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Twinkle Nora Rock Me!
Reviewed: 04/05/2020
Rock Out, Twinkle Nora...
Source: Animation & Cartoons Wiki
Welcome to the 2020 edition of Easter Sadism! Oh, and it's time for that part of my career as a ranter to have certain people indirectly challenge my assertion that Chargeman Ken is the worst anime in existence. To me, that's impossible. However, this one does have some element of truth to it and has a few aspects that make it worse than Chargeman Ken. Welcome to the Rant Shack, Nora Scholar and this spin-off of an original OAV: Twinkle Nora Rock Me, or Rock Me, Twinkle Nora which would likely be it's English release, which never came of course, because this OAV was bad. The saddest part of this is, the first Nora OAV was PERFECTLY FINE! And the manga that came before it was perfectly fun and acceptable. Statomi Mikuriya was the creator of the manga series "Nora no Hakobune"; who worked on both OVA's in various roles, and the spin-off as an animation director. He mostly worked on projects between 1979 to 1993; and was also the original creator of Moreo Arthur. The OAV's came out in 1985. Nora herself is basically a blonde haired agent who handles cases for the space police and fights crime. A perfectly fine babyface if you ask me. Now, the OAV was released on a format called Laserdisc, which even by 1980's standards was an obscure format and hasn't been re-released ever since. Here is the plot of this OAV spin-off: After helping put an end to a hostage situation at a spaceport (where spaceplanes are launched), Nora Scholar is hired by the Galaxy Police to head to planet Dazzle to capture Fuuchelle, a notorious bounty who heads a planet of crooks and the like along side his brother Toche. Nora is chosen for the job because of her ESP abilities as Fuuchelle is notable for his own ESP talent. After landing on the planet and brawling with locals Nora befriends Max, a dwarf on the planet who she convinces to take her to Fuuchelle. But Fuuchelle reveals himself to her and the two do battle with pysionic powers until Nora arises the victor. Fuuchelle is turned over to the Galaxy Police and Nora along with Max put on a show accompanied by a Cyborg from the planet Dazzle. This sounds simple enough to follow, but as I said before; the executation was a special kind of horrible and terrible. As with all Easter Sadism rants, I refuse to do tributes, but at least this OAV has proper credits and such, unlike Chargeman Ken. This "unlike Chargeman Ken" thingy is going to be a trend for a long time in this rant. The real question is: Is this worse than Chargeman Ken? (Answer: No. Not even close! I'll explain why as we go through this.) And, how does this OAV actually fare? So let's rant on shall we...?
We begin this one with a black screen with a white logo for Filmlink which is the producer of this production around 1983-2003, and productions such as Ninja Scroll, Golgo 13 and Biohunter. After that, we head to outer space as we zoom in and a streak of white light comes from the west and turns into a star; and then we get a massive explosion. Jump cut to smoke and pale fire flames as a pale man with a giant nose, brown hair and huge lips wearing a dark robe with a hood; rises up and despite everything in the scene being animated, the man's mouth doesn't move when he cuts his promo. This is still a vast improvement from Chargeman Ken, so color me unimpressed. The man claims that a plague is coming and I believe this is Fuchelle, the main heel of this OAV. He's also a vast improvement from Satan from Chargeman Ken. He claims tha the world will end because of some bewitching woman leading the charge. As you'll see later, there is a lot of sexist moments in this OAV.Fuchelle's head fades into the smoke and then we HIT THE OPENING with the blond hair bombshell known as Nora in a blue dress, blue shorts and a blue police hat against a black background and a lot of flashing spotlights. This was back when producers didn't know nor respect people who get seizures from flashing lights. Sadly, Chargeman Ken did this a lot more often in his show. The worst part of this opening was not the dancing, nor even the music. No, the worst part is that the singer tried to sing this song in English and it failed so hard that this is the first thing Chargeman Ken did BETTER than Rock On, Twinkle Nora! The animation is also horrible, but nothing to the extent of Chargeman Ken and it will get worse after this opening, though. Nora dances in the most awkward way possible through color spotlights and in front of a giant building. Then we get literal jump cuts to simulate the spotlights going out as Nora dances some more. The artwork is not great, but it's not the horror show Chargeman Ken was. I think most of the stops and resets in this sequence were done on purpose for artstic reason as Nora dances in front of what appears to be a giant modern style rotary.
