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OK, picking things back up here with... can I just call this show Iczer Three? I mean, the opening themesong even shouts "Iczer Three!" at the end. So yeah. Pinkini Jr. is now fighting... man, this show really isn't making this easy on me with the recycled character designs. Nega Pinkini Jr.? Who... actually has a pink costume while I only just now really notice Pinkini Jr.'s is kinda black, or dark red. Anyway, it's more BS contextless teleport fighting, between an annoying character and a palette swapped version of her. Come to think of it, between palette swapping, the identical hairstyles, the 4 generals, the random battles in the previous OAV, I really wouldn't be surprised at ALL if you told me this was originally intended to be some kind of RPG. It even has that logo before each episode with grainy as all heck Saturn looking 3D going on. Also, have I mentioned that literally every word out of Pinkini Jr.'s mistimed mouth makes me wish her harm? I mean, seriously, this whole setup was pretty stupid to begin with. Did we really need to add the blissfully ignorant kid angle on top of the whole thing?
Meanwhile, in that swamp base the badguys from Superfriends had... did I mention that that's pretty much what the badguys in this are hanging out in? Because it is. Anyway yeah, Nega Pinkini teleports home and has some kind of flashback to something that never happened where a naked Bluehair is saying she looks just like the varius Iczers she's seen and asks if she too was born from "the Iczerio" which is another concept it would have been really nice to establish in the previous OAV. Granted, they were cramming a LOT of crazy into a small amount of time, while here we seem to have plenty to waste on nothing at all interesting happening in a given episode aside from it being generally suggested through what are essentially contextless stills that a fight scene is happening. Anyway, the bridge crew are now studying Pinkini Jr. and noticing she was grown in a tube, and explaining it to Bluehair, who's pretty well clueless on everything, making that imaginary flashback that much weirder.
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By the way, those girl-mutton-chops you get in 80's and early 90's anime... is there any real world basis for those? I mean, were Japanese girls (and guys for that matter) generally all growing out these huge dangling hair clumps and draping them over the front of their ears for like, 10 years? Slowly phasing out tehe style of curling them in the 70's? I really want to know. And oh hey, first Golem, th last general there, telekinesed some stuff together which totally made the Proton Pack Powering Up sound, and now we apparently have Pinkini hearing what roughly amounts to the Protoman whistle. Is Pinkini Sr. going to show up and run back and forth alternating between shooting and holding up a shield for a while?
Ah. Golem is going to attack the Yamato... with airplane missile batteries, mounted on her shoulders, attached to this giant... like, half a plane she just telekinetically soldered on there, despite already having giant metal wings built into her costume. And I guess they aren't really secured because they just got teleported out for convenience. Other interest- OK I'm sorry. This show is now officially awesome. What I was starting to say is that other interesting things about Golem here are that she's got a lesser pair of wings below the main one, and then more on her boots, and a big giant blue hair mass all Super Sayan style, but then up front there's like this little jewel thing shaping two huge wads of it into this extra set of RIDICULOUSLY HUGE eyebrows. All that just became completely irrelevant though, because she just transformed into an airplane. Like a transformer. This is someone who appears to be just a plain ol' more or less human girl, with big hair and armor, having her chestplate swing over so her head and kinda awkwardly swing in there and lock in, as her legs chunk together and she generally flips over and unfolds those wings. There isn't even this big elaborate transformation for this, it takes like, a second or two. See, before I thought this was just stupid and boring and a total disappointment of a sequel, but if you were to cut out enough of the the boring, cliché-ridden talky bits, and compressed it all down to a reasonable running time, that right there is totally enough to make it all worth it. At least when paired up with the tank treads Yamato and Sonic the Robot Lion and the generally wonderful character design on the 4 generals there. You could totally put if over the top if that healing power gatling gun really shows up, but I am so not holding my breath on that one.
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So yeah, episode 5 here has now started, and pretty much right away we have Golem turning into a plain again, then the bridge crew watching the video feed of the fight and going "... rewind that again." Yes. Please do. They're trying to play it off like they're identifying her secret weak point (prominent shoulder and hip mounted turbines), but I choose to believe that they just wanted to see her turn into a plane again. I mean, I want to see that badly enough I'm tempted to rewind this. That was one of the most ridiculous and unexpected things ever, and really funny looking. Sadly, some bridge crew guy shoots this weekpoint, and "How dare you destroy my armor!" So I guess now she can't turn into an airplane anymore. Also, here's Nega Pinkini Jr. coming out of nowhere, cutting her hand off, and... wait, was she playing the Protoman whistle? And was that really where they were going with that? Anyway, she's all "Rematch!" but Pinkini Jr.'s all "Don't wanna!" She elaborates when questioned that there's more fun things to do than fighting... which... is literally all we've seen her do, she enjoys it PLENTY, and she was originally created not all that long ago specifically for the purpose of doing so. So... really, it'd make so much more sense for literally any other character to have said that.
Back at evil base, Golem shows up for her summary execution, but I guess Fetus Jr. is in the bathroom or something. Bluekini is here though, which is weird because wasn't she quite decidedly dead or something? It'd be really surprising to see her showing back up if she weren't, you know, clearly shown in the opening credits of every episode. Oh, and we have a flashback of her getting all patched up at some point. OK, hat's fine then. Then we just splice a clip of the intro here... and... OK, the general who turned into a giant insect was named... Insect. Gee, that's kinda surprisingly on the nose. And hey, are they supposed to represent the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse? The generic girl with the ethereal clones is Famine, the one with the plague of locusts is Pestilence, I guess being a catgirl with a robot lion works for War, and finally of course we have Airplanes. That's the proper order right? Famine, Pestilence, War, Airplane? Man, I totally need to do something where there's some foretold apocalypse with robot lines and transformers mentioned specifically in the prophecy.
