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Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - A Low-Down Dirty Pair
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Themaster20000
 Posts: 864 |
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I used to watch Flash when it aired on Showtime,which was my introduction to the franchise. Looking back it was okay,but after watching the original it doesn't hold a candle to it at all. The chemistry between the leads is what makes it such a wonderful series. A new show would be nice,but I can't see It being done well,considering how different the industry is now.
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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Dirty Pair is great fun. It's like Lupin III in space with more gunfights and jetpacks.
Given current conventions it's interesting to note that the characters designs, intended to be sexy, aren't even exaggerated. Kei and Yuri have pretty modest bust and hip lines. I think the films and longform OVAs are meh-to-blah though. Project Eden has an uninteresting but scene-stealing new character that just got in the way. All I can remember of Affair of Nolandia is that it had a hilarious parody of a chase sequence and Flight 005 Conspiracy has huge pacing and tonal problems. For at least the first OVAFlash is trying something rather different than the original so I found it easy to let it be its own thing. This is actually the best serious story anything called "Dirty Pair" ever did, but since Dirty Pair is mostly action-comedy I guess that's not saying much. The third Flash OVA is hilariously lazy, stranding the leads on a theme-park planet designed to look like...late 1990's Tokyo. Hey, why even bother coming up with sci-fi stuff for the sci-fi series? They did actually do a pretty good sitcom episode with that setting, but I've forgotten the other four or five episodes. Flash is a bit...cowardly?...regarding the sexualities of the leads. In the original Kei and Yuri were both eager to spend time with good-looking men (the jokes about lesbianism don't hold up) but in Flash Kei is asexual and Yuri wants to marry for money and never seems actually interested in men. Were the originals not waifu enough? Adam Warren's Dirty Pair comics are generally pretty good (the first one's a little bland) and different enough not to seem like a cheap imitation; Warren's Kei and Yuri get a lot testier with each other than the original versions did and it puts more focus on their jobs going wrong and annoying them. As aluded to in the article, it also has some pretty neat sci-fi ideas at times (something the pulpy original never really tried at) but I found they weren't explored nearly as far as they could go. In one case the neat idea formed a backstory that seemed way more interesting that the actual story. |
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Shay Guy
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My first exposure to Dirty Pair was through the fanfic series Undocumented Features, which started out as "Kei and Yuri manifest in the real world because reasons and hang out with the author and his friends" and has since ballooned into this gigantic thing crossing over more than a hundred sources, including Macross, Star Wars, Utena, Bubblegum Crisis, Transformers, The Legend of Korra, Strike Witches, CSI, and Ah My Goddess. I've never been able to get into it properly -- it's been running since 1991 with a bunch of different sub-series of varying quality focusing on different parts of the universe and timeline -- but I respect it for the sheer scale.
Going back to Dirty Pair... well, OK, I've never actually read or seen any of it. I did recently see an interesting theory about Kei's narration, though -- it's not an internal monologue, she's telling the story to someone she's trying to hit on. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6087 |
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I liked Dirty Pair Flash I always wished they're were more episodes tightly structured.......or not.
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Also forgot that Dirty Pair was spun off from Crusher Joe (also about a group of space mercenaries for hire), who in the Movie meet their contact at a space drive-in, while a goofy parodic action movie--featuring early Affair at Naolandia versions of Y&K--plays in the background.
Fans demanded a spinoff. 
Ranma 1/2 can be "fed to teenagers" because Viz can bring it back on Blu-ray and show it on Neon Alley, but Original Dirty Pair survives on old-generation word of mouth alone, and its ability to be instantly addictive. Back in the club days, this actually got more first-timers hooked than UY or DBZ. (The OVA episode was literally the first series that convinced me that Anime Could Be Fun, back when Robotech and Star Blazers annoyed most mainstream US animation fans for looking "cheap" and "humorless".) Problem is, the Original Pair hasn't been brought back like Ranma and Sailor Moon; when Nozomi put out the original TV episodes on disk, it fulfilled the long quest that ADV spent ten years pursuing, and the show has survived pretty well considering 60% of it had never been on legit disk or tape at all in the US since the days of Streamline Pictures. And if Mike can post entire YouTube links in the article (although he posted the Halloween episode and not Project Eden), so can we: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOcOnt-i1gs (Not only shows the wrestling-fan origins, but someone in Japan had clearly seen the Blues Brothers.  )
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zawa113
 Posts: 7358 |
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I only discovered Dirty Pair recently. During the last Nozomi sale (or the one before that, whatevs), I checked out two eps on their youtube page and was immediately hooked. I don't typically just buy it all, but I went "eh, what the hell" and bought the 80s TV series (both sets), OVA set, and movies set.
However, I avoided Flash because I just keep hearing how it's not as good. While I certainly want more Dirty Pair, I don't really want to bother with Flash. Even though I've been into anime since around 2002, I never really saw Flash anywhere or bought it or have seen it, so I have no idea if it did really well over here or not. And yeah, "aggressively 90s" definitely describes those character designs. Based on comments on here though, I'd certainly entertain checking it out, but I kind of just want to keep them super 80s if you know what I mean. And omg, that cosplay pic! Made me soooo happy! Just one obscure thing in a huge con makes people smile so easily. I remember when I was in the artist alley at Otakon one year, I saw a Please Save My Earth fan art and the girl was so happy that I recognized it! And at Zenkaikon, someone was happy that I knew who Jing, King of Bandits was too. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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I remember when it was a lot more common, back when it was the show every underground fan was watching, but no one EVER managed as good a real-world equivalent of Kei hair. I stand and applaud.