Nora does closeups in the stary sky as the song starts and if it wasn't for the funsub, I would have ZERO idea what they were singing in English. Yes, English. I actually tried to sing this song in English and did a far better job than the professional singer could! Seriously! That's bad. Nora's dancing in spotlights and building is so much better than the song. It's even sadder when you consider the music is the BEST THING in this OAV! So, the dancing ends with the official logo of Twinkle Nora Rock Me; with the Twinkle and Rock Me in blue cursive writing while Nora is in blood red with a star in the middle of the O. The bottom right corner calls this a "direct to video film"; so it should be called DTVF instead of OVA or OAV. Pfft, whatever. I'm pretty sure Orphan Fansubs Presents was not part of the original title screen, so let me be distracted by the white star effects on the title screen as the title screen disappears to reveal just NORA and then a white flash of light engulfs the screen as we finally head to the airport as there is no animation whatsoever and the one human outside is not animated; but the area is much, much more detailed than Chargeman Ken ever was. Cut to Nora now wearing pretty much the same type of outfit in the opening, only it's beige. She is also wearing a grey bullet case belt on her waist that extends to her shoulders and gloves that extend beyond her elbows. That in itself is fine as she just finished having a drink of water and puts the glass down as the alarm sounds. Okay, this is one of the scenes a lot of people who watched this OAV saw: Notice that every moving character starts moving, then stops, then moves again. I would like to say that this is straight out of the Ted E. Bear specials and even Chargeman Ken did this; but this whole thing happens for the next two to three minutes of this OAV. My guess is that they had inbetweeners to start, but the production ran out of time (and/or money) and couldn't finish the inbetweening to make it look like the bare minimum of animation. If it was no inbetweening whatsoever; then it would look a lot worse than shown!
This is really annoying and it's distracting because when I watch this scene before doing this rant (and yes, I watched the whole thing weeks ago), I couldn't tell what the scene was going to convey until 3/4 of the way through because the animation was so distracting due to it's awfulness. So, here's the entire scene in a nutshell for the first 3/4 of it: Nora leaves, out comes the Galaxy Police in their cars and the soliders all come out. Departure is also in Engrish, but that happens even in American cartoons (TaleSpin, Captains Outrageous, I'm just saying). They are space troooper soliders with guns, but their bosses are in suits with guns. Nora is in the bathroom loading her gun near the sink stalls as we jump cut back to the soliders pushing people around. Imagine all this while this "start, stop, restart"-equse animation is going on. It's hideous, but not hilarious. One of the bosses in this scene has a mustache and male-pattern baldness wearing a blue suit and lavander tie ordering men to take their positions and be in a hurry. I realize that they are trying to create suspense, but it's tough to do when half of your audience is laughing at the bad animation and the other half is cringing at the bad animation. Nora finally comes out of the washroom and walks towards the scene as the mustache boss of doom is surveying the scene from the top floor it seems. Nora is also wearing dark shades for no reason at this time as she's hiding behind this boss, which confused me and made me wonder if she was the one the soliders were after, which as I find out later, that wasn't the case. The mustache boss somehow doesn't suspect a thing, as I should also point out that some of the background human faces were awful and it's made more clear when the solider actually notice the target, which is NOT Nora, but a white haired man in blue running away from the hard camera and the animation looks super deformed, despite not trying to be. They also had problems with the background character animation in terms of details. So, the soliders chase him for a while and it's so hideous until everyone stops; because the white haired man has taken a blond haired woman in green, who is clearly not Nora.
