Dirty Pair Flash · review
Dirty Pair Flash is a re-imagining of the Dirty Pair franchise. As it is made more recently they've beefed up the animation budget and the animation is of a far superior quality to the other Dirty Pair OVAs and movies. The sound has improved too, except that the quality of the english voice acting is still a little bit lacking. Alas, the opening theme sounds like kindergarden kids trying to sing to really bad 70s porn soundtrack. At least that's how it sounds to me. The stories are quite good and varied. Mission 1, the first 6 OVAs is one central plotline, as is Mission 2with 5 episodes. Misson 3 is a collection of random episodes. Mission 1 was quite annoying and dealt with the relationship between Kei and Yuri. Mission 2 was the best in terms of a cohesive storyline. Mission 3 is just fun, funny and features 2 boob shots.
The real issue with Dirty Pair Flash is the re-set of the characters. They made both Kei and Yuri younger and very immature. Both are now 3WA agents that are great physical specimens with good combat scores and extremely low IQs. WHAT???!
What happened to Yuri being the smart one as per the previous Dirty Pair? Now all she is interested in is clothes, boys and telling the world how cute and pretty she is. Definitely not much interest in the job. The beefed up Kei is now a total tomboy in love with guns, who happens to have the IQ of an egg. I understand the "old" Dirty Pair was reckless but making them reckless bimbos is a bit much.
Overall, the stories are ok, the action is good, the animation is better, sound is so-so. In addition there is a lot of semi-nudity and eye candy for the ecchi guys to look at. I really wanted to enjoy this series more but the incongruity of how the characters were made killed a lot of it for me.