Review for Birdy The Mighty: Decode Part 1

Introduction

There once was a time when I thought that the remake was a uniquely Hollywood phenomenon. Plenty of exposure to world cinema has disabused me of that idealistic notion, as it turns out that everyone is at it, digging up relics and gems of yesteryear and polishing them for contemporary audiences. Not everyone seems to be as bad at it as Hollywood though, and many remakes, especially anime remakes add more to the original property, not detract from it. But my experience with Hollywood does tend to colour my expectations of anime remakes, to he point where I'm in a constant state of pleasant surprise when I encounter them. I expect the worst, and instead find something amazing. Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood has turned out to be a worthy successor to the first series, Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex opened up a wholly different dimension of storytelling in comparison to the original feature, and R.O.D The TV in addition to the original OVA just gives me feelings of joy.


On this basis, I shouldn't have been sceptical of Birdy the Mighty: Decode. Yet I shied away from the property when I first heard of it. There is that instinctive aversion I have to the daft titles that Western companies insist on translating to. Birdy the Mighty sounds so much dafter than the original Tetsuwan Birdy that you wish that Funimation had kept to the original name. When the review discs arrived, I did my usual reading around it, and learned that the story was originally released as a four episode OVA, directed by none other than Ninja Scroll's Yoshiaki Kawajiri. Kawajiri has a singular style, a unique visual action ethic that no one else can match. In fact, Ninja Scroll, when remade into a TV series, yielded one of the few anime remakes that I think follow the Hollywood lines, utterly irredeemable. I didn't have high hopes for Birdy the Mighty's remake. Then I saw that none other than Kazuki Akane directs Birdy the Mighty: Decode. Akane served as director on the anime classic, The Vision of Escaflowne, Heat Guy J, and the awesome Noein. With that pedigree, Birdy the Mighty: Decode should be special indeed. It's still a dumb name though.


Birdy Cephon Altera is a cop. She is a space cop for the Federation though; who with her trusty Marker (a.k.a. robot) Tuto hunts down the nefarious scum of the galaxy. She's also enthusiastic about her job, to the point where among the criminal fraternity, she's known as Birdy the Berserk Killer. Her current mission is to track down the criminal duo of Geega and Bacillus, who have stolen the Ryunka. All information surrounding the Ryunka is classified, but Birdy has to stop the thieves and retrieve it at all cost. Unfortunately, they manage to elude her, and escape to an insignificant backward little planet. Six months later, Birdy is on Earth, undercover, posing as a model named Shion Arita, while trying to find Geega who has taken refuge in Earth's Entertainment Industry. She eventually catches up to him at Empire TV, and trails him to an abandoned hotel.


Tsutomu Senkawa is your everyday high school student. He does have an odd hobby though, he likes exploring abandoned buildings, which is why he happens to be in that abandoned hotel with his friend Natsumi Hayamiya at the same time that Birdy is about to apprehend Geega. One thing leads to another, and Geega winds up launching Tsutomu at Birdy as a missile. True to her nickname Birdy reacts instinctively. The next day Tsutomu wakes up back at home, none the worse for wear, thinking that it was just a bad dream. Except that all of a sudden he doesn't need his glasses anymore. And except all of a sudden he has a girl's voice in his head. Actually he's a voice in Birdy's head. It turns out he died, his body was shredded, and his consciousness is now timesharing with Birdy in her body while his body is repaired. So now, she's along for the ride as he goes about his life as a schoolboy, hanging out with his friends, while he has to take the back seat when she's out hunting alien criminals.


Except the two worlds are drawn inexorably closer together when Birdy learns just what the Ryunka actually is. It turns out that there are more aliens on Earth than just Birdy, Geega and Bacillus, and that some high up figures on Earth, humans are involved in the conspiracy. At the same time, one of Tsutomu's school friends, Sayaka Nakasugi, incidentally a girl that Tsutomu is sweet on, makes a miraculous recovery from both her chronic ill-health, and a near fatal car crash. Her grandfather's company is involved with one Satyajit Shyamalan, a whiz kid businessman who knows about the alien presence on Earth, and who is seeking the power of the Ryunka.


