#216: Outlaw Star (1998)

 

Studio: Sunrise

Director: Mitsuru Hongo

Screenplay: Katsuhiko Chiba

Based on a manga by Takehiko Itō

Voice Cast: Ayako Kawasumi as Melfina; Shigeru Shibuya as Gene Starwind; Rica Matsumoto as James 'Jim' Hawking; Sayuri as 'Twilight' Suzuka; Yūko Miyamura as Aisha Clanclan

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Outlaw Star is a space western. One of the best virtues of the series is how its world is elaborated upon, including almost every episode pre-opening credits having the narrator explain context to the entire universe we will catch a snippet of. To start from the beginning and give a brief summary however, this is set in a far flung future when humanity has ventured into the outer reaches of space. Frontier environments and encounters with aliens have already happened, and in the middle of this, from Sentinel III, is Gene Starwind who is a bounty hunter, and a general job man for monety and his colleague and friend Jim Hawking, an eleven year child prodigy. Crossing paths with a female outlaw named Hilda, they are surprised to encounter, in a giant case she has been carrying, a grown young woman named Melfina hibernating inside until she wakes up, someone who is of great importance in the end for many groups, even through violence, to have with them.

Outlaw Star, truthfully over its twenty six episodes, is not really about its narrative. Unless you focus on Melfina, whose narrative is the real conclusion to this, this is a show you will find the conclusion a disappointment for. The story she and the titular spaceship are connected to, a space ship co-built by the military and space pirates she literally becomes one with, controlling inside a glass tube and become conscious inside, is a McGuffin. The plot connecting her to the Galactic Leyline ultimately becomes less important that the world and characters, whilst the personality of this Sunrise production is far more interesting. Outlaw Star, which had a lasting impact in being screened on Cartoon Network's Toonami block, beginning on January 15, 2001 and ended on February 21, 2001¹, feels like a first season to a franchise that, setting up its characters through these episodes, would grow out into a larger production on the second.

Once it starts bringing its key parts together in terms of characters in the first episodes, the show's virtues alongside its world are set up. The ship's computer alone, a sentient figure who takes umbrage to insults and to ill-advised ideas, is a virtue in him, but he is thankfully a standout character matched by others of equal batting. That there is a balance of female main cast members is distinct, more so as, in one of the aspects of Outlaw Star which has not aged well, some of its humour includes Gene Starwind being the kind of horn dog who is touchy-feely in an inappropriate way, the one failure in a character who, despite arguably being the less interesting as the generic male lead, is nonetheless the one of the best of the traditional male hot head lead as you could get.

Thankfully alongside Jim Hawking, a great straight man to Gene in terms of a likable duo, and Melfina, who becomes the most compelling figure in terms of drama, you have also Suzuka, a female samurai contract killer in this galaxy originally after someone close to Gene as a contract, and Aisha Clanclan. Aisha from the Ctarl-Ctarl alien race is, to use a Star Trek comparison, if the Klingons in Gene Roddenberry's franchise were, as a war life alien race of headstrong emotions, slightly goofier cat humanoids. It is an excuse for a catgirl on the crew, one whose mannerisms including Yūko Miyamura's voice performance might annoy some, but alongside the fact that you hear a key cast member from the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise play an entirely different character, as Aisha is definitely not an Asuka Langley from that franchise, but said change of pace and showing for Miyamura's comedic chops also happens to be a buff muscled cat girl who is able to turn into a giant monstrous werecat. In any other context, she is a fun character, but everyone in the main cast is also as memorable.

Aspects have not aged as mentioned. There is a scene, whilst Melfina is asleep, where Gene considers grouping her that is played as a joke. One character, in a trope that did not leave even a decade later, is Fred Luo, an arms dealer and the Outlaw Star's key financer who is explicitly meant to be gay and, despite being a likable character, is played up to as a gay panic character in how he flirts with Gene. It is to Outlaw Star's advantage these moments do not detract when even Fred Luo, excluding this aspect, is also a really good side character, especially when it leads up to an episode about him. His character, alongside being a fun one in being an arms dealer who is very relaxed about bailing Gene out with cash for his ventures, also has a wrestling episode where a female suitor, who he was trying to stop from marrying him and taking away his bachelorhood, decided to prove she was the strongest woman in the galaxy by trying to win a wrestling tournament open to all species of alien three times. There are serious moments, which we will get to, but Outlaw Star for me was definitely the show at its best when it was elaborating about its universe, whilst building its characters up in one-time stories even when it was doing so in openly silly plots.

