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R.O.D The TV - Vol. 2 - The Undercover Student
Genre: Comedic adventure
Producer: J.C. Staff/Aniplex/Geneon Director: Koji Masunari Creator: Hideyuki Kurata Medium: Japanese 2D animation The Skinny: A quartet of stories featuring the "Paper Sisters," a trio of women gifted with a talent of manipulating paper into fantastic devices and creatures who scour the globe retreving rare books for Dokusensha. Think: Read or Die in series form Where Found: In greater video stores/retail outlets near you courtesy of Geneon Entertainment.
Pros: Great series and characters
My Take: While the original Read or Die OVA begins airing on Cartoon Network, the series that spawned off from it, R.O.D The TV, is currently running on G4techTV. Admittedly, those airings are censored, so perhaps it's best that you check it out in its uncut, uncensored form on DVD courtesy of Geneon Entertainment. For those that haven't seen this fun series, the series is about Michelle, Maggie, and Anita, a trio of Chinese girls known collectively as The Paper Sisters. They have the ability to manipulate paper into weapons, barriers, structures, clothing, and creatures. The Paper Sisters, who has the same abilities of Yomiko Readman (aka The Paper, the original heroine of the Read or Die OVAs), now serve as bodyguards to a popular writer named Nenene Sumiregawa, who was the favorite writer of Yomiko's in the OVA and someone she saved in the original manga. The Paper Sisters saved her life after rival writers were sick of being ignored by film companies to adapt their works into movies on two separate occasions (one at a book signing and the other on a plane). Nenene is very hard on the girls at first, but she softens up as the series goes on. This volume continues where the first one leaves off as the girls go on a covert mission ala Charlie's Angels to retrieve a rare book from a madman. The only problem? Two of the girls lost their paper-making powers all of a sudden. The other stories go deeper into the personal lives of the girls (episode seven has the Paper Sisters separated for the bulk of the episode where revelations of their origins are shown) and the other two episodes involves the schooling of Anita, who's reluctant to tell the others about Parent's Day and the time Anita's class decided to spend the night at school to search for this ghost. Although Michelle's on the primary cover on this volume, Volume 2 is an Anita-intensive volume. One of the coolest moments on the DVD is the inclusion of commentary from four of the voice artists. The commentary was only on a stand-alone episode (episode 5) and basically showed how much fun the ladies behind the Sisters had working on the series. Pity it was only on the one episode. The "Next Episode" teasers was fun too. Even though it was loosely based on the Japanese script, a lot of it seemed improvised and non-scripted. I could be wrong, of course. R.O.D. The TV is a fun romp in the tradition of the Charlie's Angels movies and, in a strange way, The Powerpuff Girls. The series is fun, and I can't wait to see more episodes. Watch this . . . or die!
- Jeff Harris |