The white haired man points the gun at the woman's head as we get a hideously hilarious moment of mustache boss man slipping and stopping without falling on his ass somehow as Nora runs in and it's now clear Nora is part of the police force since mustache boss doesn't really react to this. The boss addresses her as Nora Scholar, which is very much like a Gundam name. The boss blows her off because she isn't supposed to be involved since he has a hundred soliders. Nora is not impressed; because a hundred soliders just stand there and do nothing. They must have seen Nora and thought: "Why bother? Nora's OP'ed. She'll take him down easily!"; which makes them smarter than the bosses. Lovely! And notice the song starts up again, just to really crap on this scene as boss calls someone an idiot, probably the hundred soliders. Boss needs to be fired, STAT! Sexist moment #1: Nora gives the signal meaning "want me to lend you a hand"; and the boss shoves her head forward and yells "dammit". Nora and Mustache Boss do their run in and Nora stays behind anyway. HA! Mustache Boss confronts the man and orders his to stop behaving like this and let the woman go. Yeah, sure like that is going to work. Nora ignores everything as the white haired man with the gun simply walks stage right to a taxi as the Mustache Boss is walking beside him talking, but no sound comes out. So, the solider comes out of the taxi and opens it up. Cut back to Nora watching on as the white haired terrorist smiles thinking he's won and then we see the true power of Nora, and if you thought Chargeman Ken was over powered; witness Nora invokes the SPARKLE GOGGLES OF DEATH and it's magic manages to turn the woman into a monster and then it vanishes into thin air. WHAT THE HELL?! The white haired man is scared, he drops his gun, goes full gear reverse, tries to bail; but the soliders grab him and finally arrest him. At first, I thought that Nora was going to be just another Ken Izzy in being a heartless monster babyface, but it turns out that Nora simply teleported the woman over to her and the woman is perfectly normal (albeit stunned out of her wits), thus the monster transformation was just a decoy.
That renders her as merely a cruel babyface, because that transformation is completely not needed at all. A vast improvement from Chargeman Ken still. Mustache Boss comes over to Nora and starts writing something as he is weaseling his way out of not thanking her for saving this woman from this terrorist, because he wants to save face for 100 soliders being totally helpless against one man with a gun with a woman as a hostage. Oh, and now the animation looks like it has complete inbetweeners now; thus adding to my theory that they ran out of time. Nora finally speaks and she did this for free. I would have tried to raze this guy for money, because his leadership sucks so hard. I discover that this was a cheque for $10,000 to take to the Finance Minister. HAHA! Even Mustache Boss guy doesn't want to mess with Nora and turn into a monster...for real! Nora then does the STARE OF DEATH and burns the IOU in her hands and just mocks the Mustache Boss in the process. HAHA! Mustache Boss is whining and protesting about his salery and blows her off for having weird powers and using them to interfere in space bounty police work. Wow; this is Grade S jealousy and even Nora cannot contain her laughter. She is playing this guy like a fiddle and I'm loving it. This scene alone assures that this show is much better than Chargeman Ken ever was. In fact, this would be a funny scene in any cartoon regardless of country of origin. Nora doesn't want to be a spectacle, so someone is self-aware of how toxic Hollywood can be. Nora says farewell and tries to leave, but Mustache Boss has a favor and wants to borrow Nora's power. Haven't you already done that in this scene? Nora is confused; but smiles anyway so she accepted whatever terms Mustache Boss gave. We then have a scene changer of the camer going out of focus and then scene changer to outer space as we approach a planet in the foreground (which apparently has a moon in the background) and then jump cut to a control panel which shows Nora Scholar's name as a tourist and her gender is named "Femala". Yep; more Engrish, already addressed it earlier.
There is a satellite in the foreground outside near the planet on the next shot. Jump cut to an old man with a mustache wearing a white shirt and blue jeans sitting down as the pilot of the space ship pushing buttons. The spaceship is grey in color as this guy is so stupid that he doesn't know how to issue a tourist visa since no one on this planet has had a tourist in five years. Nora is in the back wearing the same outfit in the opening sequence, minus the hat as we discover the planet in question is forgotton and named Dazzle. The man wants Nora to turn back, but Nora no sells because she has a job to do. Nora's answer is that no one asks where the wind is blowing and just winks. That is such a dumb no answer as we jump cut to a sky shot of an abyss on the planet Dazzle, which basically looks like the same earth in Fist Of The North Star. So, we get a tour of the planet and then fade to black as the music plays, the best thing in the show so far. Out of focus camera shot as we see footage of Nora sky surfing on a airplane version of the airfoil; which by show releases would be five years before Kit did the same thing on a much smaller board. Nora also defies the laws of physics like Kit did in the Christmas PSA which was a crossover between Ducktales, Darkwing Duck and TaleSpin. And I betcha, Ducktales 2020 will bring it back, again. The board also double as a mini plane with wheel landing gear. She lands on the sand as the music grinds to a halt before it got really good. Nora takes her helmet off. Jump cut to her teleported off the plane and now is in front of the plane. I've seen bad shot continuity in Teddy Ruxpin, too, so this doesn't bother me. Nora sees what appears to be a really abandoned colony with lots of domes. Someone is hiding in the foreground, and I have no idea who it is as Nora suddenly is with a cyborg and it might have be the adult version of Cyborg from Teen Titans! So, then we find out that the man who was stalking Nora are in fact all the men they could fit into this scene because this is an all-male colony.
