Project A-ko 5 & 6

volume 6 sleeve

Official Blurb:

"You think you know A-Ko Magami, the world's strongest schoolgirl? You think you know B-Ko Daitokuji, the bitch-queen genius from hell, and C-Ko Kotobuki, the galaxy's cutest bubblehead? Well think again, because you've never seen them like this before! Get ready for the newest chapter in the Project A-Ko series, a fast- paced alternate-reality science-fiction adventure: Battle1 - Grey Side."

"Life for spunky A-Ko and her cunning partner B-Ko as monster hunters on a desert planet is simple but exciting. However, when space pirate Liza and Grush foul up their attempt to kidnap C-Ko Kotobuki, the ten-year old heiress to the Kotobuki fortune, trouble literally drops in on them."

"Faced off against busty amazon Liza and her gun-toting partner Grush, A-Ko and B- Ko take the law into their own hands in order to rescue C-Ko before the sinister Gail has her in his clutches and fulfills his dark plan to resurrect the demon Xena. Fighting sand-submarines and three-headed space dragons, A-Ko must defeat Liza, while B-Ko finds herself staring death in the face..."

"Grey Side is the first of a two-part Project A-Ko spin-off series. The other adventures of A-Ko and her friends can be seen in the features Project A-Ko; Project A-Ko 2 - Plot of the Daitokuji Financial Group; Project A-Ko 3 - Cinderella Rhapsody and Project A-Ko 4 - Final, available from Manga Video."

Director:     Katsuhiko Nishijima
Screenplay:   Part 5: Katsuhiko Nishijima & Tomoko Kawasaki
              Part 6: Yuji Kawahara
Copyright:    Final Nishijima/NEXTART

VHS version:
Language:     English
Label:        Manga Video

Volume:       1              2
Running time: 50 mins        52 mins
Certificate:  PG             PG
Catalogue no: MANV 1116      MANV 1118
Price:        £9.99          £9.99
Release Date: 4th Dec 1994   15th Jan 1995

Review:

These two linked OVAs are an alternative A-Ko story, set entirely off-Earth. Here, A-Ko and B-Ko are two young women who are out hunting sand-monsters together. Meanwhile, C-Ko, the daughter of a wealthy president, is kidnapped from a space ship by two powerful space pirates, Flash and Lisa, at the orders of a sinister alien, Gail, who wants C-Ko as a receptacle for a universe-destroying dragon he wishes to reincarnate!

There is lots of action and humour as A-Ko and B-Ko chase the pirates, and it's good to see the strong and complementary characters of A-Ko and B-Ko co-operating at last. They do seem more grown up than in the first A-Ko movie. A well-plotted pair of OVAs with a good balance of action, invention, humour and emotion. The dubbing isn't that great (it sounds less silly in Japanese) but these volumes make a strong ending to the A-Ko sequence of movie and videos. [Geoff Cowie]