd, disturbing and original as far as quasi-sentai sci-fi anime goes, try "Alien 9".
Dave Baranyi

I saw at least one of the first three episodes of this, after Yuri's Bouga has been killed. Though it's yet another of those "schoolkids defend the world against alien attack" anime it's quite intriguing and really not bad. I didn't detect much humour in it, beyond the minumum - it's almost unknown for a recent anime to be completely humourless.
I can't say I found the scenario particularly plausible, though the heroine's predicament seems to mirror the perennial school student concerns of not being popular and not fitting in. (GC)

Credits
Episodes 4
Release Jap:DVD
TV Showing See the whole series for free? This series may be syndicated to regional cable, satellite or terrestial TV stations. For Europe click here.
Date 2001
Production Bandai/JC Staff
Broadcaster
Animation
References & Help Look up the latest data on this title at:
Richard Llewellyn's Animated Divots, or
Anime News Network (see Encyclopedia section) ,
or in "The Anime Encyclopedia" (Clements & McCarthy, Stone Bridge Press, 2001).
Help & further information.

 

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