Kiddy Grade

“Where lipstick is concerned, the important thing is not the colour, but to accept God’s final decision on where your lips end.” – Jerry Seinfeld

The time: Somewhere in the far future, but the year or even the century is not known.

The place: The Planet Aineias, home of The Galactic Organisation of Trade and Tariffs, or GOTT.

GOTT is a galactic branch of the civil service which is responsible for tackling financial crime. Amongst the servants are the ES Members, superpowered individuals who work in pairs to deal with the bigger crimes. Most of them have been reborn several times and are thus older than they look.

One pair consists of a girl called Eclair, who looks sixteen, has super strength, is equipped with a special lipstick which she can use as a whip, and whose taste in clothes is somewhat… well let us call it interesting. Her main outfit consists of a top with an upside down cross cut out, the intersecting point being at her navel. It could be worse; the cross could be the right way up and be exposing more intimate parts.

The other half of the pair consists of the even younger looking Lumiere, who believes that girls should be more elegant, and has the ability to control any computer. One important thing to remember is that as she is older than she looks, it is OK for her to be drinking so much wine, not that I am entirely comfortable with that personally.

Now, it should be pointed out that this is the release of the entire series. MVM has already released Kiddy Grade as eight individual volumes and this box set is simply all eight discs (three episodes each) in one box. Plus the eight volumes have already been review previously by AUKN, so much of what I am about to write has already been covered by this website.

Let us start with the good points. I like the animation for starters. It is nice and bright despite the age (it was made nine years ago). There is also a fair share of action so if you like thrills and spills then you should enjoy it. The DVD also has a fair number of extras. These include image galleries, character profiles and the original commercials.

On the downside the plot is too slow for my liking. It does not get truly going until around the middle of the series when Éclair begins to rebel against the government system and the elite class that rules it. Also, for a show like this there is way too much fan service. Not an episode goes by without a shot of Eclair’s panties being displayed, and all of Eclair’s costumes have to somehow expose some part of her breasts (but never the nipples of course). There is no need for it.

Overall, this show is OK to watch, but it is pretty forgettable. There is a sequel to this anime called Kiddy-GiRL-AND. Hopefully it is better, but I doubt it.