Starship Operators Volume 01 – Revolution

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: C     Episodes: B-

 

 

Starship Operators is a semi-comic Animé series whose title automatically makes one think of Starship Troopers, the Robert A. Heinlein book and underappreciated Paul Verhoeven film.  Though there are no giant battles every minute or killer insects on the loose, the animation is interesting, the melodrama amusing and action interplay fuller than many such series we have seen to date.  The initial episodes are:

 

1)     Count Down

2)     Trafalgar Crisis

3)     Call From Home

4)     Final Answer

 

 

As well done as it is, it cannot shake the shadows of the many Sci-Fi and Animé programs before it that make this familiar territory.  With that said, the show is still much better than the many live action digitized messes in the genre we have seen since the 1980s, with their bad dialogue, bad make-up and all.  I honestly do not know if this series will pick up, but the fact that the possibility exists makes us look forward to the next DVD.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1/16 X 9 image is good, but the animators cannot resist softening the image with bleaching whites in shots that are supposed to equal realism when the conjure cliché.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo with Pro Logic surrounds in either English or Japanese are healthy and enveloping.  Extras include a Music Video, opening and closing credits without text, trailers for this and three other Geneon DVD releases.  Our copy came with a translucent hard plastic “pencil box” art piece.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo