While this episode had some fun things like a train heist situation, this has to be my least favorite anime episode so far.
This is episode 20 of Dirty Pair and the girls are given the task of taking in an assassin named Blues. Equipped with new hand cuffs that can only be taken off at 3WA and will explode a minute after being taken apart, the girls set out on foot and then a giant fire lizard into a town after the nice hotel kicked them out. If I had known about them, I would have kicked them out too. Instead, they go to a cheaper hotel after being harassed by some rich bikers on the way there and they meet at a bar. A bar that Blues happens to hang around that bar during a fight that Kei starts. He gets hand cuffed after a chase to Kei, but he refuses to go with them until he kills the guy currently running a beauty contest, Mr. Melpot whose son runs a bicycle gang. That leads to a train heist because the assassin’s target who killed his mom is planning on blowing up the nice hotel. After a fight, Blues blasts the cup and goes after Melpot before the train sets off the bomb and dies. Kei and Yuri save their own bacon in the end and go home without Blues sadly.
So there is a lot of things that annoy me. The first one is this is an episode that has too much going on for one episode. Lots of town politics, bars, a biker gang, and Blues himself who had his mother killed by Melpot into a fire lake. If this was two episodes and it allowed us to soak into the world a bit more, this episode would have been pretty great. Instead, we get of convenient moments and things like the lava like over the train tracks just being there or the girls having a convenient reason to help Blue because the man was going to blow up a hotel. All very last minute things that I had a lot of trouble thinking about at one time. Plus, Blues’ story was just lame. Having that cliched mother complex thing despite him being 40+ years old or so was funny at first, but it’s still very flimsy for the sake of being there as a motivation. I get it was supposed to be a parody of action shows, but come on. I could also talk about how Blues was just on a side of the counter of the bar right next to them and the girls never noticed. How do you ignore such a large man like this?
There were plenty of good things too that kept it afloat though. For instance, Kei and Yuri have not blown up a train yet in this show, so the train heist/fight was a lot of fun and the explosion was generally prety good too. I also liked some of the interactions between Kei and other people. Kei called the rich gang leader out on being a trust fund baby that can just do whatever he wanted and what followed was a pretty fun bar fight. Also, some good moments with Kei and Yuri with Blues. Blues was never condescending to them, which was great. I also laughed at when Blues had to go to the bathroom and Kei was handcuffed to him and had to go with him? The inherent awkwardness of that moment, though a bit gross, was wonderful too. The man doesn’t get and you’ve got to respect that.
So an average episode over all for Dirty Pair. Solid premise, bad execution saved by cool action sequences and small action scenes.
Mechanical Anime Reviews 