Outside of staring; they don't make a move on Nora, so at least they respect her space...for now anyway. I expect them to piss this one away soon enough. So, jump cut to inside the space bar, which a typical bar with it's own show band. The four men on stage are the only ones who have any creativity whatsoever, and even that isn't saying much. Nora is still outside as there is a dark-skinned man in green pushing people around as there is exactly ONE woman in red with no name and don't expect one. Unlike the girl from Pango-Pango, this woman has zero personality whatsoever, so she's just a prop to set up the fight between this evil man and Nora. This is both sexist and creepy as there is a short man with more personality than anyone outside of Nora and maybe Fuchelle, wearing a blue helmet, blue shirt, blue pants and shoes dancing around in a detail background that makes no sense with the scene. Despite all the attempts to hide the background, Nora comes in and it's clear that the bar's name is called Galaga, which is the same name of a video game shooter four years before this OAV aired. And who says Japan doesn't stoop to pop culture references? ABSURD! Everyone stares at her; but doesn't move as Nora makes it to the bartender counter as the bartender (who wins the award for most absurd hairstyle in this OAV) asks for Nora's order. She wants milk and they cheer her. Even the men think being sober is an achievement. The bartender thinks this is all a joke; because drinking alcohol is manly, you see. Toxic masculinity, what a shocker?! So, the Incrediably Sexist Giant Man is leering at the woman as the woman is shaking while pouring the WE KNOW IT'S ALOCHOL, BUT WE AREN'T TELLING ANYONE~! Nora is pissed off and she starts kicking everyone's ass as the men are really clueless sexist as the short man is backing up while Nora brings out her gun. The men blitz her and she punches one guy in the face with the gun and she basically invokes the FLASH STOPPER and runs through the male mob with ease as all men are frozen in time. Nora makes it to the bartender as the time stopper stops and all the men off-screen crumble.
Jump cut back to the ISGM terrorizing this woman that is not Nora, and he decides "I'm done with you. I want the blondie!" and throws her and several patrons away. One of the patrons addresses him as Touchino; or Toche for short. Nora calls him a really large man as Toche starts kicking ass himself on virtually anyone that moves and is drooling, because women turn him on and in a very horrible way I might add. Of course, the bartender is a sexist douchebag because he blames Nora and orders her out. No, order Toche to leave! He started this douchbaggery, you sexist prick! The short man at least is worried about Nora getting killed, which is a valid worry, but Nora is OP'ed, so let her defend herself. I think she can take on this brute and Toche gets his ass kicked. Toche is charmed so much that he calls Nora "My honey" in English and his English is much better than the professional singer in the opening sequence! That's depressing. Nora claims that there is a bounty on his head, so are there two bounties, because Toche looks nothing like Fuchelle. Toche don't care because Nora is his bounty, it's obvious! Nora dodges and Toche breaks down the bartender's counter as Nora proclaims that she's here to arrest Toche. Normally, I would say "good luck, you'll need it"; but Nora is OP'ed so, she'll arrest him without even lifting a finger I'll bet. Then, Nora lops off the logic break for me by pointing out that Toche is the brother of Fuchelle, so they both have bounties on their heads. Good, this story makes sense now. Nora backs up to the pillar and then teleports to the stage; making the Galaga reference even more obvious now. Toche headbutts pillar and breaks it to create a weapon as Nora demands to know where Fuchelle is and she'll never be defeated from the likes of her and cut the act out. I don't think he's acting Nora; although I doubt he can defeat you. So, Toche won't cut the act out; but will cut pillars for fun and then admits that he hates killing her and hates women resisting. It's too bad Nora has much more humanity in her soul, because Chargeman Ken would have shot this sexist in the back and be done with it by now.
