Area 88: Vol.3 - Tightrope at the Speed of Sound

Introduction

There's something ineffably cool about fighter planes, especially to a young teenaged male. That's despite the fact that the closest we'll ever get to such machinery is probably in the Imperial War Museum, and the chance of us being anywhere near a working fighter are either slim or fat. It didn't stop me from borrowing coffee table books from the library, perusing through Jane's Guide to Fighter Jets, playing computer games, swapping top trumps cards, and indulging in movies like Wings of the Apache and Top Gun. It's why I will still watch Firefox despite it being the worst movie that Clint Eastwood ever made. But fighter planes in animation are another matter. There is little satisfaction to be had in Dastardly and Muttley; it may be entertaining but it won't appeal to the plane-spotter in all of us, and it's hard to envisage a cartoon coming up with the level of detail, consistency, accuracy and sense of speed that a decent depiction requires. It's jet porn basically, but two things make it feasible. One is the adult outlook of anime, where attention to detail and accuracy are commonplace, and the other is CGI. When you have realistic aircraft, modelled with digital accuracy, it makes a show like Area 88 possible.


The Kingdom of Aslan is embroiled in a bitter civil war, but rather than recruit and train its own standing air force, it has instead opted for a mercenary squadron operating from its Area 88 base, flying sorties against insurrectionist forces, fighting one of the most bitter conflicts in the Middle East. The pilots who fly from Area 88 sign up to tough contracts. There are only three ways to leave, serve the full 3-year tour, amass $1.5 million and buy your way out, or in a body bag. Earning the money would seem easy, when you're making tens of thousands of dollars for each target, but pilots also have to pay for maintenance, spare parts, repairs, armaments, ammunition, and even the food they eat and the roof over their heads, and if they get shot down, their coffins. It's fine if you sign up for it, but for the base's sole Japanese pilot, Shin Kazama, it's a deal he never made. He was on the fast track to success as a commercial airline pilot, he'd just passed his final tests, and was engaged to be married to a girl named Ryoko, when his ex-best friend Kanzaki signed him up for Aslan's merc pilots. He needs to buy his way out of the contract so he can get back to his fiancé, and that means flying, fighting and killing as many enemy targets as quickly as possible.


The next three episodes are presented on this volume 3 of Area 88 courtesy of ADV.

7. Hungry Boy - Sweet Soldier
Area 88's tankers and transports are coming under attack, and aviation fuel is at a premium, not good when pilots are expected to pay for their own fuel, and McCoy is putting the prices up. Mercenaries being money oriented, they're starting to cut corners, and disaster strikes when a hard-up pilot crashes his dry fighter on the runway. When an enemy bombing raid is detected, there is only enough fuel to put three, light planes in the air, and the pilots selected are Shin, Kitri and Kim. The trouble is that the new hotshot pilot Kitri doesn't take the fresh-faced young Kim seriously as a pilot.

8. Sand Glass - Bullets From The Sand
It's astounding, but one solitary man can indeed shut down an entire airbase. There is a sniper somewhere in the desert who is wreaking havoc. He makes his presence felt when he picks off two planes in the process of taking off, then destroys the fire trucks sent to deal with the crash, and then kills a technician in the control tower for good measure. Now Area 88 is at a standstill, no one dares venture outside, let alone take to the air, and desperate calls for support have to be ignored. Shin realises that the only way to defeat the sniper is from the air, and he comes up with a plan to get him up as quickly as possible. He'll need a distraction though, and someone will have to spot the sniper for him to target. Then Shinjou comes up with an idea.


9. Canyon - Tightrope at the Speed of Sound
When a terrorist attack takes out Aslan's key oil refinery, the entire military threatens to come to a standstill. The only solution is to capture a rebel refinery. The trouble is that it is miles behind enemy lines, through some of the most concentrated anti-air defences in the region. There is a way though, although it means navigating through a tight, twisting and perilous ravine to avoid enemy radar. Oddly enough, photographer Makoto Shinjou will be key to this mission's success.

Picture

A recent anime gets a nice 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer. Aside from the NTSC-PAL conversion issues prevalent with every other anime show available in the UK, the only real annoyance is a degree of moiré on fine detail, and almost imperceptible aliasing. It's not a deal breaker, but is a disappointment in such a visual show. The character designs are pleasant enough if a little old-fashioned, reflecting their mid-eighties origins. The real joy is in the hardware. The planes here are depicted with a degree of accuracy and attention to detail that is unprecedented for an animation. That anime budget does show though, although oddly enough it's in slower moments of animation. When you see a jet taxiing or during take-off or landing, something doesn't feel quite right, as if the plane lacks weight. But when the action heats up, during a dogfight or while performing aerobatic sequences, the visuals are amazing. It's almost as if they've taken sequences from Top Gun and just cel-shaded them.

