Director: Katsuhiko Nishijima
Screenplay: Katsuhiko Nishijima,
Tomoko Kawasaki and Yuji Moriyama
Voice Cast: Miki Itō/Stacey Gregg
as A-ko; Emi Shinohara/Denica Fairman as B-ko; Michie Tomizawa/Julia Brahms as
C-ko; Shūichi Ikeda/Jay Benedict as Captain Napolipolita; Tesshō Genda/ Marc
Smith as D; Asami Mukaidono/Lisa Ross as Miss Ayumi; Megumi Hayashibara/Lisa
Ross as Ume; Yoshino Takamori/Anne Marie Zola as Ine; Yoko Ogai/Toni Barry as
Asa; Sayuri Ikemoto and Daisuke Gouri/Marc Smith and Anne Marie Zola as Mari
Viewed in the English Dub
The known story is that Project A-Ko was meant to be hentai. Cream Lemon, a vast OVA franchise that lasted long past the eighties even if the initial series started in 1984 and ended in 1987, was what Project A-Ko was originally meant to be for until the producer had a change of mind1, ditching the erotic nature and focusing on something more action and comedy based. The result was that they created a cult hit that spawned sequels.
Project A-Ko is a title you could also point to for what made the eighties era of anime special for a lot of people, including for reasons which have sadly been lost over the decades with the transition to new technology and working procedures, as this openly silly action farce also happens to be a painstakingly elaborate, expertly crafted project that eventually got a theatrical run in Japan and even in France. It is all for indulgence, but what indulgence. Namely for a plot follow three female characters - A-Ko, B-Ko and C-Ko2. A-Ko is a superhumanly strong and fast teenager, possibly the daughter of Superman in a final scene joke, always late to her new school.
C-Ko is her friend, but the joke is that she can be annoying and is in the trope of characters who are terrible cooks, which is signposted when not only does her homemade boxed meals have whole fish in them, but (in a nice use of actual photo collage for a single joke) the contents of an entire fridge and even an inedible alcohol bottle in a bumper bento box.. As for B-Ko, well, you cannot help but look at her desire at wanting to be C-Ko's friend and see this all so blatantly as a gay crush, leaving you to sympathise with a "villainess" wanting C-Ko, even if it means building giant robots and a fighting armour to confront A-Ko each morning before classes. The creators probably did not intend this characterisation to be there, but even in her thinking longingly of C-Ko whilst she bathes, as a ballad about wanting to be someone's friend plays, her desire to be C-Ko's "friend" comes off with a yuri subtext that cannot help but be read.
Oh, and this is a future where a meteorite hit a city, destroying it, and is now a sci-fi futuristic one that is not elaborated upon in the first of this franchise. It is strange that this action comedy is set during a world where the city and its inhabitants, Graviton City, were obliterated by a meteorite and is set sixteen years later when it was rebuilt in the crater. It does however set up the aliens who are searching for a princess, a story juggling many balls as a result and never feeling too padded out or not pacing itself well. A huge factor to bear in mind is that it is meant to be fun, a comedy that leans a great deal to action as well so that, even if there is a surprising amount of death and destruction, including two obliterated space ships, you are more riveted along.
A great of this virtue is because of how incredible the production is. For ever cheap production churned out in this era there were also many helped by all the money being pumped into the anime industry at the time, here evidence incredible technical and production design craft. Let us set aside one sequence to explain this, A-Ko having to run on fired missiles to reach an alien spaceship, which for a production like this insanely complicated in it to pull off in any era, especially as you have to animate the character and all the missiles in the background not being ran on. Aside from such an example, the production from robot designs to its aesthetic is strong to this day. It plays to the story too, as characters stand out just in their designs, or jokes such as showing how less practical a vehicle that turns into a robot is, which is greater in punch line knowing that animators had to hand draw each cel to depict its intricate transformation, that would have taken weeks if more to do well, only for the result for B-Ko to have an inherent design flaw with her machine.
Part of the nature of the feature length story is also referential jokes as, whilst most of Project A-Ko is over the top action, such as B-Ko continually waiting outside the school gate with a new robot or an alien henchperson's bad habit of standing in the centre of a road, some of the humour stems from referencing the anime of the era even English speaking fans may have known of especially if they were hardcore tape trading fans. So it will seem odd to newer viewers, who do not know the reference or never seen the influence, that one of B-Ko's friends, told to torment C-Ko so she can mock rescue here, is effectively a muscle bound male character from a fighting anime redesigned as a schoolgirl (i.e. redrawn slightly whilst wearing a dress and with pigtails), who in the either dub has a voice actress but also a male one for grunts, and does a weird ritualistic martial arts at one point. It works still, especially as this character is never joked about for her appearance, only once having to point out she is like any other girl except for having to shave every day, and helps the good guys eventually. It is also probably one of the first in a long history of jokes about Fist of the North Star, the legendary and influential Tetsuo Hara and Buronson manga, where such stereotypes of burly and ultra muscular male characters who came from a post apocalypse get turned on their heads, sometimes turned into magical girls from other franchises. Decades later, especially in dōjinshi manga, not even including officially sanctioned parody anime where they put the cast of this series in tonally inappropriate places for comedy, you would have this franchise crossed over with others you would never expect like Azumanga Daioh3.
