While it might sound like a horror title, for Shinji it means two beautiful alien women who can’t get enough of him. Why can’t we get invasions like this more often?
What They Say
Shinji lived the life of an ordinary college student until he woke up one morning to find a horny alien catgirl sleeping next to him. Shinji teaches Yuria all about human life and culture, or at least about how humans have sex. Meanwhile, the mother ship has sent down Yuria’s sexy sister, Alissa to do some invading of her own.
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language in stereo along with the English language dub, both of which are encoded at 224kbps. The shows stereo mix is pretty standard with most of the dialogue being done through the center channel and having a full feeling. There are of course a few moments of directionality as characters are off to particular sides of the screen but overall it’s not the kind of track you really expect much from. Dialogue is good on both language tracks though and we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally released in 2005, the transfer for this two part OVA series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. The series has some very bright and vibrant looking animation which comes across well here and essentially problem free as not even cross coloration shows up here for the most part. Colors in general are very solid looking and have a good sense of depth to them. The transfer is overall very good looking and captures the animation well.
Packaging:
The front cover artwork is interesting in that it’s done in a style of artwork not often seen with a lot of anime characters but it looks really gorgeous here with the shading and design overall as the two sisters show just how close they are. The web artwork simply doesn’t do it justice. It’s also interesting how the logo for the show is basically wrapped all the way around plus the creative way of adding “emoticon” style boobies to the various letters. The back cover has one of the weakest summaries of a show I’ve seen in some time with four sentences spread out to look like paragraphs. The artwork used for it is nice though as it has several of the characters in various outfits inside bubbles floating to the side of the summary. The shows features and basic technical information along with production information flesh out the bottom. No insert is included with this release.
Menu:
The menu is pretty weak especially since I had hoped they’d reuse the cover artwork. Split in half, the left side has a shot of a naked Yuria post-facial which “drips” to the right side which is all white and has the layout of the front cover for the logo with the selections inside along with a couple of small shots from the show as the upbeat instrumental music plays along. Access times are nice and fast and the player correctly read our players’ language presets for the audio but not for the subtitles as the full subtitle track is the second English listed track.
Extras:
None.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With so many of the titles from this period turning serious or dark, the few comedic pieces that come out are like rays of light in all of that darkness. While the adult anime world hasn’t been completely dark in nature since the beginning, a lot of light material used to come out in the direct OVA market for years until they figured out how to turn those kinds of shows into TV shows and just tease you a bit less… or maybe more. So when a comedy piece comes along, they always get a bit more interest out of us.
Invasion of the Booby Snatchers is a light comedy to be sure and simply a good little romp in the sack. It has its lightly twisted moments as well but it’s the kind of show that feels good to watch with a smile on your face. The story revolves around Yuria, a woman who has spent the last three hundred years roaming the universe looking for her sister Arisa who ran off all that time ago. She’s finally found her on Earth and has set down in Japan to find her. Things go kind of wonky as you’d expect; Yuria isn’t exactly a ditz but she’s not the quickest of the pack. Before she can find her sister, she ends up meeting (an understatement!) a young man named Shinji of whom she finds herself to be quite fond of. The young man is well kept and generally free of malice so he’s happy to show her about and indulge in her desire to learn more about human sex practices.
Along the way, Shinji ends up coming across Arisa while with Yuria but not at the same time, which leads Arisa to trying to seduce Shinji so that she’ll have an ally of sorts against her sister since she doesn’t want to go home. I’m not sure Yuria wants to go home at this point either considering how much fun she’s having with Shinji. Before Shinji really knows what’s going on, he’s had both sisters and is finding that they’re awaking his inner artistic talents and they’re both looking to keep him close at hand. Unfortunately, there’s another alien in the vicinity that’s trying to take advantage of Arisa for his own needs and that of his gang which leads to some mild moments of action as Arisa’s life is threatened.
Now, it must be mentioned that the two main girls here are indeed catgirls. When we first see Arisa climax, she sprouts ears and a tail and proceeds to lick her hand in post-coital bliss. But it’s not big on the catgirl material beyond that for the most part but even that little bit is something that some fetishists simply must know about. The animation and character designs for the show is nice and clean, very smooth and simple character designs with bright colors and a good look. Both of the lead female characters are very attractive without really feeling like a stereotype and even Shinji as a whole doesn’t come across as a dork, a loser or a bad guy. He’s an average guy who really just lucked out and finds himself dealing with two very sex needy women.
In Summary:
If there was a title I was unsure about when it was first announced, this would definitely be one of them. Having seen it, it’s a great little title that has little to do with anything in terms of a real plot or story. It’s a perfect show for first timers or couples as it hits some of the basics without anything too far out of left field, the animation is good, the sex is clean but detailed and it simply has something of a feel-good nature to it. Add in that the dub is pretty accurate and it doesn’t date itself with much in the way of slang and that makes it all the more accessible. This is the kind of show I wish they’d make more of to help balance out the darker material.
Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles
Content Grade: B+
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: A-
Menu Grade: B-
Extras Grade: N/A
Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: February 14th, 2006
MSRP: $29.95
Running Time: 60 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.
