Sol Bianca

Original Title: same
Romanized: Sol Bianca
Literal:

Plot Synopsis

Somewhere in the distant future, the mysterious Sol Bianca and its crew of five (female, of course) space pirates ply their trade on the space lanes. There's Janny, the violent one, Feb, their drunken leader, April, idealistic and vengeful, May, who even though she's still a child tools around in a missile-packin' mech, and June, the ship's resident technical genius.

Things get interesting for them when, along with some loot, they pick up a young stowaway, Rim Delapaz. As it turns out, the boy is trying to get to Uno, his homeworld, now occupied by the forces of Batros, the despotic dictator of the nearby planet Tres. These war-torn, backwater planets wouldn't be of much interest to the crew of the Sol Bianca, except for the fact that Rim also happens to know of a treasure held somewhere on Tres, the Golden Box--rumored to hold all the knowledge in the universe and God-like power. This is too much for these pirates to overlook, and so off they go for lots of action...

Quick Review

Rating: 3.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2008-06-01

Sol Bianca is far from a masterwork, but it still manages to take a simple genre and pull something enjoyable and reasonably creative out of it. Its weakness is probably it's thin plot, but its strengths are a variety of fun and creative action, bits of detail and realism that take the world a notch above bland sci-fi fare, and a very likable cast of characters.

Put that together with nice art, half-decent animation, and a topnotch voice cast, and you've got an enjoyable little classic anime action flick. Add to that hints at more plot than is presented and something in the characters that made them feel unusually realistic to me (not necessarily you, though), and you've got a very enjoyable movie if it synchs with your taste.

US DVD Review

None available yet.

Content Guide

Violent and has some bad language, but not over the top in either case, making ADV's 12-up more or less appropriate.

Violence: 3 - A bloody execution, plenty of gunfights, and some mass destruction.

Nudity: 1 - One very brief shot.

Sex/Mature Themes: 0 - Nothing at all.

Language: 3 - A fair amount of expletives, though at least nothing out of character.

Notes and Trivia

It's not a big deal, but ADV did something nice with the credits on the old VHS release, having the English credits matched to the Japanese ones underneath (wish I'd see that these days).

Availability

Formerly available in the US from AD Vision on subtitled or dubbed VHS, or a subtitled CAV LaserDisc. All are long out of print.

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