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Anyway though, yeah, Bluekini arranges to meet Pinkini and Bluehair somewhere to bug'em to summon Pinkini Sr. again... and did she always have such awesome shoulderpads and look so blatantly like a Phantasy Star character? My queue on these is getting kinda long again, I don't fully recall. Way more importantly though, Golem actually wasn't executed as a change of pace, and got upgraded with a new white and red set of armor that presumably allows one to transform into an airplane. And now Bluekini and Pinkini Jr. are fighting in the sky, with Bluekini doing a lot of taunting, so.. maybe she feels like being a good guy now and they're sparring? Meanwhile Nega Pinkini Jr. is attacking Golem, because I guess everyone can just go right ahead and fight whoever at this point... although .... man that head popping into the chest deal never ceases to be hilarious and completely derail my brain. Anyway, Bluekini and Golem move into the second bracket, at which point Bluekini kinda teleports over and cuts Golem in half vertically. Looks kinda neat, but who will turn into an airplane NOW huh? There's no further point in watching any more of this. We have clearly peaked and only misery lies ahead.
... Apparently the series agrees? The episode ended pretty much right after that (and Pinkini Sr. finally getting around to heading to Earth) and I don't believe this is the standard ending credits music. OK, there is another episode. Seriously though, I would have been so amused if tha really were where we were ending this. There's totally precedent for OAVs to just end abruptly on cliffhangers like that (and not even just lousy ones, Giant Robo did it and Giant Robo is @#%$ing awesome). But seriously, it'd be like when someone shoots someone, then in instant remorse turns the gun on themself. But no, instead we've got this last episode here, with no triple winged double eyebrowed girl turning into an airplane at all. All we've got is 4 Iczer's of confusing alignment (Nega Pinkini Jr. is apparently officially flipping to good guy... I give up on refering to her as anything at this point), and... actually Fetus Jr. seems to have kinda like, stretched the robo-skin of her arms around the visor of a giant robot helmet-head, that could pay off in the future. Seriously though, if they're all basically palette swapped, sometimes extra young clones, why does Bluekini get to have a way better hairstyle and awesome shoulder pads? Everyone should get to have those. Anyway, she's fighting Pinkini Sr. now because... it makes perfect sense to do so by bad anime logic.
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Anyway, Pinkini Jr. is off to go blow up the enemy base and kill the end boss by herself. Seriously, she jst left in this "I'm gonna go play in the park!" fashion and started punching through giant laser cannon. Also, the waitress outfits have now been arbitarily replaced with these ridiculous sci-fi armor deals with 4 shoulder pads each for no particular reason I can think of. Besides huge shoulder pads being awesome. You know in the original Trigun manga the whole B.D.N. bit was dragged out crazy long, presumably just to show off how he totally WON the shoulder pad arms race. Then the anime came later and people were kinda over it so... actually wait, did he get to have a two-parter? Been forever. That reminds me, apparently they just arbitrarily out of the blue recently decided to make a Trigun movie, set during the portion of the show when Wolfwood is hanging out with Vash, as kind of a mid-quel. I should look into seeing that. You didn't mss anything while I was off on that tangent though. Bla bla why do you care, bla bla love and goodness, bla bla I'm not going to kill you I'm just walking away, maybe I shouldn't be evil, that sort of thing.
Oh and yeah, I officially called it. Fetus Jr. is officially just kinda stuck into the face of a big ol' giant robot and will be a proper final boss for us. And both Pinkinis are attacking it, in generally symmetrical fashion. Except oh yeah, 3 and 4 get to have two lightsabers, while 1 and 2 only get one big one each. Which again makes TOTAL sense by console RPG logic. And of course, here's Bluekini joining in, having had the most heavily foreshadowed change of heart ever. One assumes Nega Pinkini Jr. will be joining in soon too. And oh yeah, we have a giant robot we need to summon too. By he way, I seem to recall someone trying to use officially listed stats to try and call Iczer Robo here the biggest giant robot from anything ever, which clearly isn't true. I mean, for starters, Super Mega Fetus bot here is clearly bigger, but also, there's plenty of scale comparisons to show that it's pretty much your standard giant robot size, I don't care how many km tall you read it was on some weird fact sheet. Anyway, gee... that fight ended rather abruptly and anticlimactically. Everyone ends up in space and unconscious, except for Fetus Jr. who crawls out of her robot head, and seems to have internalized a pair of shoulder pads under her skin, and Pinkini Jr. who hops out to fight her. Then everyone else gets to wake up and watch, but there's really nothing to watch. She just kinda... charges forth in that general direction, and Fetus Jr. explodes, and that's it. Also, Nega Pinkini Jr. never really got in on this. I mean, I guess she like, Gave Her Energy to Pinkini Jr. and is now stuck watching from the sidelines or something, but it's kinda weird. f course, she also has a proper name instead of just being Iczer Four, so I guess she's scum and doesn't count.
Anyway, I really get a kick out of how the American packaging, and box blurb in particular, are trying so hard to hide the fact that Iczer One is pretty much not in this at all. Seriously, the blurb makes it out like she's the main character, but all she does is put in a token appearance in the first and last couple minutes, while letting her annoying little sister dominate the whole thing. Anyway yeah, most of that was severely disappointing, but seriously holy @#$% those airplane transformations were so awesomely wrong you have no idea. No idea I say! So hey! Wikipedia! Is this it for Iczer? Do I need to hunt a new lead to find out where that ridiculous picture came from? Aha! There IS one more bit of this! Iczer Girl Iczelion! Netflix doesn't have it, but DOES consider the original Iczer OAV to be similar to Killer Klowns from Outer Space, which, yeah, I can get behind that sentiment. Amazon has it... VHS only, for about $7. To the wish list!
