Masami Ohbari returns to the adult side of anime to bring an amusing slant on the neo-magical girl genre.
What They Say
One of the most outrageous hentai series ever, MARIN A GO-GO! Gleefully lampoons anime hits like SAILOR MOON, POKEMON, and KIKAIDER in a riotous send-up that involves a doctor trying to obtain ‘samples’ from 100 men. Will Marin be able to stop her sister from going down a carnal path that could only end in disaster?
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this series brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with an English language dub, both of which are encoded at 224kbps. The stereo mix for the series are pretty standard adult fair since it is mostly dialogue driven but there are quite a few action scenes along the way and some amusing bits where dialogue and sound are well spread across the forward soundstage. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we had no trouble with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally released between 2001 and 2003, the transfer for this three episode OVA series is good but shows some of the usual problems of its time. The show looks to be traditionally animated but depending on when it was actually made it could just be a visual trick. With the style used, there’s a fair bit of grain throughout the print and it does suffer from a bit of aliasing here and there. The most noticeable problem we had was with some dot crawl along reds and sometimes some of the blue/black backgrounds not maintaining a terribly solid feel due to the graininess. For the most part, this looks like a late 90’s traditionally animated series that looks good but has a few areas that some people will nitpick over.
Packaging:
Going with lots of bright colors, the cover has a good shot of Marine in her cosplay outfit with a big smile while other women from the show are lined around her in the background in different shades. Lots of pinks and yellows are here and the look is very sweet and cute. The back cover is done in a pink hue that has a couple of nicely detailed character illustrations that surround the shots from the show and the basic summary of the premise. The discs production information is nice and clear and the technical grid accurately covers everything. As is common with most recent releases from Kitty, there is no insert included here and no reversible cover even though the keepcase is clear.
Menu:
Using the full-color character artwork from the cover but without clothes, Marine and Mariyln are laid out along the left with a basic pink hued background and nothing else to really draw on leaving it somewhat plain. The layout is pretty simple with the selections along the right and the navigation is easy with little on here beyond the show and the trailers. Access times are nice and fast and the disc did not read our players’ language presets due to the full English track being the second on the disc instead of the first.
Extras:
None.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While it may not be a truth that holds for many people, one that does hold for me is that when it comes to Masami Ohbari, give me his porn over his regular anime material any day of the week. With the adult material, he’s usually either able to do a really neat parody of something mainstream and infuse it with some good if comical sex or he’s able to produce a nice dark work that builds upon the sex of the show but still provide an interesting enough story. With his mainstream works, he just feels like he’s trying to fit into things that don’t suit him quite as much and wants to just rip the characters clothes off and get on with it.
Marine A Go Go is an amusing three part OVA series that starts with an amusing plot, combines it with something of an idiot with massive breasts and then introduces an equally stupid blonde and sets them to compete with each other. It also includes a small mechanical turtle that talks and helps make sure that Marine never gets pregnant. How can you go wrong with that?
The premise is fairly simple as we’re introduced to Dr. Narutaki, a twisted genius who wants to ensure the future of Japanese men as real men instead of the wimps that they are today, so he begins a proper preservation project. The idea is to collect semen from one hundred specimens that will be involved in this project. The problem he faces is that the people who he needs to get it from probably wouldn’t do it voluntarily so he creates a plan where he kidnaps a young woman from her school named Marine and puts her in a special costume. The costume won’t come off until she achieves her goal of acquiring the semen from all one hundred men.
The costume is fairly neat in a couple of ways. As described by Pon the turtle, it won’t let her get pregnant since the semen never really “goes all the way” even though the guys do, but also in that when she’s with a particular man, her outfit changes to his desires. So if someone has a real fetish for doing a woman cop, her top changes to a police uniform complete with hat. Someone else wants a French maid, there you go. Marine really doesn’t want to do this, especially since she’s never had sex before, but once things get underway she really gets into it because she sees it as a way to be really caring and sweet to the guys she’s swiping semen from.
This is in polar opposite to South Pole One, a sexaroid created by Dr. Narutaki’s former assistant with backing from some mysterious people. South Pole One’s goal is to simply exhaust the person she’s with as she collects the semen in order to beat Marine to the goal and she often leaves behind nothing but near-corpses while Marine leaves behind exhausted men who want her even more. It’s an amusing difference if only that it separates their styles but it does figure into the plot eventually when both women are forced to get all one hundred men at one setting and it’s woman against sexaroid.
While the massive breasts continue to be an area where I roll my eyes at, the sex scenes in this show are rather good and range between comical to really hot. The comical goes to areas like when Dr. Narutaki kidnaps one young man so that Marine can have sex with him for the first time so she knows what to do. So in a faux training session for young male Japanese viewers, it’s all explained about what you’re supposed to do and feel. It doesn’t feel like a training video that some adult releases have in the past, but it’s done with a wink and a smile. What really surprised me was how good South Pole One’s first scene was ” and in both languages. Both women really nailed the part and really provided a great performance for it since I thought they were equally as hot, something that I’m noticing more and more of with the English language performances. They are definitely getting better out there and it’s becoming much easier to watch these in English.
In Summary:
Marine A Go Go is one of the more amusing Ohbari adult series to come out that I’ve seen. It’s not serious by any stretch, it doesn’t have many real dark moments to it and it does have some really fun sex scenes throughout it as well as a flimsy but decent storyline to tie it all together. The character designs are decent if not for the breasts but I found myself rather liking the designs more for South Pole One and Marilyn more than Marine. This plays up a few genres and has some fun with cosplay but overall it provided about ninety minutes of amusing and erotic anime with some style.
Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles
Content Grade: B
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A
Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: February 22nd, 2005
MSRP: $29.95
Running Time: 90 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