There is an emotional core, and it is Melfina. The eventual love interest, she is also a likable figure, certainly distinct in the character and costume design, but also someone who inherently scratches a little into science fiction ideas, as a biomechanical android woman who has full consciousness, stuck in an existential crisis of why she exists. The Galactic Leyline is the McGuffin, with everyone requiring her to unlock access to them, so she is the real figure in terms of emotional weight bearing some exceptional moments throughout. Most of Outlaw Star, in contrast, is a very fun show set in a rich lore which has no shame being silly as it is well made. The world is fascinating in how barely glimpsed it is, be it in the species seen or details like religion still existing, least for the lizard species as Melfina briefly visits one of their temples during her existential crisis. This is a world of space station metropolises, of spaceship races with sponsors that the Outlaw Star is entered in for needed cash, and elaborate science fiction, but one of a variety of aesthetics, be it its own distinct touches to explicitly Chinese iconography. This goes further as Taoist magic is real in this world and has even been weaponized, through Gene's rare "Caster" bullets for a specialist gun and a group after Melfina, and how one episode or two, to fund their exploits.

There is a through line throughout, including that aforementioned group of assassins, or the MacDougal brothers, criminals who are connected to the death of Gene's father, but for a show which has characters die, one prominently early on, this also has, four episodes before the end, a hot springs planet episode with an excuse for the female cast in bikinis, and nudity. That, by an ending which gets esoteric in dream virtual realities and the cast finding themselves, does show the strange yet worthwhile duality of Outlaw Star, becoming an episode of pure slapstick, involving Gene having to record the female head of the temple presiding on a mountain naked so he can acquire Caster shells.

This show does not take itself seriously when it wants to, and the best episode can be summed up for having a psychic cactus alien, which is as strange as that sounds, and barely spoils the episode itself for how memorable it became. Said episode midway within itself, Advance Guard from Another World, ties into a one-shot episode tale a conspiracy about an ice cream stand that gets all the customers despite average products, an alien beast loose in the city sewers Aisha is after, and Gene trying to woo a female character from the spaceship race episode on a date. That episode gets over the top, yet develops characters and the world, so it is brilliant and is a perfect example of a mid-run episode, specifically those from twenty six or so long anime shows, which can be unpredictable as one-off stories for a tangent, yet win you over with how the characters and the worlds get a flourish of additional context for them.

The show's style helps greatly. It has even in its tropes distinctions to this as a sci-fi show, such as the fact that this show has "grappler" spaceships, which are absurd in that they have arms, even their own hand weapons and guns the ships are controlled to fire, but are distinct and are among the many traits which give Outlaw Star its own personal touches. The end credits alone, two different takes with different songs, are distinct as pencil illustrated images closer to a Möbius/European comic book style, which are really good. For all the humour as well, when this does decide to be serious, it does so well. There are two deaths in the series, both done well. One is a surprise early on, especially as the character leaves their mark on the series onwards in implied death, whilst the other is a one-episode story which is also a really good one and one of the best of the series. It is strange in its own way with talking assassin cats with their own little spaceships, but contrasting that image is at its centre a tragedy of two characters, one of the main cast and this figure, developing a crush as innocents and going on a date or so. That it is a moment telling a tale of children on enemy sides, where one will die in spaceship combat, does show Outlaw Star taking itself serious when it is right to. There are flaws for Outlaw Star, or least the sense this should have had a second season with the good will it had, but a lot of Outlaw Star does win me over fondly in terms of the characters, the personality, and key episodes like that one.

There was a spin-off series by Sunrise set in this world, called Angel Links (1999), but this is an obscure work. There was a proposal for a straight-to-video OVA follow-up called Outlaw Star 2: Sword of Wind², but that never came to be. This is a shame, considering that the series had a lot of good virtue which could have gone further than this. This, as well as never having that season, is just based on a three volume manga which is not a lot in itself, so there was a lot you could created from this world, and considering how much personality this has, in spite of a main plot that feels like a mere prelude, that is a huge amount of praise to give this series.

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1) Cartoon Network Outlaw Star Broadcast, posted on December 28th 2000 on Anime News Network.

2) Outlaw Star 2 Visualization project! !!, from I-Morningstar.com, preserved on Web.Archive from between October 18th 2000 and September 27th 2021.