Idol Fighter Su-Chi-Pai

Original Title: アイドル・ファイト スーチーパイII
Romanized: Aidoru Faito Suuchiipai II
Literal: "Idol Fight Su-Chi-Pai II

Plot Synopsis

What do a maid who uses black magic to transform into a dominatrix, a military cyborg who just wants to be human, a rabbit-shaped alien invading earth, a psychic girl from the world of magic masquerading as an idol singer, and an everyday Tokyo girl who transforms into a crime-fighting, Mahjong-themed superhero have in common? Absolutely nothing, really, but that doesn't stop them from going at it in this series. Each of them wants to vanquish a set of monsters to retrieve a set of magical Mahjong tiles known as the Pai--these ancient artifacts will grant the one who gathers them a wish, and these girls aren't going to let anything stand in their way--monsters, or each other!

Quick Review

Rating: 1.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2003-10-13

If the idea of anime based on an erotic Mahjong game sounds random to you, you've already got an idea of the plot of Su-Chi-Pai: Rather than sticking to a single tired anime cliche about transforming girls in cute costumes fighting evil, this little gem goes for the gold and shoves all of them into a single story. It is devoid of meaningful content, goes absolutely nowhere, and crams an impressive number of wildly unrelated backstories into one single episode, but the free-for-all climax is actually pretty funny. Kick in cute character designs by Kenichi Sonoda and decent production values, and you've got yourself an effective way to kill 30 minutes marveling at extreme randomness while rotting your brain at the same time.

The series was never completed, it's really random, and it's low-brow, but at least it's well made. If the sheer randomness of its pedigree sounds intriguing or it otherwise sounds like fun, go ahead and give it a shot.

US DVD Review

The DVD, like Hirameki's other first effort Soar High! Isami, is a little odd. The basic checklist is OK: the video looks fine, the audio in both languages is OK, and the menus provide access to proper chapter stops and language controls. Aside from the disc skipping the menu and launching directly into the dubbed program, the problem is mostly with the subtitles; although the translation is accurate, the font looks a little cramped (though unlike Isami, it's not monospaced or left-aligned), the timing was off in a few spots (not badly, but certainly enough to notice), there were an unusually high number of typos, and in a few spots there were a full four lines of text onscreen--that's going a bit far, even for narration.

The disc didn't have any song translations, and more disappointingly featured no translations of the closing credits (or credit for the English voice actors), but at least it left the Japanese cast intact, so you can find that here.

The DVD includes a sort-of-documentary (as long as the anime feature, in fact) on the making of the anime as well as some history about the game series it's based on. The documentary was interesting enough and fully subtitled (it even featured a dub audio track if you prefer), but Hirameki apparently decided to edit out the close, which consisted of some of the game-ending animation sequences from the arcade game and was apparently a bit too raunchy for their taste. Not often you see an anime company cut out some exposed skin on a title that was fairly raunchy to begin with.

The disc also includes a couple of little Su-Chi-Pai themed applications for PC users.

Content Guide

Rated 15-up by Hirameki, that's about right--it's a lttle low-brow, but doesn't actually have anything that objectionable in it.

Violence: 3 - Despite being cute, the monster leaves a bloody corpse in its wake and the fighting is surprisingly gory.

Nudity: 1 - Actually pretty clean.

Sex/Mature Themes: 2 - Mostly innuendo.

Language: 2 - Not too rough.

Notes and Trivia

For those not familiar with the Japanese arcade scene, erotic Mahjong is actually a genre in and of itself--the game play is always similar (it is Mahjong after all), but each game features its own brand of attractive anime girls to play with or against, and some go as far as having storylines revolving around the gameplay and full-on animated sequences. Most (though not all) also happen to involve scantily clad women who become more scantily clad if you manage to win.

The Suchi-pai series, as the documentary on Hirameki's DVD explains, started with a 1993 non-erotic SNES game by Jaleco that was followed up by a spicier arcade version with voice acting in 1994. The OAV is based loosely on the arcade version (same characters, anyway), which is why it's technically "II." Later games include several releases for the Playstation and other systems, most of them mature-viewers titles, and none of which ever made it outside Japan.

If you're actually interested in trying a video Mahjong game and you don't live in Japan, the free MAME arcade machine emulator is your best bet (for those not familiar with the software, it lets you play a faithful reproduction of most arcade games on a computer that's fast enough, providing you can find the ROM files for the games). If you are a MAME junky, Su-Chi-Pai is supported by newer MAME versions, though as of 0.74 the sound isn't supported yet. The ROM names are 47pie2 (version 1.1) and 47pie2o (version 1.0), and the game is listed as Idol Janshi Suchi-pai 2. For those interested, I did find a great site for learning to play arcade Mahjong, and it even includes a detailed tutorial for Suchi-pai 2 for those who can't read Japanese.

This is the first release of a small startup anime company, Hirameki International, along with the TV Series Soar High! Isami. They quickly gave up on anime DVDs, however, and now specialize in "Visual Novels" in the form of "AnimePlay DVD" or "AnimePlay PC," basically choose-your-story-path games either on computer or set-top DVD players (including one based on Ai Yori Aoshi). Their shot at anime DVDs produced some rather rough discs, and didn't last long.

Availability

Formerly available in the US from Hirameki International on bilingual DVD. Now out of print, although you can still find it used at Amazon: Su-Chi-Pai.

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