ダーティペア (TV Anime) Episode 19 Review
Dirty Pair – 19

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Kei and Yuri are fleeing a paramilitary unit when they spring their surprise and blow up a large portion of the facility they are on. However, on their shuttle pod, they find themselves still under pursuit and while they manage to take down their pursuer, their pod is out of fuel, forcing Kei and Yuri to eject. The shuttle pod crashes into a mansion on a cliff, where the rich and eccentric Reimon is dining with a life sized doll named Meshuzera. The crash causes the doll to be destroyed.

Returning to HQ, Kei and Yuri are assigned a new case where they learn of Reimon and his desire to avenge the “death” of Meshuzera, whom he claims was murdered by a shuttle pod. Kei and Yuri realize this was their shuttle pod and despite Reimon’s strangeness, they take the case. Both Kei and Yuri decide that they will have to show him the joys of a real woman to hopefully get off the hook with Reimon. Privately, they begin to think of how they can show each other up.

Arriving at the mansion, Kei and Yuri attempt to turn on the charm as Reimon mourns at the grave of Meshuzera. However, when Kei gets too close to Reimon, he starts sneezing. Reimon’s maid Milaluda tells them that Reimon is allergic to women and if they get too close, this is what happens.

Entering the mansion, Kei says she believes the crash to be an accident, but Reimon doesn’t care. When Yuri touches him in an attempt to charm him, Reimon goes into a fit, which Meshuzera explains is also an allergic reaction. After finally coming out of the fit, Yuri and Kei decide to make a meal for Reimon to charm him and each sabotages the other’s food. When they return to present it, the injured leader of the paramilitary force (Deos) shows up in a flying submarine, determined to get revenge. Kei and Yuri throw the plates of food, hitting two men who are taken out by the mere taste of the bad food. This leads Yuri and Kei to start a verbal fight with each other.

Deos and his men attack, so Yuri grabs Milaluda and flees. Kei grabs Reimon, but this starts a new fit and he attacks the paramilitary men. The fight continues out of the mansion with Kei taking a hit in the arm. Deos is on her, but she wasn’t hurt as bad as he thought and knocks him back. When Reimon comes charging out, still in a fit, Kei tries to keep him from going off the cliff and ends up going over herself, using her skills to grab a ledge to keep from dying. When Milaluda sees that her Reimon-sama is in trouble, she grabs a gun and goes after Deos. Seeing Deos shoot at his beloved maid, Reimon knocks him off the cliff to his death and saves Milaluda from going over. To Kei’s and Yuri’s amazement, Reimon suffers no ill effects from touching Milaluda and thus is able to love a real woman at last.

Thoughts/Review:

When Kei and Yuri were doing their thing at the beginning of the episode, I figured this would have no bearing on the rest of the story since we’ve seen this sort of thing happen before. So, when Deos showed up again to take revenge on Dirty Pair, it was a nice thing, though not completely unexpected based on the spoilerish episode title.

Reimon’s doll love made me think that this episode might be a commentary on that phenomenon in Japan, though I can’t remember how deep that was in the mid-80’s. When the cause was revealed to be his allergies to women, I laughed and thought of an anime I’ve never seen — Hanaukyo Maid Tai. I understand the protagonist there is allergic to women and has a ton of maids.

Yuri and Kei’s cooking competition went as expected once they became rivals to win over Reimon. With the food sabotage, I figured that we’d get Reimon eating the food and getting sick or something. So when some of the paramilitary guys ate some when cleaning off their face from being hit by plates of food, it became a funny joke to have them go down as a result. Kudos to the writers from coming up with a new twist on an old, old joke. ^_^

Once Milaluda was shown to be a beautiful young woman who doted on Reimon and addressed him lovingly as “Reimon-sama,” I knew Reimon would find he wasn’t allergic to her and they’d be a couple. Being a shounen title, the production team couldn’t allow a really nice romantic end, thus had Yuri and Kei sabotage the romantic moment by getting close to Reimon and having him sneeze before cheering. *chuckle* Silly, but oh well.

In the end, we have a mostly enjoyable episode that has weaknesses like most Dirty Pair episodes do, but still somehow manages to overcome most of them.