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パワードール
2
OVA
Finished Airing
Mar 1, 1996 to Mar 1, 1998
In 2535 A.D., after decades of oppressive policies instituted by the Terran government, the people of the colony world Omni joined together to declare their independence from the tyranny of planet Earth. Lacking an established military or specialized weapons of warfare, the Omni rebellion seemed doomed to failure. However, by adapting the robotic Power Loaders used for unloading spaceships into man-like battle tanks, the Rebel forces instead introduced a whole new era of mechanized combat. Now, the future of the planet Omni rests upon a handful of young female pilots who serve in the special Detachment of Limited Line Service. Their code name: The Power Dolls! (Source: AniDB)
6.3/10
Average Review Score
67%
Recommend It
3
Reviews Worldwide
Cool little MSF mecha based on a PC98 series of tactical turn based strategy games. The story is about as generic as you'd expect from a MSF but it does all it needs to: set the stage for some mecha battles. The gamut of the usual war related themes is only hinted at but this is for the best given the limited 2 OVA run of the anime. Art is very standard fare for the 90s but a lot of detail has been put into the mechanical designs and they have been futurized to immerse into the interplanetary setting; unlike the games which depict very contemporarymilitary units alongside the titular Power DOlls. The DOlls themselves are rendered very faithfully, down to the extreme level of loadout options available in the game. It is also fun to see the character portraits in the game fleshed out with surprisingly good facial animations and movement. There wasn't as much mechanized firefights as I'd have liked given the screentime. The Enemy mechs turned out to be very mook-like but seeing the flakpanzer gepards (but in space) and the spider mechs in the second ova being taken down by the Power DOlls was quite satisfying. One thing to mention though; the second OVA has a striking artstyle change that makes it more reminiscent of how Silent Mobius/Gall Force Revolution looks. I can confirm that at least some of the soundtrack are tracks from the games (not even rearranged I think, a testament to how good chiptunes were), its pretty glorious cyberpunky synth fusion jazz. Alas the sort of music the average person would dismiss as 80s cheese. Overall, only people who like the game or love their fix of MSF anime would enjoy this short ova; appreciating how even a tiny bit of the extreme detail in the games was carried over to an anime adaptation helps too.
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Power Dolls is totally unremarkable mecha slop, with a poorly defined, generic conflict, washed out visuals, and wooden dialogue. In no way is this title worth anyone's time, because it's not even bad enough to be comedy material. It instead just languishes in that lower third of the quality curve, where all the titles that are on the bad side of mediocre find their final end. To begin with the story, there's a war between Earth and the colonists of a planet called Omni over Earth's "oppressive immigration policies". What do "oppressive immigration policies" even mean in this context? Is the Earth preventing them fromimmigrating to Earth, or is Earth depriving them of potential colonists, or is it some secret third thing? Why do the Omni colonists care so much? It's just sloppy writing, and serves only to justify the existence of the titular Power Dolls- an all-girl team of mech pilots who fight against the Earth government. Also, there are certain moments of hilarious attempts at English, like calling the self-destruct function the "oneself blast system". If nothing else, this anime gave us the best name for a self-destruct button that I've ever heard, and that's worth something I suppose. The art is generally mediocre, but still better than the story. While the mech designs are alright, the visuals are washed out and the animation is extremely stiff. Despite being produced in the late 90s, it feels in every way like an 80s anime, and not in some purposeful callback fashion, but rather in a kind of technical limitation capacity. The sound is completely unremarkable, and there is nothing of note to say about it. The characters leave much to be desired, and feel as though they possess no depth beyond what the story confers to them post-hoc. All in all, even if the second episode has an alright fight in it, this anime nonetheless remains a waste of time, and I wouldn't recommend it, even to people who consider themselves mecha fanatics- there is little of value to be found in this title.
I can assure you, it's a very good show, but I confess that I thought they were half robots :v The script. There are 2 episodes, each one covers a mission. The first introduces us to the characters, personal characteristics and feelings, focusing on a character because the mission involves facts linked to him. The second episode is a more extreme mission, I imagined it would be more comprehensive in terms of the team, but (at a certain point) it returned to focusing on one character. But it’s really worth watching! I love the design, I'm a penciller and I love old designs. The look of thePower Dolls' clothes is pretty cool, not too ecchi, but with the practicalities that fanservice always brings us. I thought the Power Loader PLD was really cool, very much so, and I feel a certain similarity (I didn't research the designer) with the MS from Fullmetal Panic Right at the beginning there's a scene that surprised me, about firepower VS one of the PLD, and considering the fanservice in ep2 I found the x-plicit scene strange, it wasn't necessary