ダーティペア (TV Anime) Episode 20 Review
Dirty Pair – 20

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Yuri and Kei are assigned to take down the assassin named Blues and have been given special handcuffs to use on him. Thus if he attempts to escape, the cuffs blow. Since the nice hotel on the planet Blues is on have heard of Yuri and Kei, the pair end up having to “rough it” and consider entering the beauty contest. After an encounter with a gang of punks, Yuri and Kei stop by a bar where said gang again gives them grief. Yuri and Kei start a bar fight and defeat the thugs, but they summon support, leading one bar patron to toss Kei and and order Yuri to follow. The gang leader has his re-enforcements pursue the trio, including one unit in a helicopter. The man helping Yuri and Kei reveals a cybernetic arm with a built in weapon that destroys the chopper. However, that lets Yuri and Kei know they’ve found Blues and Kei slaps a cuff on the man.

At a small hotel, there is a stalemate between Blues, Yuri, and Kei with the girls deciding to back down. Blues wants to finish his final job — killing the organizer of the Miss Creamy Gal beauty contest, a man named Melpot. Apparently, Melpot killed Blues’ mother by throwing her into the fire sea and Blues wants to return the favor. Yuri leaves Blue in Kei’s hands and disguises herself as a hostess on a monorail where Melpot will be. Also there are the gang of thugs and Yuri learns that Melpot plans to destroy the nice hotel to collect insurance. Hearing this, Kei decides to help Blues.

Blues and Kei attack the monorail on Blues’ bike before landing the air bike on the roof of the monorail. A fight breaks out with Yuri breaking cover to help. Unfortunately, she’s caught by the gang leader, who’s working with (and possibly the son of) Melpot. Melpot has the front part of the monorail detach from the rest of the train to escape and set off the bomb as planned. Yuri takes out the gang leader and Blues shoots the cuff, meaning his bracelet will explode in one minute. He takes his air bike and makes it to the lead car before his bracelet explodes, destroying the car, everyone inside, and part of the tracks over the lava sea. Kei and Yuri rush to activate the hand breaks to keep everyone in the back cars from ending up in the lava sea.

Thoughts/Review:

I really didn’t like this episode because it just violated all manner of common sense. Granted, one needs a wide range for disbelief when watching a Dirty Pair episode, but this one went way out of scope.

For starters, there was the moment when Blues threw Kei out the bar window to save her. Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s rather extreme, especially when Blues could have just drug both Yuri and Kei outside and got them on his bike to get to safety.

Then, there was the ride on Blues air bike. After he takes down the helicopter, Kei slaps a cuff on him with the other on herself. Blues is under arrest, right? OK, so they somehow get him to a cheap hotel and have the gag about him needing to go to the bathroom with Kei attached to him. However, knowing that Blues has a built in weapon in one of his arms, Kei and Yuri have no way of disarming him and thus the situation is bad from the start. Kei and Yuri are often shown as being more clever than that and this seems like a boneheaded move to not do something about that weapon.

Next is the apparent decision of Yuri and Kei to help Blues in his final assassination attempt even before they heard his cliched story. I kept thinking, “You’re going to help this bozo kill a man? Why?”

The cliched back story gives Yuri and Kei a reason to help as does the cliched moment when Mr. Melpot (as Yuri called him in the Japanese) reveals his insurance scheme plan. I was never quite sure if the target was solely the hotel, the monorail, or both. I just went with the hotel and when I buy the official DVD release in the U.S., I’ll see what the official translator did with this mess.

Finally, there was the ulta-cliched moment where the killer with a good heart and motive sacrifices his life to take down his foe (and an innocent monorail conductor) while Yuri and Kei have to stop the speeding monorail cars from going off the track and into the fiery sea below.

And lest I forget, there’s the case of the missing ditsy actress who gets lost in the shuffle at the climax of the anime.

It is a real shame to have such a terrible episode, not that it was unwatchable mind you, but I think it has been the worst of the lot thus far.