Toche throws the pillar at Nora, as Nora invokes the TWINKLE EYE OF DOOM and this causes the pillar to float in mid-air. There is more animation in this moment than the first sequence, so maybe they should have spread out the inbetweeners more. Maybe it just looks like that to me, I don't know. Nora then pushes the pillar (without touching it mind you) and it bonks into the chest of Toche, both go flying stage left and Toche goes through the wall outside. Nora follows and literally disappears seconds later. Ooops! Even Nora is questionning this, so Toche literally got written out via teleport and sadly, this makes sense than most of these kind of spots. The short man is impressed by Nora's impressive ass kicking of Toche, without touching him I might add. Nora even calls it teleporting, so she is very self-aware even for this show. Even Chargeman Ken wasn't this self-aware of his actions. We discover from the short man that Fuchelle also uses magic like Nora, so apparently, this short man knows something or is related to Fuchelle in some way. I doubt they will explain it; but it would be a nice bonus to me. The short man then pleads for Nora to get away now, because Fuchelle will likely kill her as Nora brings out a card (I should note that she's wearing her police uniform from the first sequence; so no logic break there) which is electronic, it might as well be the credit card smartphone. I discover that Fuchelle is indeed the robed man from the pre-opening sequence (check the lips, I'm not fooled) and has a bounty of one million dollars! The short man realizes that Nora is a bounty hunter and he is also a sexist because he cannot believe a young cute girl could be a bounty hunter. Nora ignores the slight on her and asks if he knows where Fuchelle is. The short man doesn't know and bails stage right, but Nora is willing to give $5000 for information on Fuchelle. The short man turns around and blows her off for using money to move his heart, because that's now how he works and judging by his face and Nora's Gruffi pose, they have accepted the terms to find Fuchelle.
So, more shots of Dazzle BEFORE HAPPY HOUR (sunset) as it ends at a saucer space ship and we head inside as Toche is kicking the control panel and swearing like a PG sailor. He sits down in a love seat as we finally see Fuchelle in full profile as he is indeed, the robed man from the start of this OAV. He is watching on the computer, the short man talking to Nora with no sound coming out. Fuchelle tells Toche not to go berserk. Fuchelle is impressed with Nora's ESP and basically tells Toche that she could have killed him when she had the chance to. If it was Ken Izzy, this conversation would never happened, and Fuchelle would be frightened by this. Toche threatens to kill her next time and Fuchelle blows that off, because you have to fight physic powers with physic powers. So, we see Nora and the short man walking around the planet as the short man gives us a history of the planet Dazzle as it's basically a lawless planet and lonely with only mining as a main source of resources. While the entire sequence has no animation whatsoever, it's in an artistic grayscale that you see in a lot of anime, so it's not like the OAV is doing anything other anime wasn't doing at the time. This is an artistic decision, not a financial one. The guise of this is that the planet is ruled by Fuchelle and Toche and they merely turned the planet from a mere miserable planet to a really miserable planet. In other words, a really soft target for criminals and bandits. I discover that it's AFTER HAPPY HOUR (after dark) and Nora and the short man are inside a mine during this history segment as Fuchelle has a really frightening power. I guess making a star explode in outer space would be considered a frightening power; but Nora's kindness might be even more so. The short man puts his face between his knees (Kit did this in Plunder and Lightning Part 3) as he had planed to save some money and go to the city to become a dancer, but these evildoers have dashed those plans hard. Almost fourteen minutes in, and we finally have the short man's name and it's Nora who addresses him as Max. Nora wants Max to fight and Max doesn't know how; as Nora wants him to tell her where Fuchelle is.
Nora wants to fight Fuchelle as Max asks if she's afraid. Nora says that she isn't, but she is capable of being afraid, but doesn't talk about it. Max no sells the deal as Nora finds the out of nowhere drum sticks and drum as Max is pleading for her to give up and return to Earth. Nora no sells and sits on the tank drum, because it's time for Max....to do that dance! Max is confused as Nora starts banging on the tank drum and encouraging Max...to do that dance! Max gets up, Nora counts to four and she is banging on everything that moves, and missing spots 50% of the time and the animation doesn't match the drum beats. The scariest part is that this is still better than Barican's version of this in Chargeman Ken. Half of the time, Nora's drum beat literally hit air as Max is still confused. And due to the power of Nora's drum beats, music starts playing out of nowhere as Nora says "Go!" in English and Max starts...to do that dance! This dance sucked! The animation is so stiff that Max's dancing comes off as goofy! And unlike the first sequence, there are inbetweeners clear as day. Whomever animated this sequence had really cold feet here. Luckly, it gets better in other shots. Nora calls him the best dancer in the galaxy, and he might very well be since he seems to be the only dancer outside of Nora. Nora then gives up drum playing and runs in...to do that dance! I was laughing my ass off on how awkward this dance was. This was hideously hilarious! It looked like they did the "start, stop, reset" animation; but the flow was more fluid and more complete than the hostage sequence earlier. There was sense of volume and looked like they were literal puppets on strings, only there was no string. And then the song starts up again, which means the return of the "start, stop, reset" animation in full from the hostage sequence. This was a trainwreck of an animation sequence here. Then the animation gets slightly better as they literally have the animation moving against the background as the background slides southwards. Still better than Chargeman Ken.
