April 27th, 2010 
AstroNerdBoy ダーティペア (TV Anime) Episode 18 Review
Dirty Pair – 18
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Yuri and Kei are charged with taking in the criminal known as BJ. They barge into room 503 of the hotel and get into a gun fight with the occupant, destroying the hotel in the process but sadly, they had the wrong hotel. The right hotel is next door and BJ thinks he has the drop on the girls, but instead they have him after lassoing him from the air car and dragging him through the streets. Slapping an electric cuff on BJ, Kei has fun electrocuting him whenever he steps out of line. However, Kei and Yuri aren’t happy when they learn that they won’t be handing BJ immediately to the authorities but will have 
to take him to police HQ. They change their minds when reminded of the hotel and Kei turns on the tracker.
After filling up at a gas station, Kei discovers they have a bomb on the air car, forcing them to bail before it blows. The police chief informs Gooley that BJ is being targeted by a criminal organization who don’t want him to testify, meaning they have to keep BJ alive at all costs. The trio board a bus, which is soon targeted by gangster types. The people on the bus end up helping Yuri and Kei in the eventual fight that happens until teargas is set off in the bus.
Kei, Yuri, and BJ get away to the sewers, but again find themselves trapped by gangster-types. When a giant cleaning ball comes through, the trio use it to make their escape, but the city streets are crawling with more of these thugs trying to kill BJ. Entering a restaurant, Kei makes a report to Gooley of their situation, including that they are surrounded. Gooley makes an in-person report to the police chief as Kei and Yuri attempt an escape with BJ. They soon discover that their attackers aren’t gangsters or thugs, but cops. Gooley confronts the chief about this and gets shot.
Meanwhile, Kei and Yuri procure a heavy duty rig for hauling goods, which they use to drive to the station. The police chief has lots of cops set up to shoot the truck as the injured Gooley makes contact with Kei, telling them they were right about the police involvement. They blast through and crash into the police HQ, where they end up snagging the chief and making the arrest. Gooley is taken to the hospital after which Kei and Yuri leave, only to watch the police HQ building come crashing down.
Thoughts/Review:
I think this episode, more than most so far, goes to show the true destructive power of Dirty Pair. *lol* They destroy a hotel; a car of theirs is destroyed by a bomb, which destroys more buildings; they get a bus shot up and destroyed along with a number of vehicles along the way; they get a big rig destroyed; and finally they destroy the police HQ building. ^_^; That’s a lot of destruction, but is a mark of the Dirty Pair and indeed how they obtained their reputation.
The episode was rather predictable with the police chief obviously behind the failed attempts to 
kill BJ, Kei, and Yuri. Beyond the stereotypical 80’s “the police chief is a crook” aspect, the writers put it up in big, bright, marquee letters when (1) they had Kei turn on her belt tracking and (2) the chief could follow them in real time on the giant city map in his office. It was so painfully obvious, it made both Kei and Yuri look stupid for not figuring it out sooner. OK, they do look dumb for hitting the wrong hotel, but that comes off more like a mistake for the purposes of comedic destruction rather than looking dumb.
Speaking of the first guy Kei and Yuri went after, I had to laugh when after they bust in on him in the bath, he returns fire naked but then the very next time we see him, he has a bathrobe on. *lol* Well, I suppose in the middle of an intensive gun fight, there’s always time to put on a bathrobe. ^_^
The other moment that made me smile was the full service fuel station where Kei and Yuri filled up their tank. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a full service gas station, though I think New Jersey and Oregon 
made it a law banning self-service gas. However, in the 80’s, I do remember seeing full service stations around, though their numbers had already seriously declined.
So we end up with a fun episode that typified the popular “bad cop” themes of so many action movies in the 80’s.
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Just a generic heads-up: Dunno about NJ, but it’s still the law in Oregon. It freaks me out every time I drive down to Portland or Eugene and they won’t let me pump my own gas. ^_^;
The cynic in me says that the only reason they have these laws was to protect the jobs of gas station attendants.
Me too. I don’t know what their rationale was, but I find it hard to believe that it would have had more than a mild effect in combating photochemical smog by reducing escape of gasoline vapors.
I’d be curious to know if requiring more than one person on duty had an unintended positive effect on the holdup and murder rate, though. From past experience, the companies that run them care almost nothing about the issue, since they bear no monetary liability. Almost none hire security monitoring companies, and even bulletproof glass is rare.