Like many fans back in the day struggling to find new anime to watch, I jumped at the chance to watch Project A-Ko as soon as it was available to me. First released in Japan in 1986, it landed in the US in 1991, and has the distinction of being the first release for the long-time successful but now defunct Central Park Media (the dub followed in 1992). At the time of its release, it was hard to find new examples in this quirky new medium we were coming to enjoy, and the trailers for Project A-Ko made it seem quirkier than most anything we had seen at that point. Watching it doesn’t disabuse that notion.
A-Ko is a bit unreliable when it comes to things like school, but she possesses superhuman athletic abilities such as speed and strength, and she will always be there to protect her best friend (and subtly hinted at romantic interest) C-Ko, a bubbly, air-headed type who would never get by in anything in life without A-Ko’s guidance. But that friendship is threatened when they move to a new school and meet B-Ko, the spoiled, erratically brilliant daughter of a powerful businessman who is used to getting everything she ever wants. And what she wants is the exclusive friendship/love of C-Ko, and she is determined to get it any way she needs to, despite C-Ko’s continual declarations of loyalty to A-Ko.
So begins a regular pattern of A-Ko and C-Ko arriving at school each morning to find a new mecha designed and built by B-Ko for the express purpose of defeating A-Ko in combat and winning the heart of C-Ko. And no matter how many times A-Ko easily crushes her inventions (nor how many times C-Ko rejects her advances), it doesn’t deter B-Ko from continuing to try.
While all of this is going on, a strange man (sorta, it’s kinda complicated) named D has appeared to spy on A-Ko and C-Ko. It turns out that D is an advanced scout for an alien empire, and he is increasingly convinced that C-Ko is his princess that went missing years ago, and he won’t hesitate to bring the wrath of his race’s military might against Earth in order to return the princess to her rightful place. With the Earth’s own military effectively useless against this invasion, the question becomes whether A-Ko and B-Ko can put aside their animosity long enough to save C-Ko and send the aliens back home.
Really, what Project A-Ko comes down to is a three-way fight between people trying to get C-Ko to do things she doesn’t want to do. She just wants to be left alone to hang out with A-Ko, but everybody else is convinced they know what’s best for her. She’s the damsel-in-distress in the middle of a conflict between two women and a race of beings whose gender is somewhat indeterminate. Honestly, I don’t know how many times I’ve watched this movie and the various sequels (both sub and dub), and I’m still not entirely sure what they are supposed to be. Manly women? Hermaphrodites? Some new gender that has no real definition in human terms? And if C-Ko is their princess, what does that say about her (it’s never really explored, and frankly, honest answers would just seem out of place in this movie).
When put in writing, none of this sounds particularly ridiculous, especially when compared to some of the stuff that’s come out of Japan over the years, but words cannot do justice to the insanity that comes on the screen. Project A-Ko is a parody of shoujo love triangles, shonen fighters, mecha anime, and just about any other genre you can think of, and it’s all mixed up in silly situations that could only come from anime. I honestly don’t know how to explain it otherwise, but it was this movie as much as anything else that was imported in the early 90s that really showed us just how much all bets were off when it came to these cartoons from Japan that we loved so much. A few sequels and a spin-off series followed this up, but none could really match the manic energy of the original (and how original it is!). While Central Park Media went out of business in 2009, the rights to this movie was picked up by Eastern Star. It was re-released in 2011 and at the time of writing it is still available on DVD (though the sequels and spin-off are out-of-print). If you love anime (and if you don’t, why are you reading this article?), then you owe it to yourself to check this out at least once.