We are over halfway through this OAV and as bad as this is; there is exactly ONE thing worse than Chargeman Ken so far. That's over three Chargeman Ken episodes by the way. Max claims that they are the ultimate partners as Nora invokes the (I cannot believe I'm typing this) THE SPARKLE ARMPIT OF STARS and this gives the mine lights, which is stupid because the entire mine is lit with no sign of darkness. Then the SPARKLE HAND OF STARS to continue pointlessly turning on lights. Max stops to look at the pretty lights and this somehow causes Nora to change costumes to a red dress with pink ribbon on the back and red shoes. Her dancing also improves as Max is now wearing purple overalls, pink shirt and a red bowtie while Max rubs his eyes. Max then slips and falls and the animation goes into really, really slow motion and this I think was on purpose. It's hard to tell considering the other scenes. Max recovers and....does that dance! Max then claims that Nora is showing him a dream of dancing with Nora as we jump cut to the foreground clapping way too fast and the background with no clapping animation whatsoever. More dancing and the faces of the audience has zero animation whatsoever. Still better than Chargeman Ken on the count that the artwork is at least complete. Max and Nora are dancing in shadow in front of a rainbow arch that is named Disco Mike. This is the first time shadows were used, and this was clearly for artistic reasons. More dancing in space this time and I give up as Max screams Nora after teasing a headache, so I assume Max finally told Nora offscreen where Fuchelle is because we never hear the confession or even Max saying "I'll tell you where Fuchelle is". That was not good as we fade to black 18 minutes in! We come back as Max and Nora are on the plane motorcycle driving around the area of planet Dazzle. Max is not happy about this as the motorcycle airplane flies into the sky. We fly for a while and Max panics. Nora tells him to hang on tight and point out where Fuchelle's spaceship is with the promise of protecting him.
Max looks shameful because he thinks he's useless, a sign that Max is likely going to turn on her and be a heel. We also get the plane sliding southeast across the background before we jump cut into Fuchelle's control room as Fuchelle meditating standing up and Toche sitting on a chair in the background. Closeup of Fuchelle's face calling Nora a spirited girl; as we jump cut to Toche looking at the computer and notices that Nora has arrived. Toche looks like he is getting that high again; but Fuchelle stops him because Nora is Fuchelle to play it; since Toche is as good as dead if he faces Nora again. Considering Nora's personality, I doubt it. Toche protests this outrage and it's ironic that Fuchelle is Toche's big brother despite being much bigger than Fuchelle. Most powerful brother I might buy, not big brother. Fuchelle blows him off because you cannot beat her with brute strength. Fuchelle has a point Toche, so let him fail and then you can pick up whatever pieces of Nora are left. It's called teamwork, even sexist men should realize that one. Toche curses in response. About the fansub: It's mostly well done and considering that this is probably for older audience (despite the content being mostly within children's standards today), the cursing sort of fits here. Jump cut to Nora landing her airplane cycle and you know what: I found the second thing worse than Chargeman Ken and this one is the big one: Pacing. The pacing is slow as molasses and there is a lot of dead scenes where if you cut most of it out, the result is the same. At least five minutes of this OAV could have easily been cut with zero lost. Chargeman Ken's pacing is absurd; but at least there are connecting points to each scene that are required. The story itself is nonsensical, but the pacing is fine in spite of that. Here, I understand 90% of the episode and there just a lot of fluff that could have been cut down to one 22 minute episode without losing anything. It's like they did a lot of padding, but none of the padding means anything. That being said; if this is the only major thing that is worse than Chargeman Ken, then I win the challenge easily, so HUZZAH~!
