apless Ayako Hanabishi wanted to be a teacher, but when she graduated
and began looking for jobs, nothing was available. When she was finally
offered a position at a school, she jumped at the chance, even though it
meant traveling to a distant planet. But when she arrived, she found the
school had suddenly gone bankrupt. She and athletic scholarship student
Wakana Nanamiya were left in the same position--broke, abandoned and very
far from home.
As Teramonya Voyagers begins, the two decide to find a way back
to Earth no matter what. Suddenly, a giant mecha crash-lands in front of
them, demolishing their old school. A cocky pink-haired girl named Paraila
emerges and quickly makes friends with the two Earthlings, claiming she's a
student who wants to "find herself" by enrolling at a school on their
distant planet. The three pool their limited funds for a shuttle flight
that will get them marginally closer to Earth, but they haven't even gotten
on board the ship when Paraila is noticed, with explosive results.
It turns out Ayako and Wakana's new friend is the notorious "Space Trash
Paraila," once a notorious criminal boss in the Jaoukai crime family, now
wanted by angry people on both sides of the law. Ejected from the Jaoukai,
Paraila set out on her own, hunted by the Space Federation Police, who want
to bring her in and squeeze Jaoukai secrets out of her. The Jaoukai, having
caught on to the danger, want to silence her. Paraila's only hope is to get
to Earth, a "backwater planet" outside the range of operative
law-enforcement treaties.
With Ayako and Wakana now branded as accessories to Paraila's constant
lawbreaking (a list of new violations is helpfully presented at the end of
each episode), the three flee across the galaxy in varying degrees of
screaming panic. Another Earthling, violence-loving pit bull Tatsue
Yokoyama of the SFP, catches up to them again and again with increasingly
huge and elaborate weapons. But Paraila has one ace up her sleeve--a piece
of stolen Jaoukai technology that turns any mecha, no matter how archaic,
into a state-of-the-art machine capable of evoking big, splashy fight
sequences.
In-jokes for an out crowd
American audiences aren't going to get most of the subtext of
Teramonya Voyagers, a grab-bag spoof of popular Japanese TV. They'll
have to content themselves with the more obvious gags, which are served up
in abundance from the opening credits--featuring the characters' heads
rotating in washers and dryers--to the abrupt ending. (The characters don't
even get close to Earth, nor do they specifically fail; as the last episode
wraps up, a voice-over says brightly, "What will happen to our three
voyagers? Only God can answer that. And for some reason, that's the
end.")
The producers clearly had a lot of fun with this short series. Given its
silly beginning and complete lack of ending, it doesn't need to hold to any
particular storytelling standard. That makes Voyagers a pretty
lightweight and unambitious series, but it also leaves a lot of spare room
for unrestrained goofiness. Some highlights include Ayako's impromptu
haikus ("My unemployment/Robots are falling, falling/From the autumn sky"),
Tatsue's over-the-top revenge schemes, and frequent send-ups of detective
shows, big-robot cartoons, space sagas, crime dramas and martial-arts
films. The final episode is particularly weird--trapped in a damaged
spaceship with malfunctioning air conditioning, the protagonists avoid heat
prostration by donning an ever-changing assortment of skimpy costumes, each
consisting of random pieces of equipment strapped over the pertinent areas.
(Some of the best styles include sports gear, machine parts and, in one
memorable case, an inner tube and a bag of goldfish in water.)
On the surface, Voyagers is a standard blend of bouncy,
squawking girls squabbling over trivia and giant mecha pounding at each
other. But the series is loony enough to develop its own unique flavor.
Sharp, protean animation, which changes often for parody effect, frequently
heightens the sense of freshness and unpredictability. Bandai has
conveniently packaged the entire series on one DVD--anime's first DVD-only
release--which makes it easy to breeze through all four irreverent
episodes. But the sheer exuberant insanity of the project makes it a lot of
fun, too.