Sound

You have a choice between DD 5.1 English and DD 2.0 Japanese, along with optional translated subtitles and signs. I was happy enough with the original language as always, and the stereo provides some nice whooshy plane noises when required. But for the full jet porn aficionado, the 5.1 Surround will be the audio track of choice, and while it isn't as full-blown as a multi-million dollar effects movie, it does throw some planes, missiles, cannon and AA fire around your speakers. It's enough to put a grin on your face during the action scenes. Unfortunately when they start talking, that grin will ebb, as the English language dub is decidedly average. It's a show that desperately needs a 5.1 Japanese track.

Extras

There may be a low episode count on this disc, but the extras compensate.

The clear Amaray case has a reversible sleeve you can make use of, and the inside has character guides for Kitri Parvaneh and Saki Vashtar, with interviews with their voice actors as well.

On the disc you'll find trailers for Yugo The Negotiator, Samurai Gun, Madlax and Gilgamesh. There is a 1-minute slideshow of production sketches, the clean credit sequences (with 2 versions of the end sequence), aircraft specs for the Buccaneer S2B and the Mirage F1, and character bios for Gustav Tanchelm, Roundell, Saki Vashtar and Kitri Parvaneh (there's a bit of repetition in the last from the sleeve notes).


The first interview on this disc sees Isamu Imakake talking to Sound Director Satoshi Yano. They talk about the cast, the dubbing process, the music and the sound effects. There's also some footage of said sound effects being recorded at the Komatsu airbase. This lasts 24 minutes

The second interview lasts 21 minutes, and this time the director talks to Director of Photography Shinichiro Tachi. There's a lot here about the move from film to computers for animation, as well blending the 3D mechanical elements with traditional 2D animation.

There is also a preview for volume 4.

Conclusion

I had a little whinge at volume 2 of Area 88 for its rather thick 80s soap opera veneer. I have fond memories of the era of shoulder pads and hairspray, which is why I can tolerate those character conventions and story shortcuts, when less forgiving folk than I throw in the towel. But it did mean that I really didn't take episodes 4-6 of Area 88 all that seriously, and more often than not, was smirking while watching them. All that is rectified for volume 3, and then some. It's as if someone has suddenly remembered that it's a show about a war, with fighter jets and fighter pilots, and that there needs to be action and excitement and lots of things exploding.


The three episodes here are three missions that need to be accomplished by our heroes, and with each successive mission, the odds get stacked higher, and the stakes raised. If the first two volumes were about setting the scene and developing the characters, this is where the story starts whittling them down. You'd think things would be bad with the entire base running low on aviation fuel, and that's compounded by the mercenary attitude of the pilots and the quartermaster McCoy, who instantly puts the price of fuel up. That causes disaster when one pilot, damaged, running low on fuel, needs to make an emergency landing, but refuses to drop his expensive ordinance before making the attempt. A last minute show of heroics keeps the base fighting for another day, but matters actually get worse.


A sniper sets up a camouflaged tent outside the base and starts picking off targets. A single bullet can cause disaster when aimed at the tyre of a plane in the process of taking off (although I'm not quite sure how his bullets blew up the fire trucks). We learn that the usually gung-ho pilots are literally out of their element on the ground, and it's actually the observer, the photographer Shinjou, who has had actual experience with snipers. Of course the irony of his own vulture-like attitude to death and warfare when seen through a viewfinder is pointed out, yet slowly but surely, Shinjou is becoming part of the base, and he keeps missing opportunities to get the photo he's been paid for. It's a race against time for him to develop a photograph in this episode, and if he is late, Shin will die. All he has to do is take his time.


If the fuel shortage in the first episode was dire, the loss of a key oil refinery could mean the loss of the war. So a desperate plan is conceived. "You are required to manoeuvre straight down this trench and skim the surface to this point," yes, it's the Death Star mission, only this time it's a ravine instead of a trench, fighters instead of X-Wings, and an enemy airbase instead of a thermal exhaust port. The attrition rate is just as high, and this episode is a poignant reminder of how pilots face their deaths, or as in most cases, refuse to and instead opt for nerve-soothing superstition.


The overarching story of Shin Kazama and Satoru Kanzaki is on hold for this volume, but there is some character development, mostly in Makoto Shinjou's case, who is warming to the pilots on the base, and Shin in particular. He also gets a first hand look at what the pilots face when he accompanies them on a mission. The first episode also sees Kitri's attitude to Kim change. It's my particular sticking point with this show, the presence of a teenaged Harrier pilot whose voice is yet to break, and it's one that Kitri shares as well, refusing to take the boy wonder seriously. The first episode sets about changing that when she has to go on a mission with him and Shin, and Shin reminds her that the fact that Kim has survived so long when so many others have fallen counts for something.


This is the best volume of Area 88 thus far, with three action packed episodes, and a distinct dearth of soap opera shenanigans. While it does nudge up my opinion of the series slightly, it all depends on how the final three episodes resolve the Shin Kanzaki storyline.