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4116 |
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My largest problem with the Dirty Pair franchise is that it should have been more than simply Kei and Yuri. Kiddy Grade may be a knock off but it's what Flash should have been, a new version covering the gaps where the original work left empty or ignored completely.
Gaps such as: An overarching story, character development, backstory, a cast, a reason why the whole work can't be represented in one side story in an off plot episode of an OVA afterthought, personality and... basically a series and not just a "They fight crime. Occasionally, it gets weird because it's sci-fi crime" franchise. Flash's specific problem? I could have done without its take on DP's iconic weapons. You know the pose and they both have guns, not Kei with a gun and Yuri with a sword. Even this article's thumbnail makes me wonder what they were thinking in regards to combat. "You don't bring a sword to a gunfight unless the Director really likes swords. And by sword, I mean his..."? Probably overthinking it. I mean, it's not as if Kei couldn't carry a sword. No, I mean Yuri couldn't carry a gun. But then she wouldn't use his... her sword at all. I don't care how special a sword it is or how good a swordfighter, anime "gun x sword" fights should be more like that scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark than "cool sword beats average gun". Ok, I give Hellsing an exception if only because it's the main character who has the gun... and the swordfighter is immune to bullets. Anyway, moving back. Yeah, it's really hard for me to like Flash for a number of reasons, mostly because what it should have been. And Kei's hair is dumb even if its style is an improvement over the 80s version of an afro. |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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A knock-off that takes the original in a different direction is the good kind of knock-off. A shame Kiddy Grade is such a mess. |
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krpalmer
Posts: 32 |
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I first picked up on Dirty Pair through the continued interest of mid-1990s anime fans in it (including Undocumented Features itself, although I'm afraid I wasn't focusing so much on the vast amount of crossovers as the feeling its authors were working through self-esteem issues by writing themselves into it to accumulate cool gear and ripe girlfriends; maybe I was just "missing the joke." Maybe nowadays I just console myself with the thought there wouldn't be too much "recent" anime being written into it...) All of that, though, may also have left me thinking the consistent "gag" of Dirty Pair itself was "every bystander the Lovely Angels pass is dead by the end of the story, but it's never their fault," which somehow didn't quite appeal to me. Getting to see the original TV anime helped a fair bit there; I've managed to see all its other works in animation (I'm at least interested in how "different" Dirty Pair Flash feels), but I'd probably go back to the TV series first.
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GDMaid Man
Posts: 71 |
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Put me on the pro Flash side.
I bought it on VHS then replaced them with the DVDs when they came out. (I sold the VHSs on Ebay quite easily for enough to pay for the DVDs) It is one of my more favored show that I have watched multiple times. While I like them both I actually like Flash a little over the earlier version. I've always loved Rica Matsumoto's Kei, especially when she was angry. And the OP and ED songs are some of my favorite anime music. I also always liked the 90's character designs over the 80's. I think that is part because I started watching anime in the 90's. And in a large part because I have always liked straight angular designs over curved rounded designs, not only in anime but in all kinds of things. I picked up the comic book because it was the Dirty Pair, but Warren's work really appealed to me, since then I've bought pretty much everything he has put out. Last edited by GDMaid Man on Sun Jun 14, 2015 5:43 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Keichitsu0305
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I loved Project Eden because it's pretty much a collection of random 80's sci-fi scenarios and the Lovely Angels duo screwing up or exploding everything within their grasp. Aside from having the most stylish OP in the history of cool OPS, the major problem was the dub yet that only added in the hilarity. For some reason when Kei and Yuri are on the hovering construction platform, their dialogue is muted and music plays over them talking. Every time the mad scientist showed up or was mentioned, a woman would 'seductively' whisper "Wattmans" as though this was suddenly a Shaft film.
Still haven't read the novels but I have no intention of watching Flash. One of my favorite OVAs was the one where the spoiled brats of a military base takes over it so the Lovely Angels have to teach the punks a lesson. I kinda wished Dirty Pair got a live-action with as many cheesy effects as possible but it's fine as it is. |
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Beltane70
 Posts: 3920 |
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That OVA episode with Kei and Yuri chasing the robot is probably one of my favorite stories in the franchise! The novels were pretty interesting, I remember reading them about 20 years ago or so. The one thing that's the most interesting to me is that Dirty Pair first appeared in animation form in the movie for Crusher Joe.
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FLCLGainax
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It's always good to see new fans trying out an old favorite. My first exposure to DP was Project Eden back in the late '90s. The TV series piqued my interest a few years later. Never got into Flash because of the designs. The franchise is in need of a reboot, but only if done well.
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wastrel
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Dirty Pair is the show that got me into anime, way back in my college days in the 80s. Every time I hear/read the words "Dirty Pair", I want to scream "Lovely Angels!" and dive under a table.
As for Dirty Pair Flash, that's just an old joke that doesn't really exist, like the supposed sequels of the Highlander movie. Fortunately such abominations were never actually set loose upon a terrified humanity. |
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