Anime of Yesteryear presents: “That little ol’ OVA: Wanna-Be’s”

Hey everyone. So its another Friday night for me filled with my plastic, boxy, large cassettes with images of japanese cartoons from the past with a glass of Jack Daniels by my side as I use to transcend time and space with the man made invention dubbed “blackouts.” When I came to, I found myself by facing two fierce female warriors, with binding spandex and eyes of a tiger, pouncing on the prey of some butch looking women, with missing teeth and bad 80’s hairstyles. Looking around the area, I found myself on the sidelines of the grand gladiator brawl of Japanese woman’s professional wrestling. Welcome to the world of Wanna-Be’s folks, lets get ready to rumble.

Wanna-Be’s is an anime about woman’s “wraslin” with high tech power armor training equipment, butch ladies, evil corporations and moves from pile drivers to “The Vag’ Slammer!” This anime starts out really entertaining and ends with “…why?” It had a good and simple premise even with the evil corporation thrown in to the story, but how they bring in and execute the final boss is just… gah, why? Well, let’s elbow drop this anime into submission then go in for the count.

Wanna-Be’s starts off with a match between the Dream Angels and the Foxy Ladies, battling for the glory of the ring. Unfortunately it’s pretty much a one sided fight as the burly Foxy Ladies dominate the Dream Angels between choke holds, suplexes and being thrown into turnbuckles in there shear dominance in the ring. With the Dream Angels out, its up to the Wanna-Be’s to step in and avenge their sisters in the ring with Miki Morita and Eri Kazuma. The coach is able to set the Wanna-Be’s up with state of the art equipment (some say may rival what Dolph Lundgren used in Rocky 4) to get in top shape to take on the pro wrestling circuit and soon to exact revenge against the Foxy Ladies.

While all this is going on, we find that the corporation, the Kidou group, was funding the manager for the Dream Angels, now Wanna-Be’s, from the hi-tech training equipment to getting other “enhancements.” Turns out the Kidou group is putting in certain types of drugs into the female athletes to improve their stats for research and testing to… make them the ultimate fighter, or something.

Fight after fight, the Wanna-Be’s are able to finally get a match with the Foxy Ladies to settle the score from the slaughter of the Dream Angels. The fight is introduced by the main singer of Seikima II in an Undertaker style introduction with him throwing a coffin on stage and telling the crowd that the Foxy Ladies will make sure this coffin is the fate of the Wanna-Be’s. Talk about class man, and that is something I can totally dig. They have their showdown with the Foxy Ladies in a 3 bout match which is really entertaining to see. Full of kicks, holds, chairs and the Wanna-Be’s hulking out at the end to make the match a tie (due to them not getting the credit for the pin since the Foxy Ladies knocked out the ref like 5 minutes before hand. Yea it got pretty crazy after that).

After the match, Miki and Eri find that they are nothing more than guinea pigs for the Kidou group, just like the Dream Angels before them, and decide to go to the company HQ to put a stop to it once and for all. But, they find there is more to these experiments than what meets the eye, and to see the ultimate horror of the project. What will they find in the depths of the Kidou group? You’ll have to find that out for yourself.

Wanna-Be’s starts out with a promise of a somewhat sturdy wrestling anime, but ends with something that I just cant imagine why the people who worked in this thought it would be a good idea. I’m not going to spoil it for you because I want you to see it for yourself, but I am sure your going to ask yourself when watching this “wait, why was that in there?” I have to admit, this anime is entertaining and ridiculous, especially for animes that I seem to enjoy the most give or take. You must also realize, this is just 45 minutes of mindless entertainment that you have no reason to put any thought or action into making it more serious or deep than what Wanna-Be’s shows you.

What got me into watching this was the character designs are done by none other than Kenichi Sonoda, the man who made the lovely women of japanese cartoons in the 80’s with Gall Force, Bubblegum Crisis, Gunsmith Cats and Riding Bean just to name a few (these titles I just named will be reviewed in the future at some point in time). I am a HUUUUUUGE fan of Sonoda’s work, and I hope to meet the man one day, and just show up with a truck load of crap I want him to sign, and possibly take him out to eat or to hit up a bar just to get the know the guy. I hope by then I have a acceptable ride like a ’67 Shelby GT 500 that would suit him to take him to one of these places.

All in all, if you wanna check this anime out, be my guest. And if you like wrestling in some way, its entertaining to see. But man, that ending will get you, I tell you what. I sign off my saying, have yourself an apple: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APcAK0c9OJU

Well, this is my weekly review, and you can check me out on my blog at: http://animeofyesteryear.blogspot.com/