Battle Athletes

Original Title: バトルアスリーテス 大運動会
Romanized: Battle Athletess - Dai Undoukai
Literal: Great Athletic Competition

Plot Synopsis

In the distant future, after centuries of war with an alien race, it was agreed that the dispute would be settled by a contest of physical strength between one representative of each species. Though the alien race was physically far superior to humans, the human champion miraculously defeated his challenger, ushering in an era of peace marked by human kind's drive to improve itself physically.

Our story begins at the turn of the 51st century on a satellite training facility constructed for the purpose of honing the skills of Earth's best and brightest for a competition to decide who is truly the epitome of the species--the "Cosmo Beauty."

The story follows Akari Kanzaki, the daughter of a past "Cosmic Beauty" and a Freshman entrant into the orbital training facility. Determined to follow in her mother's footsteps, she will work with her classmates to overcome the rigors of training, school bullies, and her own lack of self confidence in her trek toward the great competition. She is joined by a number of other students, foremost among them Akari's roommate Kris Christopher, an emotionally solid priestess-to-be from the moon. Also along for the ride are their other roommate, the quiet, shy Anna Respighi, and Tanya, a rather boisterous friend of Akari's from earth.

Quick Review

Rating: 3.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2005-01-23

Battle Athletes is something like a shoujo-tinted take on a sci-fi sports drama given a Pioneer twist. Though it could have easily turned into a cute girls in space romp or a really silly comedy (which the TV version is), the focus is more on character development and the building of friendships, with enough tension to satisfy fans of more emotionally-oriented stories. To cover the sports anime end of things there's plenty of creative futuristic athletic action, and the animation and art are of the quality you'd expect from AIC.

If an athletic soap opera with cute girls, a spot of wacky humor, and a fair amount of action sounds good to you, Battle Athletes is definitely worth a look, but be warned that the dubbed version has some major character changes, and is significantly raunchier with a lot more jokes.

US DVD Review

The DVDs are nice productions, but rather minimal compared to some of Pioneer's other titles. Aside from a nice video transfer, each disc has Japanese and English stereo soundtracks, both of which are very crisp (though the Japanese track seems to sound a little better, particularly on the end theme, which remains in Japanese). There are two subtitle tracks, one that's a translation of the Japanese, and one track that's a transcription of the dub for the hearing impaired; the latter includes sound effects, and is quite a bit different in the details than the former, as discussed above.

Each disc also includes a little character gallery and a set of promo pages for every Pioneer title available at the time (interesting resource/historical reference). For some reason there is no chapter index on the discs (go figure; there is a list of the chapter breaks on a card in the package, but you'll have to jump around manually). The discs originally each came with a chapter index insert and some cute Battle Athletes stickers.

Content Guide

Would be suitable for younger viewers, if it weren't for the occasional nude scene/raunchy joke (more frequent in the dub). Pioneer calls it 13-up, that's probably fitting (some parents might find it more offensive than others, though, and the dub is worse).

Violence: 1 - Some relatively intense fighting, but not really life-threatening.

Nudity: 2 - Occasional nude scenes, though not detailed.

Sex/Mature Themes: 1 - A couple of raunchy jokes/comments, with more in the dub.

Language: 3 - The dub has more rough language and crude comments than the Japanese subtitled version, which only ranks a 1.

Notes and Trivia

The Battle Athletes franchise began its public life as a radio drama in early 1996 on "Orikasa Ai's Moonlight Cafe." At the end of 1996, a video game of the same name was released for the Sega Saturn. It was followed up by the OAV series and shortly after that by the TV version, as well as two more games ("Alternative" in 1998, also for the Saturn, and "GTO" in 1999, for the PlayStation). There was also a comic adaptation, subtitled "A.D. 4999."

Battle Athletes Victory is what the TV version goes by in the US, but as with other Pioneer OAV to TV conversions, it has no continuity with this series, despite sharing a premise and several characters.

Battle Athletes has a lot of good old fashioned wild sci-fi stuff, most of it quite well done. The zero- or random-G scenes are pretty well done as far as realism goes, although you wouldn't actually be able to run along the floor of a zero-G lacrosse court. The shuttle launch at the beginning is also quite impressive, but I seriously doubt that we'll be using shuttles like that 3000 years from now, particularly if we're capable of waging an interstellar war.

The titles of the six episodes (or "Missions") are, for reference, Chronicle Beginning, Oath Entrant, Screaming Advance, Match Unexpected, Objective Tension, and Stage Yonder.

Availability

Available in the US from Geneon (formerly Pioneer) on three bilingual DVDs. Was previously also available on three dubbed or subtitled VHS volumes.

Looking to buy? Try these stores: RightStuf (search) | AnimeNation | Akemi's a(nime)Store