Review: 'Outlaw Star'

Anime: Outlaw Star

Genre: Adventure, Space Opera, Space Western

Age Rating: Good for All

Studio: Sunrise

Music: Kow Otani

Author: Katsuhiko Chiba

Dub/Sub: Both

Ecchi Level: Nosebleed (Very limited nudity exclusive to one episode).

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So, this was another nostalgic romp through a show I saw as a kid. This show was my world for a long while, and I loved it even more than I did the Dragonball Z series because it dabbled more in space travel. So, now that I’m doing reviews, I thought I’d go back and check this series out again with a critical eye.

And I came out with a clearer view on what’s good and what’s bad about it. While I didn’t notice it back in the day when my child-like wonder was oooing and awwwing at space battles, the animation of this series is… bad. When it’s focusing on a single character, it’s relatively fine. But when things start moving around, it gets pretty terrible. They hide a lot of the shoddy animation by making enemies that move in crazy, distorted, dances rather than attacking like normal human beings would. And the animation shows its weakness relatively early by reusing the animation for ships launching missiles. But let's get to the story.

The story starts with Gene Starwind, the protagonist, and his partner, a crazy 11-year-old genius mechanic by the name of Jim Hawking. As a kid, I only ever watched this in English. So I thought I’d give the Japanese cast a chance to impress me, and they definitely did. The English cast was fine. They excelled at matching voices with personalities. But when it came to effort put into the voices, I have to go with the Japanese dubs. They had a lot more emotion in their voices when they were portraying the characters. Melfina in particular had a very… stiff voice actress in English, and sounded much better in Japanese.

Alright, so Gene and Jim are on a colony planet called Sentinel III where they run a kind of mercenary business. They take all kinds of jobs, from vehicle repair to bodyguard services. They end up taking a job from a mysterious patroness and end up in the cross hairs of an organization of criminals that harness magic known as the Kei Pirates. With the help of this outlaw, they rescue the lovely Melfina and get their hands on a new, fancy starship. Then, they continue in an almost slice of life sequence of finding jobs, avoiding a lovely assassin and the wily Ctarl-Ctarl officer, and continue through their lives with an ever-growing debt.

Without going into too much spoilers, there is an end goal that they have relating to Melfina and the ship that they got. But it’s not the focus of most of the series. Despite the poor animation, the series does provide us with some comical moments. And Jim in the beginning of the series gives Gene a look that could define my entire life.

As the show goes on, they express a bad habit that’s relatively common in anime, and I don’t know why. It’s the one where they show the future at the beginning of the episode, and then jump into what got the protags in such a situation as if to say, “Here’s what the heroes are going to be doing during this episode!” I don’t know why this is so many animes do this, but it needs to stop. We don’t need a sneak peek of the future. Just start the episode and progress time normally. Stop trying to tease people. It’s annoying.

The story progress is slow. Gene finds out that a big name in the outlaw scene was present for a traumatic scene in his past, and nothing ever comes of it. It’s just a space western slice of life show with little progression, and only concludes in the last couple of episodes. I would criticize the series for its lack of action, except that the action that’s present isn’t anything to get excited about. It’s a lot of people shooting and not hitting anything, as if storm troopers from Star Wars had been hired in these merc bands.

Also, there are a lot of moments in the series where you outright call bullshit on the main cast. The biggest bullshit moment in the series is when Gilliam, the ship’s internal artificial intelligence saying that he has a foolproof guard system. The dude gets hacked several times throughout the series. In fact, I think any time someone attempts to hack him, they’re successful. It’s ridiculous to think that this thing has a foolproof defense system. Also, there’s a claim that the ship they obtained at the beginning of the series is supposed to be a super advanced grappler ship. But it’s really nothing special. They run into tons of other ships in the series that are on par, or outright better.

But, oh well. I feel like it isn’t very good story telling, but that gets a slide because some of the villains they run into in the series are great. Especially ones like Crackerjack. You can see a lot of good storytelling in the series’ non-main-story episodes. But I really wish more thought went into the main story itself. Because as it stands, it’s ridiculously plain. And really, the final battle was nothing to write home about. The voice acting and animation increased in quality the further in the series it went. But that didn’t really make up for the lack of creativity in the final battles. Not to mention the unsatisfying ending. But I’ll complain about that in the spoiler section.