By the way, Nora and Max have found the secret base of Fushelle and they practice the fine art of not being seen and the animation is choppy here. Nora loads her gun and tells Max to go back to town in her GIB, which doesn't sound smart. Max no sells and wants to back her up and Nora is pissed off at this...and then thanks him. Awwww! My heart melted! Nora is OP'ed, but she has the humanity Ken would never have. Nora wants to meet with Max in town after this and then runs in with her gun, with Max following her trying to get her attention. Lots more pointless running that could have been easily cut with nothing lost. And the animation is perfectly fine here. Then we get a ear screaming sound and Nora is force to teleport as flames come completely out of nowhere, which is the universal signal that Fuchelle has begun his assault on Nora. Another reason why this is better than Chargeman Ken: Fuchelle is not an idiot. Nora is now on a cliff surrounded by flames as Max is screaming, admitting that he's completely useless. To be fair, Fuchelle is a powerful ESP'er and Max is not, so there you go. Nora has her gun set to profits and blows off Fuchelle claiming that his flame wall is an illusion. You expect me to believe that, Nora?! Fuchelle floats in through the flames, so Nora was right all along. How about that?! Fuchelle is as sexist as every man on this planet since he called her one hell of a tomboy. Nora threatens to arrest him under the name of the Galaxy Police and then Nora manages to do the SPARKLE EYE OF DEATH without moving and proves that the flames were faker than an Inferno Match. Hey, Fuchelle at least was not an idiot as he calls her food while sitting cross-legged on a large boulder. Fuchelle jumps up and teleports out of physical space while lifting the boulder out of the ground. Boulder rolls down towards Nora, so Nora invokes the SPARKLE TOUCH OF DOOM to crumble the boulder to dust. YOU GOT THE TOUCH~! YOU GOT THE POWER~! The Transformer Movie music would have been perfect here if the OAV ever got dubbed in North America, which it didn't.
But wait, it gets even better! Nora creates a loop with the stones and then drops them on the ground and this exposes that Fuchelle was a part of the whole thing as he screams. I take back what I said about Fuchelle, he is an idiot! At least it took him 22 minutes to be one instead of one minute like Satan was. Fuchelle admits that he underestimated her and actually calls her a little bitch, sort of. Fuchelle says "You little.." in English; but the last word he said was not clearly "bitch", it sounded like a Japanese word, so I suspect he said "witch" or "wench" and the fansub was embellishing. Fuchelle then turns into a giant, so Fuchelle really was the big brother all along. Now, him being Toche's big brother makes total sense now. Nora is not amused and dodges Fuchelle's hand and bails stage right. Fuchelle then transforms into what appears to be a lizard like green dragon as Max joins in. The dragon drools a lot during this as his hands turn into bird like talons as they tease Nora being smashed and grabbed in that order with a lot of dust. Max cringes on cue as the lizard dragon thinks he's won; but Nora is gone, so it's clear she teleported away. Hey, she can teleport others away, why not herself? The lizard transforms back into Fuchelle, and floats down into the rocks like a complete moron (complete with one shot of an off-model face) as it looks like leather quicksand with mud. Fuchelle protests this outrage as Nora is standing near some rocks, telling Fuchelle to surrender as Fuchelle apparently opens the ground and tries to swallow Nora while; but Nora counters with the SPARKLE EYE OF DEATH to teleport out and turn back time to before the earth swallowed up. Nora is OP'ed. Fuchelle is impressed by this even battle and then transforms into melting goo which looks similar to the smoke and pale fire in the first scene with Fuchelle as Nora has no counter for this and gets swamped by the raging goo. This forces Nora off the cliff and she falls to the ground taking the lightest bump in the process. Max is panicky now as Fuchelle stalks Nora and tells her to know her place, basically.
