Iria: Zeiram The Animation |
 | Summary:Mainstream sci-fi anime follows a young bounty hunter's battle with a powerful space creature. Despite some flat plot and dialouge, it's vibrant animation, fast-past action and appealing female lead character makes this a favorite amongst action anime fans. |
| Title Aka: | N/A |
| Company/Distributors: | Bandai Visual;Emotion;U.S. Manga Corps |
| Year: | 1994 |
| Length: | 6 Episode Series |
| Rating: |  |
| Genres: | Action, Science Fiction |
| Format: | OAV Series |
| Content Level: |
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| Comments: | N/A |
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Synopsis:
This six episode, sci-fi anime-actioneer centers around a young bounty hunter named Iria. Being a 19-year old apprentice to her older brother Gren, she tires to gain a bounty's licence in order to become a full-fledged bounty hunter. When Gren and his boss Bob recieve an urgent call to attempt a rescue mission aboard a large space station called the "Karma", Iria decides to accompany Gren and Bob in an attempt to rescue President "Tedan Tippadai"; who is aboard the Karma along with some cargo. This "cargo", which is actually a mysterious and powerful space creature known as "Zeiram", tries to halt Gren and Iria's operation. Now with the passengers of the Karma evacuated, Bob seriously wounded and the fate of Gren uncertain, Iria escapes the exploding starship. She must now try to avenge Gren and Bob by attempting to destroy Zeiram. While doing so she discovers the true hidden mysteries of Zeiram and the "Tedan Tippadai Corporation". While landing on a remote planet Iria befiends her new-found sidekick Kei, while in an attempt to halt the evil space creature's destructive rampage.
Review:
When first seeing this particullar series, several things come to mind. First of which is the sheer technical style of this series, which contains some of the most unique architechtural and mecha designs I've ever seen in an OAV series. One can clearly see where a number of cultures When one thinks of your typical action series, one would assume that the story is probably not as up to par as it's animation. In Iria: Zeiram The Animation, that's all too true. But don't get me wrong, there are also A lot of good things about this series. It is actually far better than your average anime action series. The music tends to be uninteresting, but is rather well-matched and effective for this particular anime. My favorite track is most likely the closing theme. The show does contain some rather interesting plot twists, (One of which caught me totally by surprize) some rather likable secondary characters and some pretty good animation. Actually, probably the aspect which shines the most about this series is it's animation, which is in fact quite good. Although theres nothing really eye-poping about the animation itself, it's still very good and adds a unique sense of visual style; which does good justice to this series' lacking storyline. Which is poorly written, directed and composed. If you ask me, this series should have been much better than it turned out to be. If only the writers had taken extra effort to make the storyline as worthwhile as the animation. It's rather interesting plot twists and slight use of effective drama hardly does justice to it's plot, which becomes more and more less interesting past episode 1. It tends to be rather predictable at times, and the dialouge becomes flat, uninteresting and rather poorly-executed. Iria's final battle with the Zeiram was neither unexpected or surprising. And when the final episode draws to a close, you begin to wonder why you actually sat down and watched the entire thing. |
have influenced the technological designs. Some truly intricate and rather interesting middle-eastern and Japanese style designs can be seen. But by far the more impressive aspects of come from the series' female character lead. "Iria" is truly one of the more original female anime characters I've seen in a long while. Her character design are fresh and original, if one looks hard enough, they can discover just about any character personality trait from a number of different female anime leads. On top of that, she has more weapons and gadgets than I can count. Even more so than "Batman" and "Boba Fett" combined. This character aspect truly adds a unique sense of style and originality to this OAV, which suffers from more than kinky sub-plots and an uneven storyline.