Overall, rewatching this series was a feast for my nostalgia bone. Especially with the awesome, and frankly one of the catchiest intros for anime of its time. And the soothing sounds of the ending credits songs were chilling. I had forgotten about the ending songs and hearing them again sent my goosebumps flaring. I love both the intro and ending credits, and that’s very rare for me. But after removing the nostalgia glasses, it’s not a great anime. The characters barely grow as people, the animation is relatively poor, the battles aren’t anything interesting or intense, and the main story lacked any real depth. Cap this off with another ‘friendship power up’ to finish off the final battle, and you’ve got your run of the mill, average anime.

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TLDR: Honestly, I was afraid of revisiting old anime again for this exact reason. While I still get pumped about the nostalgia of the series, that’s where the excitement ends. My recommendation is that if you have nostalgia for this series, go ahead and watch it. If you love space cowboy western series’ with plenty of ship battles and gun fights, give it a shot. But if you want actual depth in your anime, this might not be the series for you. Because the absolute best I can give this without adding my own nostalgia is that it’s average.

Ratings:

Animation: 4/10

Music: 6/10

Story: 4/10

Comedy: 7/10

Overall Rating: 5/10

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SPOILER TALK:

Best Girl: As much as I love Melfina and want to protecc her adorable cinnamon roll ass, this has to go to Aisha Clan Clan. She’s also adorable, is super strong, eats like a Saiyan, and probably had something to do with me loving powerful women in the media. She’s comedic when she needs to be, and a ruthless killer when it calls for it. She lovers her some scalding onsens, and also becomes an awesome member of the crew. She’s the best the show has to offer, and I’d recommend watching the show for her if nothing else.

Best Bro: Jim Hawking. This dude puts up with so much of Gene’s shit that it’s hard to give this title to anyone else. He’s smart, quick witted, and ONLY ELEVEN YEARS OLD! How the hell did this kid get a gig with Gene Starwind? In any case, he was one of the few people in the story with a lot of character depth. The others were either side characters, or Melfina. The rest were rather generic. But Jim, I felt for the dude. Not only having having to get out of trouble that Gene starts, but there was one episode where he actually met a girl he liked. That episode was heart wrenching, as the girl turned out to be a mercenary out for Gene’s head. Neither the crew of the Outlaw Star, nor the girl knew who was on the other ship, and Jim unknowingly blew the girl he had feelings for into space dust. That episode killed me. And if it didn’t kill you, then you are a zombie.

Really, I hoped this series was as good as I remembered it. But aside from a few instances of isolated story-telling, it wasn’t much to look at. After watching the series and seeing how disappointing everything was, from the sub-par animation to the lack of effort put into character development, I really hoped that the ending would be satisfying. But it wasn’t. Sure, Melfina learned who she was, what her purpose was, and all that good stuff. But when her main purpose was a GPS and key to the Galactic Leyline, that’s not much of a character arc.

And can we talk about the final battles? Any time Gene fought someone, he literally just used his black hole caster gun to take them out. The only person this didn’t work on was Hazanko, who they had a ship battle with later. And that wasn’t very exciting either. Suzuka and Aisha both had fights that I guess were supposed to be epic at the end, but they finished the exact same way. Them and the bad guys attacked each other with massive attacks, and the Outlaw Star crew’s attack ended up killing the pirates. Anticlimactic at best. Suzuka also apparently had an unexplained story arc with this pirate, but that wasn’t elaborated on at all.

And to top everything on this disappointing conclusion off, the crew ended up with nothing. Literally nothing. They found the Galactic Leyline and got nothing from it. Like, yeah. I understand that Gene’s wish was for Melfina to come back with him, but at the very least they could have come out with some sick scrap left over from the pirate’s destroyed ships. Or dragonite. Or something. But they didn’t get anything. Gene and the crew went back to Sentinel III and were still in debt, still had no idea what they were going to do next, and were basically back to square one with just a happier Melfina.

I really do understand that not every series can have a happy ending, but at the very least they could have found something to pay off their debt so that they could start fresh. I don’t know why I’m harping on this point so much. At the very least, the adorable little Melfina is happy. And given what I saw in the Season 3 trailer pilot (RIP), she’s veeeery happy. So there’s that. Nostalgia really does blind you in the end. Because I still love this series to death.