ダーティペア ラブリーエンジェルより愛をこめて (OVA Anime) Episode 01 Review
Dirty Pair Lovely Angels Yori Ai O Komete OVA 01
Dirty Pair – 25 (With Love From the Lovely Angels OVA 01)

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Kei is frustrated at being stuck at home repairing an A/C unit while Yuri is out on a date, something that isn’t going so well for Yuri as they guy she’s with is only interested in reading. Gooley has a counterfeit money assignment for Yuri and Kei, even though it is their time off, but since Yuri is out, Kei takes the job and is assigned a temporary new partner — Gooley’s aide Calico. As Kei and Calico head to Jobs Garun’s mansion across the snow, their approach is spotted by an elderly lady at the mansion. Meanwhile, Yuri angrily takes her date back across icy roads before returning home to find Kei gone and Mughi working on the A/C unit.

Reporting the arrival of guests to her husband, the elderly man has a robot dragon tell them they want no visitors. Kei tries to talk but Calico destroys the robot with a rocket. Kei is not happy about this since the dragon robot was not a combat machine. Another robot appears and Kei takes it out. Now, multiple droids attack them and Kei finds herself in the crossfire between the droids and an overeager Calico. As Calico fires away, a smaller, insect-winged droid is launched and gets the drop on Kei, shooting her with a beam and taking her out. Calico tries to react but isn’t fast enough as the droid shoots him as well.

Meanwhile, Yuri checks in with Gooley to discover what happened to Kei. Hearing that Calico has been assigned to Kei, Yuri knows he’s not up to the task and though Gooley doesn’t completely agree, he does want Yuri to assist. Before she leaves, Gooley has additional information about Jobs, including the fact that they had a son named Mack who committed suicide after being made the fall guy in some huge bank scandal. Yuri takes off in Lovely Angel and checking her messages from Kei, she realizes that Kei’s lack of serious verbal abuse over Yuri’s date means she could be in trouble.

Jobs and his wife have Kei and Calico bound in the basement, explaining that the counterfeit money was to punish the bank that killed their son. Their plan is to now flee. Upstairs, Yuri breaks into the mansion’s kitchen, only to be asked by the kitchen robot what she wants for dinner. After placing an order, Yuri leaves and encounters a robot made to look like Mack. She accidentally shoots it, causing it to go out of control and destroy everything around it. Jobs tells Yuri how to take the robot out and after a bit, Yuri manages to score two shots that sends the Mack robot into the active fireplace.

Down in the basement, Calico screws up again and causes the cutting laser to activate, threatening to slice Kei in half. After Yuri, Jobs, and his wife make it downstairs, Yuri shuts down the laser just in time, but the Mack robot, sans its artificial skin, comes down and attacks again. It is strangling Jobs when Kei and Yuri do things to cause the robot to fall apart. With the mission over, Calico is determined to take Jobs and his wife in for trial. Kei and Yuri aren’t thrilled with this solution. As such, a deal is arranged with Calico that if he lets them stay on their island, Kei and Yuri won’t report Calico’s numerous mistakes to Gooley. Calico isn’t happy by this but has no choice.

Thoughts/Review:

Having just watched a horror parody with Urusei Yatsura, I was amused by the coincidence that this episode of Dirty Pair was a parody of 80’s action flicks, The Terminator, and the James Bond movie Goldfinger.

It was strange to have an episode where Yuri and Kei aren’t together from the start. Yuri and Kei have split up to do separate tasks on a mission before, but never been dispatched solo. However, I guess the writers thought that this was a good way to have Kei get caught in a manner that was believable considering how Calico’s inexperience and trigger-happy nature got them into a deep mess from the start.

Anyway, it was fun seeing Yuri come in for the rescue and humorous to have her break in, only to be asked what she wanted for dinner by a robot. *lol* Indeed, one could say that this episode really allowed Yuri to shine without knocking down Kei. After all, Yuri had to battle the Mack robot several times before she and Kei literally took it apart at the end. OK, that take apart business was rather cheesy, but somehow it fit the moment in a comedic way. Too bad Linda Hamilton didn’t think to dismantle the Terminator this way. ^_~

The touchy-feely “ends justify the means” ending made me roll my eyes but that ending was not unexpected. Indeed, the moment it is revealed that this counterfeiter named “Jobs” is an elderly man living with his elderly wife, it was clear that Kei and Yuri would want to leave them alone. I kept thinking that it would be a nice twist if Jobs and his wife used their age and soft-spoken ways to just gain sympathy so they could continue doing what they are doing, even if they had to move.

So, a pretty fun episode with its various parodies.