In Japan, Birdy the Mighty Decode was released as two separate series, 01, and 02. The Western release that Manga Entertainment is following gathers it all as one series, Birdy the Mighty Decode, but releasing it in two halves keeps the series separate anyway. This first instalment gathers all thirteen episodes of Birdy the Mighty: Decode 01, and presents them across two discs.


Disc 1

01. One Plus One
02. The Partnered One
03. View of Life
04. A Stranger From Earth
05. Another World
06. Both of Us
07. Night Walker

Disc 2

08. Ghost Village
09. The Champion of Justice
10. You're The One
11. Bye Bye Buddy
12. Doomsday
13. Stand By Me

Picture

Birdy the Mighty: Decode gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer, which courtesy of Madman in Australia is a very appreciable native PAL conversion, with the 4% speedup that implies. The image is clear and colourful throughout, there's no ghosting, and compression artefacts are hardly noticeable. The only issue really is the ever so slight aliasing around fine detail and sharp lines, but that's par for the course for anime. The animation itself is bright and lively, with likeable character designs, and a colourful and detailed world design. You can see some of the continuity in art style if you have seen Heat Guy J and Noein, but there is a lot to Birdy that is unique as well, the various aliens, the cetacean-like spacecraft and of course the action sequences which are top notch and energetic. At the same time the animation of the more sedate scenes is also imaginative and vivid. This isn't one of those shows where exposition means the image remains static except for mouth flaps. Instead there is vitality to the animation that marks it as a recipient of a nice, generous budget.


I did note an odd striping effect in occasional frames, usually when a bright scene would transition to another, but this was intermittent, and I couldn't tell if it was an artefact of the transfer, or deliberate. Certainly, it happens at the same point in the opening credit sequence for each episode, suggesting that it is a creative choice (or that Funimation only uses the one credit sequence for all the episodes).

Sound

You have the choice between DD 5.1 English, and DD 2.0 Stereo Japanese, along with the usual translated subtitles and a signs only track to accompany on screen text and song translations. It's a typical Funimation dub, which gives the audio an unobtrusive 5.1 upmix, allowing for a little more space for the action sequences. The voice actors are sufficiently suited to their characters, from what I sampled. As usual, I prefer the original Japanese audio, particularly with Saeko Chiba as Birdy. The stereo is effective enough for the action sequences, but I do have to scratch my head at the translated subtitles, as it seems that Funimation have gone a little overboard with the colloquialisms, Yesirreee!


The music suits the show well, if it isn't all that memorable. The opening and closing themes have a certain pop quality to them that is catchy, but Funimation have given the end credits the postage stamp treatment so that they can get their English language credits in. It's a damnable shame, as the end credits animation really deserves to be seen in full screen. The least they could have done is alternated between full screen original language, and postage stamp English overlay through the episodes.

Conclusion

You'd think after Bubblegum Crisis, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hayate the Combat Butler, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Read or Die, Gunslinger Girl, Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, Beck - Mongolian Chop Squad, and countless others, I'd have stopped judging anime by the titles. More often than not, and usually because of original licensor demands, anime get English titles that sound absolutely ridiculous in comparison to their Japanese titles. But you have to ask just what kind of audience a company is aiming their product at, with the titles that they bestow. Birdy the Mighty is a pretty accurate translation of the original Tetsuwan Birdy, but there was just something about the title Birdy the Mighty: Decode that had me convinced that my time would be better spent elsewhere when Funimation started streaming it on Youtube. That was a mistake, although it does mean that 'discovering' the show on DVD has been an absolute delight. It's the sort of bright, fun, entertaining, and exciting anime that got me hooked on this medium in the first place, and for the first time in years, I was sorely tempted to put the first disc back in after the final episode had ended, and start watching it all over again, there and then. Incidentally, Funimation recently announced that they had licensed Asobi ni Ikuyo, but for the English speaking market, they are going to sell it as Cat Planet Cuties. Seriously, just… stop!


