Area 88 Vol. 1



Imagine a Japanese fighter pilot. Visualize him in your mind's eye. Got him? Okay, here's the Japanese pilot from the new TV version of Area 88.



No seriously, this guy is supposed to be Japanese. It's a major plot point. He's Shin Kazama, and he's a mercenary pilot in the fictional-but-not-very-real-sounding Middle Eastern country of Alsan. It's a sort of a Foreign Legion kind of situation, where you can only get out after serving a three year stint or earning $1.5 million by shooting down enemy planes in Alsan's seemingly interminable civil war. I saw this as an OAV series back in the 1980's, and the new version is much slicker when it comes to the dogfights, but oddly they've taken the focus off Shin. In the first three episodes (all I've seen so far) we don't even get the back story on Shin and why he's in Alsan. Instead it's more of an anthology of pretentious stories about the spiritual lives of other pilots. It's a very touchy feely, and only moderately fun.


"Must... find... Iceman..."

Posted: Mon - February 27, 2006 at      

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