ダーティペア (TV Anime) Episode 15 Review
Dirty Pair – 15

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

While Kei and Yuri are on vacation and enjoying the flirtations of a man named Stephan (Stephen?) and his talk of roses, an elderly man in a cowboy interrupts as he is pursued by men in suits and dark shades. Kei decides to involve herself in the fight and helps out the old man. In the process, Stephan is knocked out along side the suited men. The old man is looking for the 3WA girls who are supposed to be residing at this hotel and since Kei and Yuri are said girls, they give him an audience. He tells tale of a treasure belonging to the ancient and extinct La-kahanga people on the planet Yukka and offers 10% of the 150-million credit find. Yuri attempts to get the old man to go up to 20%, but he’s unwilling until a helicopter gunship, sent by his former assistant Clementine, opens fire.

After escaping, the Lovely Angel makes its way to Yuuka were the old man stinks out the ship with his heavy garlic usage in the food he cooks. The smell is so bad that it causes Namo to short circuit. Kei takes control of the ship and safely crash lands. Kei, Yuri, and the old man take off for the temple with the treasure which Mughi left to repair Namo. Upon entering a craw space in the temple, Clementine’s men stop them and get them out. Clementine takes the key from the old man and after forcing the trio to stand to one side, she shoots the roof over their head, causing a cave in. The trio end up unhurt and emerge in another part of the temple.

In the meantime, Mughi finishes his repairs on Namo and the two take a flier to meet up with the trio. At the same time, the trio hear a scream from Clementine and rush to find her and one of her men in a fight with some giant snakes. Kei sees a holographic projector and shoots it, ending the threat. The old man demands his key back, so Clementine throws it. When the trip go to retrieve it, they end up in a deep pit and Clementine has the key back. The floor closes over the pit, but Kei’s gun is out of energy thanks to the last fight. The old man tries to find an exit but only discovers another chamber where a not-so-lucky adventurer has snuffed it. To make matters worse, a stone block starts moving down to squash them while the pit begins to fill with water. Fortunately for those inside, Mughi and Namo arrive just in time to deactivate the trap.

Continuing on, the old man leads them to the giant doors that lead to the treasure, but which have not been opened. They find Clementine snared in a stock-trap and the key on the ground. The old man takes the card-key and inserts it into the lock. Having Kei and Yuri each stand on a separate platform with himself in the middle, they work to push down the blocks that keep rising up. This causes the key-card to be fed in and eventually the doors open. However, there is no treasure inside, only a message about cooperation, as the old man reads it.

Returning home, Kei and Yuri are a bit bummed but not surprised at how things turned out. On TV, they are stunned when they see the old man has sold the secrets to a new energy source found in a document from Yukka for 170-million credits. Kei and Yuri realize they’ve been had as a delivery flying truck arrives with a package for them. Inside are a ton of red roses and a picture of the old man. Even though they aren’t rich, Kei and Yuri find themselves laughing at the old man and his win.

Thoughts/Review:

This episode ended up being surprisingly enjoyable and a bit funny.

I get the distinct feeling that this episode was very much a parody of action-adventure shows and movies of the 80’s. The cheesy way Clementine had Kei, Yuri, and the old man “killed” started my thinking in this regard. It was pretty obvious from the time that she shot the ceiling rather than actually shoot her captives that they’d encounter each other later and she’d be all surprised that they were alive. *lol*

Also, I chuckled at the absurdity of the helicopter gunship destroying everything in the room save for the one table they are using as a shield. Naturally, a chain gun that can shred walls couldn’t hit an upturned table, but also naturally, Kei can shoot down said gunship with a couple of well placed shots of her hand gun. *lol*

There were other elements that marked this as a parody, but the biggest one had to come from the Indiana Jones references. I laughed out loud when the old man opened the one wall in the pit, only to find a dead body dressed as Indiana Jones there. Then you had the traditional Indiana Jones trap upon trap so that the pit filled with water and the top of the pit starts pushing down to crush them. I laughed at that, mainly because there was no way the “roof” of the pit (which is the floor of the chamber above them) could come down in that fashion.

I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but the scene with Mughi being stuck in the entrance to the crawlspace made me think of Star Wars and Chewbaka when Han Solo was trying to get him to go through into the garbage chute. Namo’s use of an electrical charge to shock Mughi and get him through made me laugh out loud and reminded me of R2D2 doing similar things. ^_^

I also got a chuckle at the ending. I figured that there would be no treasure, at least in the traditional sense, and that was true. However, having the old man win by knowing the treasure was the note that was left is what gave me the chuckle. After talking up the old man to 20% of the find, having him one up them in the end was OK with me. Plus, he did send them roses. ^_^

So as I said early, a fun episode was found here. ^_^