I have to admit that it isn't just the title, as Birdy's gender-bending premise is enough to put a smirk on anyone's face. Tsutomu Senkawa isn't the first male protagonist to be killed by a female at the start of an anime series. It happens more often than you think, in shows like Shakugan no Shana and Buso Renkin, but Tsutomu is unique in that he winds up having to time share with Birdy's body while his own is being repaired in some futuristic, hi-tech alien lab somewhere. But there's nothing salacious about it, when Tsutomu is in control, it's his body that appears, while Birdy's appears when she takes control, and the transitions are instantaneous. There literally is no time for innuendo. Which is a good thing, as they have no time to waste commenting on each other's anatomy.


Birdy's day job as space cop/secret agent has brought her to Earth hunting an alien piece of technology and the criminals that stole it, so she's undercover trying to track it down. Of course powered up by alien technology, she's practically a superhero herself, able to leap tall buildings and inadvertently crush yakuza cars. That a superhero's working uniform has a compulsory skimpiness to it certainly adds the requisite aesthetic qualities to the animation, but to the creators' credit, they don't dwell on Birdy's physical attributes. Besides, the action sequences are so fast paced and energetic that you really don't have time. But when we meet her, she lives up to her reputation of the Berserk Killer, not letting anything stand in her way of meting out justice, and tending to act without thinking. It's what leads her to cross paths with Tsutomu when she kills him.


Tsutomu is a fairly run of the mill teen male protagonist, although he doesn't suffer overly from the indecisive whininess or timidity that often afflicts teen males in anime. It's his decision that gets him into trouble in the first place, leading him to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course waking up in Birdy's body, hearing her voice in his head, and learning that there is a universe full of aliens out there does come as a bit of a shock. But the early episodes are a whole lot of fun, with Birdy trying to track down the Ryunka and those who stole it, with Tsutomu along for the ride, or Birdy taking a back seat while Tsutomu goes through his every day life as a high school kid. He's got a crush on a fellow classmate named Sayaka Nakasugi, and his 'hormone rushes' are a source of amusement for Birdy, but it's here that the linking of the two begins to grow their characters. Tsutomu learns to be a little bolder from Birdy's example, while Birdy's personality begins to temper and soften, vicariously experiencing Tsutomu's life. Of course there is the inevitable friction when the body gets double booked, a 'date' clashing with a stakeout for example.


As the story progresses, we learn more of the Ryunka and the conspiracy surrounding it, meet more of the various alien characters on Earth trying to possess its power, as well as those high up humans that are also trying to control it. The earlier episodes, played more for laughs give way to something a little more serious, especially as it becomes clear that the fate of the Ryunka is tied in very personally to Tsutomu and those he cares about. It's an entertaining mystery that unfolds in a very appealing way, and certainly makes it hard to press stop at the end of an episode, knowing that the next episode will reveal more.


If Birdy The Mighty: Decode does have a problem, it's that it does tend to telegraph its major revelations far in advance. We as the audience know about the fate of the Ryunka long before the characters do, and even before the series really starts building on that storyline. I did occasionally wonder why the series was taking so long to get to the point. Similarly the conclusion of the series is pretty obvious and inevitable, but by this point the show is progressing at such a pace, and engaging the audience so completely, that I wasn't really concerned by it. I was having too much fun watching the show. Yes, Birdy The Mighty: Decode 01 is complete in and of itself. The thirteen episodes set out to tell a story, and do so with a beginning, middle and end, perfectly paced, rich in entertainment and utterly satisfying. It also seeds enough back story, and paints a rich enough and diverse enough world, hinting at further plots and conspiracies, that you can instantly see the possibility for more story to be told. It is such a good series that you do want more, and the 'To Be Continued' in large text at the end of the final credits, along with the knowledge that Manga will release Birdy The Mighty: Decode 02 in September is still decidedly welcome.


Birdy The Mighty Decode is a fantastic sci-fi action anime, it has a rounded cast of great characters, the story is told with energy and wit, the animation is top-quality throughout, and in terms of all round entertainment, it's been a long time since I've seen a show of Birdy's calibre.  Once again, Kazuki Akane delivers a show that I'm sure will quickly become one of my oft-visited favourites. And in future I'm going to ignore the inanity of the English titles that anime get. Next month Manga release Black Butler, and I'm leaving my preconceptions at the door.