Tag: OVA

Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episode 14

Protip: If you’re developing super-secret military robots in order to sell them to a foreign power, don’t send them walking all over Tokyo while simultaneously using them to run an idol business.

Key: The Metal Idol, episodes 14, “System.” Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.

Available on Crunchyroll.

The good news is that it’s not a complete disaster. The bad news is that it’s not all it could have been.

Shattered arm of a robot idol
What a disaster.

Through its thirteen-episode run, Key: The Metal Idol ratcheted up the tension with a measured and deliberate pace. Then, as so often happens to anime, the money fell through. Instead of producing another thirteen episodes as originally planned, Hiroaki Satō created two ninety-minute movies to finish off the story. This is the first of those two.

This movie is a massive infodump. Most of the “plot” consists of two guys sitting on a park bench and drinking beer while discussing Key’s extensive backstory. Occasionally, these sequences are punctuated by scenes of a crazy dude talking to himself … and discussing Key’s extensive backstory.

Tataki and Kagami talk in a park
“And then this chick was like, ‘I’m a robot,’ and I was like, ‘No way.'”

Although this is a terrible way to make a ninety-minute film, it nonetheless displays the consummate skill of the people working on this project, in that they succeeded in making much of this actually interesting. Yes, I definitely got antsy and fidgety at parts, but it really is a good story that the characters are telling each other, interspersed with arresting imagery and intriguing flashbacks. It finishes off with a good cliffhanger ending that sets up for the next, and final, film.

Miho gloats over Tsuruki, who's tied to a chair
This looks like my last date.

Also, I must give Key: The Metal Idol credit for laying its storyline at our feet in this way. Other anime that ran out of resources (I’m thinking mostly of Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is back in the news thanks to Netflix’s new dub) simply gave up on storytelling and took refuge in opacity and esoterica instead. By contrast, instead of telling us, “You just don’t understand because we’re deeply symbolic and stuff,” Key says, “We gotta tap out, but here’s a lengthy description of what’s happening before we go.”

I respect that.

Continue reading “Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episode 14”

Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episode 1

Key: The Metal Idol, episode 1, “Startup.” Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.

Available on Amazon Prime.

A bizarre OVA that appeared from 1994 to 1996, this is a series I have wanted to see for a long, long time. I noted some time back that it was out on Blu-Ray, but after that it fell off my radar.

In the meanwhile, it has appeared on streaming services. Amazon has added the English dub, but Crunchyroll has the Japanese original. I only discovered the sub while writing this post—so I watched the first episode in the dub, but will watch the Japanese version from now on.

It is a noirish version of Pinocchio, the story of a girl robot on a quest to become human—a quest that draws her into both an international conspiracy and the seedy underbelly of Japan’s idol industry.

Coming as it does from the early Nineties, when a lot of Japanese anime creators thought unintelligibility equaled depth and when both Blade Runner and Neuromancer were casting long shadows across Japanese pop culture, this show is famously weird. It’s weird perhaps most of all because of its mysterious director, Hiroaki Satō, who as far as I know has no other credits to his name. He crept onto the scene, made a competently directed anime skewering the world of Japanese idols, and then crept away again.

Key's new body
Key examines her new body.

I am really excited to finally watch this series, so I am going to review it one episode at a time. I have not seen it previously, so my comments here are off the cuff. Any criticisms I make come with the caveat that they may be satisfactorily answered by later episodes.

Continue reading “Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episode 1”