Burst Angel

Burst Angel is one of those anime’s that I fizzled out on more than halfway through. I considered pushing to the end, but the show just doesn’t appeal to me.

The anime is set in the near future and follows a group of female miscreants as they fight against mutated human monsters that cause havok in Tokyo. The group is part of a police force known as RAPT (Recently Armed Police of Tokyo). Their job is to exterminate criminals.

The series revolves around Jo. She is pilot of RAPT’s mecha Django and the spearhead of the group. She is friends with the group’s redhead Meg, who has a habit of getting captured. Jo (not much of a surprise here) is a genetically engineered killing machine.

The show is fairly episodic. So much that I felt the series was too disjointed. It opens with Kyohei Yachibana, a cook dreaming of becoming a pastry chef, getting accidentally involved with the missions of RAPT. He later unknowingly takes a cooking job with them. Kyohei is essentially a supporting character.

Burst Angel touches a little on the ethics of gun ownership and the problems of using violence, but it is mostly a one-time passing rather than a centerpiece. The anime mostly revolves around the girls-with-guns theme and mecha fights.

Perhaps it is because I watched the show so late at night, but the anime couldn’t hold my attention. I didn’t really care for Jo as a character. Meg was particularly ditzy and annoying. How did she ever get into a supposedly elite police force? She spends most of the opening part of the series captured and used as bait to get Jo motivated to fight.

The dynamics between Kyohei and the RAPT girls was interesting, but underplayed. He felt rather unnecessary a character through much of the episodes I watched. I can’t really judge the anime adequately since I couldn’t stick with it. Generally, I am not much of a fan of mecha. Burst Angel would be a much better anime if it modeled itself after crime thrillers like Ghost in the Shell rather than mix in teen-angst found in mecha focused anime. There was very little mystery in Burst Angel and even less thrill. I found most episodes predictable.

The action scenes are decent. The mecha scenes are computer animated and crisp. Generally the animation is decent. It breaks down in places, but it feels like a typical Gonzo production. It certainly targets a male audience. It has some up-skirt shots, boob bounce, impossibly large ones (in the case of the character Sei), and impractical outfits.

Perhaps you will enjoy the show. The characters just turned me off. If you have seen the anime, what did you enjoy most?