Akai Koudan Zillion: Utahime Yakyoku

In the peaceful aftermath of the Nozsa wars, the charismatic heroes known as "The White Knights" have changed career paths to becoming music making rockstars. J.J., Dave, Champ and Apple have formed a rock band called, "The White Nuts". Their music career would soon be interrupted by a new threat of colonial settlers. Apple is kidnapped by the sadistic ODAMA Clan - a family of ruthless killers. Located in a heavily-fortified mountain retreat, J.J. and company attempt a rescue mission with their laser weapon Zillion. But the former Knights only have a limited supply of Zillium for the Zillion guns. A mysterious stranger named Rick turns out to be an old lover of Apple.

(Source: Wikipedia)

JJ Main

Seki, Toshihiko Japanese

Apple Main

Mizutani, Yuuko Japanese

Champ Main

Inoue, Kazuhiko Japanese

Baron Riks Main

Hayami, Show Japanese

Dave Supporting

Nakamura, Daiki Japanese

Opaopa Supporting

Honda, Chieko Japanese

Bo Supporting

Admiss Supporting

Guardog Supporting

Shiozawa, Kaneto Japanese

Gordo Supporting

Fujimoto, Yuzuru Japanese

Macek, Carl Producer, Screenplay

Ueda, Motoki Producer

Nishikubo, Mizuho Director, Screenplay

Yuuki, Risa Theme Song Performance

Reviews

Jul 24, 2024

jonnjonzz

Mixed Feelings

No one else who reviewed this had seen the actual series, and most of them wondered if that would help appreciate this more. I just watched it after seeing the whole series, and it really doesn’t. This is an alternate universe which uses some character designs and names from the show. You might think from the first scene that the white nuts retired from fighting aliens after the war and became a band. These are just a band who never had the experiences in the original show. This is obvious from the way they get their weapons and the nature of the villains. Baron Ricks ... is in this but he isn’t an alien Baron. He is just an ex boyfriend of Apple who likes to fight. The other trio of villains also have no connection to the Nohza and are just some generic Fist of the North Star bandits now. The plot uses Apple as a damsel in distress who spends the whole film getting captured, groped, and sexually assaulted. Very different from the fighter she was in the actual series. JJ is basically the same, a total moron and pervert. Champ is also not much different, just a foil to JJ. The music is decent, but the OVA doesn’t offer much for fans of the series. You’re probably better off watching this in isolation, since the lack of follow up on the show’s ending was disappointing, and the characters seem to have regressed to be even more immature than in the show.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Dec 28, 2021

Kamezuki

Mixed Feelings

I haven't seen the show this is based off of, so I didn't know anything about the characters. That may have actually made watching this funnier, though.

It starts out almost Bubblegum Crisis-like, with a woman in a band singing a rock song on a stage to a packed audience in a club. Things quickly go awry though as she is kidnapped, and her band-mates comically fail to save her. I'm not sure if we are supposed to know who the kidnappers are, either, but their backgrounds and origins aren't explained here. Anyway, they kidnapped the main female character, Apple, in order to marry her off ... to another bad guy (I guess their brother?). It seems like villains in this one are all part of a family, with "Mama" as the boss. After Apple's locked away in some desolate dungeon-like tower, it's up to her band-mates to rescue her, and they use laser guns, motorcycles, hang gliders and a dirigible (!) to do so. Complicating matters is a mysterious guy hired by the villains to dispose of Apple's friends, who seems to have a past with Apple. Can JJ and Champ save Apple before she becomes the bride of some sleazy guy in front of his family and an army of mask-wearing robots? And what will the mysterious guy do? I won't spoil the ending, so let me get to the more technical aspects of the OVA.

While the character designs are good, the animation isn't that great. Characters move awkwardly sometimes (like when characters far away are supposed to be walking, it almost looks like they just get dragged and dropped by a mouse cursor). Also, characters' facial features aren't well-defined from a distance, and characters that are speaking will sometimes not be moving their mouths.

Music is OK, but forgettable. Voices are decent; there are a lot of veteran voice actors in this one.

Characters aren't developed too well (especially the other 2 members of the band who don't get much focus), and we don't really get to understand the villains' motivation: why do they want to have Apple marry one of them in the first place? What does that accomplish?

There are also a bunch of seemingly pointless scenes, like when the mysterious guy fights one of Apple's friends. The friend even asks why the mysterious guy is fighting him, to which the mysterious guy responds with something like: "do you need a reason to fight?" as the buildings around them are falling down. There's also a lot of cheesy bickering between the two main male characters (they both clearly have a crush on Apple), and then there is some cliche groping, looking up a dress, etc. On a more serious note, there is also an attempted rape by Apple's evil wannabe groom, but this gets thwarted before things get too far. The overall tone of this OVA is humorous.

They make a big deal about Apple's music box locket, and even show it at the end of the credits, but its significance is never explained -- maybe this is something else that isn't understandable without the context of the original series.

Anyway, as a whole, this is a fun action-comedy romp that is highly nonsensical, but it might make more sense to viewers of the story on which it's based.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Mar 6, 2020

Yemi_Hikari

Not Recommended

The summary for the show doesn't go into the fact Apple is getting kidnapped because they want her to become the bride of the eldest son in the group, yet I think if I saw that in the summary I wouldn't have been as thrilled going into this as I was - I was honestly looking forward to a series where the heroes get on with their lives despite not having ever seen the original series, only to find they never really do get on with their lives, but instead are definitely left at a place of picking up the pieces, but not moving on. ...

That's not a very nice send off for a beloved series characters, but I'd argue the characters in AD police, even if they did get a tragic ending still ended up with a chance to move on. I mean, they discussed moving on. While the Animation is beautiful, the sound as well, this really didn't make up for the story, character and - well, watching yet another female pulled into a damsel in distress role and unable to fight back simply because she was female and this was for the male audiences personal wish fulfillment.

Yeah, I'm female, but that doesn't mean I can't watch or appreciate something from the shonen genre, nor does it being the shonen genre really excuse the poor narrative. That said, its rather hard to by into the whole shonen isn't about romance argument a lot of the younger fans put forth when the plot definitely revolves around romance, albiet a poorly done one. The expectation was never that there would be no romance in shonen, but that the narrative for the female character is about being this romantic interest. In some ways the industry has moved on from this, in others, not.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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