Vandread

The ROSSMAN Dread
(after no sleep)

Here's the set up. A wussy guy on a planet full of nothing but men somehow gets stuck on a spaceship that get's attacked on its maiden voyage and he gets transported to a far end of space where he's stuck on a pirate ship filled with nothing but hot looking chicks in tight outfits. I used to go to an all boys Jesuit school and I think that was one of my first boyhood sexual fantasies.

The "just trying to get home" story has been told numerous times before (and it looks like they unfortunately tried to rip off Voyager a bit too much), but Vandread does have many redeeming qualities. First of all, every one of the women was pretty damn hot (well, except the captain who was wrinkled and old... and I don't think of old women as 'chicks'). And when you consider that the main ship everybody's on has over a hundred crew members, that's a lot of nice anime-breastesses to ogle. There are a few guys thrown into the mix along with Hibiki, our uncouth hero. But who gives a shit about them. Ditta (the man-chasing female pirate) is ultra-cute and uber-affectionate towards Hibiki. For ya see, the women mostly come from cultures where there are no men and they don't know how to really act aroung them either. Ain't that something..... Yeah, not really, but it's kinda fun to watch for at least a few episodes.

"Ahhhhh! Why are you touching me there?!"
"What's wrong, Mr. Alien? We women do this all the time."
"Ahhhhhh! It feels good and if I were in the real world it would be the beginning of a great porno, but I don't understand your intentions in this anime!!!"

You chuckle a bit the first 50 times this happens, but it does get old. And, unfortunately, Vandread also suffers from "monster of the week" syndrome for a while (where every show has basically the same set up of misunderstanding, conflict, an enemy attack and then comprehension and forgiveness). But near the end, the whole storyline that's been woven throughout the 13 episode plot, comes to a conclusion (sort of) and all of the small tribulations that the bosomy pirate crew had endured up till then end up being made a bit clearer. But of course the final episode is a major cliffhanger in the hopes that Vandread 2 will be financed due to fan rioting and firebombings... Mostly started by my friends.

I give Vandread 50 out of 71.34 Puntas de Calientes because it was fairly generic, yet much more enjoyable than it should have been. And although many people will like the overuse of shiny computer generated graphics for all of the mecha fight scenes I would have preferred traditional hand drawn cel animation.

(06/19/2002 editor's note: Vandread: The Second Stage gets a 68.96 out of 71.34 Puntas for rocking that much more than the original... But since I'm not going to review it, this is all you get to know)

JAIME and KIFFDread

Jaime's Review:
What was going on in this show? It was kinda confusing what with all of the fighting and "harvesting" and explosions and all that jazz. Not everything was totally like explained in the end of it all ya know and stuff. I did like the monkey who lived with the Rat Bastard guy on the spaceship.... Was he a bad guy or not? I couldn't tell. The monkey was cute though ^_^. And what was up with the pirate crew? Why did they all have to be attractive women in revealing spandex? The future can't possibly be that gaudy. The three men were all meanies and stuff to the girls too. I hope they burn in hell.

I give Vandread a thumbs down.

Kiff's Review:
Ummmmmmm, if Jaime said it was bad it must've been bad. I didn't pay attention to it too much.

(That's a lie... I actually loved it!! All those hot girlies with brightly colored hair and big boobies walking around in leotards when they weren't blowing up the enemy robots and shit!!! Lots of sexual innuendo and it even had a special guest star monkey!!!This is the reason God made animation!!!! Whoo hooooo!!!)

Thumbs down for my sweety pie.

BOB Dreadstar From the Future

Actually, space travel in my time is pretty close to what you see here in Vandread. Each interplanetary ship is made up of a crew of 50-60 incredibly gorgeous females and 2-3 men (of varying attractiveness). In our time however, galactic orgies are the norm and most crewmates choose to free themselves of the pressures of conventional clothing. I have lots of pictures if you'd like to see them.

As for the show, Vandread, I thought it was fairly good. "The Harvest" that really occurred 155 years ago in my time was actually a helluva lot bloodier than the one portrayed in this anime. And unfortunately there are no orangutans left in the universe anymore (Back in the 22nd Century, after bringing the great apes of the world back from near extinction and repopulating the Earth's rain forests with them again, somebody made the tasty discovery that chimp, gorilla and orangutan meat tastes better than polar bear and great horned owl. They were wiped out in less than 4 months).

I will give Vandread a 3.5 out of 5 shot lasergun salute.