Parasite Dolls

Despite its flaws, I’ve always considered myself something of a fan of Bubblegum Crisis, and so it was with cautious optimism that I approached Parasite Dolls, the franchise’s latest spin-off OVA. Unfortunately, I was to find myself sorely disappointed.

The year is 2034, and boomers, humanoid robots manufactured by the Genom Corporation, permeate every walk of life. Unfortunately, with this new technology comes a whole new class of boomer related crimes, along with a specialised department, the AD Police, set to combat those crimes. All of this information will be familiar to those acquainted with the BGC franchise, but Parasite Dolls adds its own twist with the introduction of Branch, an undercover division of the AD Police. Over the course of the OVA, we see Branch tackle three separate cases, spread over a timeframe of some six years.

Central to these tales are the staff of Branch, as generic and two-dimensional a set of personalities as you could ever hope to meet. There’s Buzz, the hardworking cop with a few skeletons in his closet; Kimball, his stoic robotic partner; Reiko, the spunky young sergeant with unrequited feelings for Buzz; Angel, the seductive undercover officer and Myers, the computer geek. These are all personalities we’ve met many times before in any number of crime shows, and none of these characters receive enough development to stand out- in fact, you can find out more about them by reading the character profiles on the inside cover of the DVD case than you can from actually watching the OVA. Even the decision to spread the three segments over a six year period is a wasted opportunity- instead of seeing the characters grow and change over the time, there is little difference in the way they look or act each time we meet them.

The stories themselves are equally standard fare; rogue boomers, drug dealing, prostitute murders and corrupt bosses framing the hero have been done elsewhere, and done better at that. Even though anime is no stranger to fitting a complete story into a mere 25-30 minutes, none of Parasite Dolls’ three parts use their time well, and come off as compressed and poorly developed tales, sections of which make little sense since we are rarely given an insight into the protagonists’ motivations. Many of the supposedly dramatic moments fail simply because we do not know the characters well enough to care about their plight.

Presentation-wise, Parasite Dolls is solid enough; the visuals are sound and in keeping with the cyberpunk ethic, whilst the background music consists of a range of simplistic and understated techno style tracks that add to the atmosphere but rarely intrude too much on the viewers’ consciousness. There’s fair smattering of the sex, violence and gruesome monsters you’d expect from the genre, but whilst this isn’t for the faint-hearted, it is somewhat toned down compared to the earlier AD Police OVA.

In Summary

If Parasite Dolls had been a 13 episode TV series, it could have made for a serviceable and better developed outing; as it stands it’s just a generic offering messily compressed into its limited runtime. Unless you’re a hardcore Bubblegum Crisis fan who wants to own every single piece of the franchise, there are far better things to spend your money on.