One joke which might come off as tasteless nowadays is the alien ship's captain being a chronic alcoholic. It is softened however if you know the reference, that this is the inevitable conclusion to Captain Harlock, the legendary Leiji Matsumoto character who, as his own free man and space pitate roaming outer space on his ship being manly and heroic, had as a trademark his passion for drinking wine. Considering the character first came to be in a 1977 manga, and has been adapted over the decades even after Project A-Ko, the unsubtle and potentially crass nature of the jokes about "Captain Napolipolita" are softened knowing that this was created by a group of anime fans, making anime, wondering about the state of his liver over the near decade up to this point.
Beyond this, it is surprising how effectively put together Project A-Ko is, effectively three acts with its first and second (B-Ko trying to do in A-Ko with her plans after the initial set up of these characters) managing to stretch the length of a usual forty plus minute OVA without feeling padded, only to continue on to what is an extended fight scene between A-Ko and B-Ko which spirals into the alien plot. That there it is almost a joke in itself that, when A-Ko and B-Ko finally fight, B-Ko creating a suit for herself that can match A-Ko, they brawl and cause distruction blissfully unaware of a sudden alien invasion adds a lot to the climax when the film escalates into its third half. Many expectations are subverted in really funny ways, whilst others like C-Ko being really terrible at cooking, whilst clichés in the modern day let alone back then, were always funny when done well. It only gets lazy when the story uses short hand when it reveals the aliens are an all-female species, suddenly having a very big macho figure in a skimpy bikini, rather than be more creative. Even minor characters like Miss Ayumi, the put upon teacher of the girls' class, have enough here that, when the sequels came due to the popularity of the first story, leading to a series of OVA follow-ons, you understand how when there was a demand for them there was enough to run with in this world and premise. They even do reference the origins of the project being hentai by having one scene with B-Ko and bathing already mentioned that, whilst cheesy fan service, is likely in hindsight the production having a private joke of this origin before that knowledge was better known of.
Honestly the only thing particularly dated about Project A-Ko is the music, and even that is charming in being part of that era of eighties anime music, especially when a lot of the instrumental material is the great atmospheric synth that I think still works. It in itself is fascinating as, alongside Toru Akasaka, it was composed by two non-Japanese collaborators Richie Zito and Joey Carbone. Zito is an American songwriter, composer and producer whose career has varied between playing guitar on Kenny Loggins' Danger Zone to producing albums for the likes of Cheap Trick to The Cult. Joey Carbone, also American and having a huge list of careers (a composer, music producer, arranger, keyboardist, vocalist, advisor and educator) has a giant list of individuals and bands he has crossed with in his career that would be too many to try to list. It is of note, however, that his connection to the country since he first visited in 1982 has lead to him having a monstrously successful career in J-Pop in terms of hits in the Japanese music industry4.
By itself, the original Project A-Ko is awesome to revisit. To its advantage, this feature length film has also stayed in consciousness even in the West when it was first a 1991 subtitled release from US Manga Corps, getting a British recorded dub in 1992. It was a Central Park Media title, one of the titles they licensed to the defunct ILC in the United Kingdom, and that Discotek released the whole franchise as the other two did in the 2010s. Despite one major issue, that the master has vanished leaving the film unable to be restored, it still lasts even into 2020, when a service called RetroCrush was started, allowing one to stream classic anime on your phone or mobile tablet of choice with Project A-Ko one of the first titles on the service. This is entirely because, whilst obscurer nowadays, Project A-Ko has been of pride and place for a certain generation older anime fans and that, over the decades, there was thankfully never anything problematic you had to quickly brush over with the material either.
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1) The old ILC UK release (which is a copy of the Central Park Media release) has an interview with Yuji Moriyama that is barely a few minutes long but had a few choice notes of interest....sadly causing one to wish, whilst an audio commentary thankfully does exist with members of the production, that there was more than this tiny little stub.
2) Also from that DVD release interview, I learnt that the names are based on blood types, which are of interest in Japanese culture as reading one's star sign is said to show one's personality. It is a bit complicated, but A-Ko equals O type (energetic and headstrong), B-Ko equals A type (orderly and jealous), and C-Ko as B type (sensitive and impatient).
3) Here's one such example.
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