Max runs in and gets the POWER OF THE PUNCH in the face awkwardly and he takes better bumps than Nora, actually. Toche's back, of course and he's laughing, so he's addicted to short men, too. Max bails as Toche proclaims that he cannot run as we cut back to Nora on the ground as Fuchelle proclaims that she's paralyzed and cannot move. If you cannot guess the mistake Fuschelle made here, you have no business reading this rant. Fuchelle threatens to stop her heart, but; will give her a nightmare first. Yeap; he allowed her to speak and did nothing to her face, which by the way; her own eyes are not paralyzed and they account for most of her offense. Fuchelle is finished as Nora invokes the WINK OF DEATH! If Fuchelle had just paralyzed her face, he wins! I realize that in the end, the heel is supposed to be stupid, but this was so obvious it's not even funny. So, the finish of this OAV is that Nora induces Fuchelle to have a heart attack, which ends the paralysis for Nora. It makes sense, but come on now! More winking and then they go into the anime techinque of teasing that Nora was going to kill Fuchelle outright with the bottomless pit spot of doom. Then a dream sequence of Fuchelle walking around and then he kneels down and puts his head on someone's knees which turns out to be Nora's. Fuchelle says mama twice as he cries in Nora's lap. Nora might be OP'ed; but she has humanity and this makes her much better than Ken Izumi by a mile. She could have easily killed him; but she has actual scrupples. Max comes in and he's fine as he explains the obvious to us. Nora then asks the obvious: What happened to Toche? Remember that there is a bounty on his head, too. Max then shows Toche is stuck in between two rocks, like a big idiot would be. Would have been nice if they showed the entire thing and trim five minutes out,of pointless scenes, but at least they showed the result and not written him out by teleport, so there's that. The two babyfaces laugh at his expense and at least Toche is a monster heel, so no one should feel bad for that big sexist douchebag.
Then we return to the Galaga Bar, as Max and Nora are now on stage as the sexist men are cheering; probably fearing that Nora will induce heart attacks on them if they act like sexist douchebags again. Nora is wearing a red bra with a yellow cover around the waist, black pants and grey boots. I will say, Nora is very modest in her own fashion sense. She is dancing like she is trying to prove that she's animated in 1's rather than 3's and sometimes 5's. Jump cut to an office of the Galaxy Police as Mustache Boss is with one of the soliders as Fuchelle is sitting down in a chair with his head attached to some machine with the Gruffi pose forced on him. Fuchelle basically admits defeat as Mustache Boss proclaims that his ESP was no match for hers as Fuchelle claims that her smile is the most powerful thing in the word. I disagree, her winking is much more powerful than that, since it was the thing that induced the heart attack in the first place. So, back on stage as the song starts in the middle this time as the male singer does a better job at singing English this time. And this audience in the background is somewhat animated this time with a full ADR crowd voice. Max comes in and he basically wears the exact same outfit as in his dress. He is more clueless in creativity than Huey Duck in Ducktales 2020. The Adult Cyborg forces his way into the audience and joins Nora in the dance. Why?! Why not?! The Cyborg is poking at Max the entire time and generally having fun. Somehow, Cyborg causes the stage to shake and Max has to stop and Nora laughs at his expense, probably the only time she acted like a jerk and it was so harmless that I wasn't bothered by it. Her laughing out loud ends the OAV at 27:00 as we go to the credits with more singing. Outside of the obvious major errors and stupid decisions, this was a fun, light romp OAV that if it was a lot more polished; would have been an average and inoffensive production. So, no stars on the trainwreck scale. * 1/2 (30%) mostly for Nora mocking Mustache Boss with the IOU. That alone was worth the review.
THE REVIEW LINE
Well; the challenge is over and son of a fish, I am so disappointed by this. Yes, this OAV is bad. But it is nowhere as bad as Chargeman Ken is. The only major thing that was worse than Chargeman Ken was the pacing, and trimming five minutes of pointless scenes wouldn't have changed anything in it. Most of the awfulness seems to be as a result of running out of time and/or budget and only two major scenes were truly affected by it. Sadly, one of them was a major dance number. The rest of the animation was pretty TV average for that time. Sexism was the bigger problem for this episode, but the main hero Nora was perfectly fine here and despite being OP'ed and the suspense gone; she was a perfectly acceptable human babyface. Fuchelle was for the most part a perfectly fine heel as was Toche. As I said, it was intended to be mostly a light fun ride and it mostly delivered, outside of the obvious mistakes made. Overall, I don't think any production can touch Chargeman Ken. Besides, Kenny Launderdale, the one who started this challenge finally saw Chargeman Ken for real, and basically agreed with my side of things. I didn't even have to force it; Chargeman Ken did that for me without lifting a finger. So....
Thumbs down for this OAV and I'll see you all next time.