I’m the Eclectic Dude and I review it for the lolz (especially this
week).
Sorry, this review is up a day late-it’s a holiday weekend and I got
sidetracked a little from the relaxation. Anyway, I’ll make an effort to post
on time from now on that’s for sure.
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| DVD Cover Note the 17+ recommended. It's not a joke I'll tell you |
Guilty Pleasures Month closes on “I Dream of Mimi” or Buttobi CPU as it
is known in Japan. This 1997 OVA is strikingly similar to another OVA from that
same year that I’ve looked at earlier this year. That would be My Dear Marie,
an OVA deals with the relationship between a young man and his robot female
companion/girlfriend. I reviewed that in February, so check that out for
details, but for summary, it is a rather good if criminally under-rated OVA
from the 90s, touching on a lot of issues like love, nature of humanity and
reality, etc.
What is “I Dream of Mimi” about? Well, none of that interesting stuff.
Instead, it’s a soft-core erotica masquerading itself as a sci-fi romantic comedy.
Yes, seriously. Not surprising, since the company who made this OVA is Pink
Pineapple, notorious for producing hentai (the animated equivalent of porn),
though they apparently got some help from Oriental Light and Magic, who are
most well-known for Pokemon. Take that what you will.
The premise of “I Dream of Mimi” is as follows: Akira, the male geek
and audience stand-in, comes home one day with a box supposedly carrying a new
computer. Except it’s not; it’s a young naked woman! He’s very confused, as is
the audience (yours truly) and then she turns on. It is revealed that she is a
biomechanical computer, state of the art (from 1997!). She then requires
‘memory’ in the form of ‘active molecules’ from her owner. They do make a cute
couple, to be fair.
If this sounds a bit familiar, well minus the sexual part,
congratulations: You have seen/heard of Chobits, another anime that has a
couple consisting of a young average male schmoe and a robot girlfriend. I am
convinced that the girls at CLAMP (who are really great mangaka) at some point
must have watched this OVA. Granted, I haven’t seen much of Chobits so can’t
really say how much it’s different than “I Dream of Mimi”. Then again, one guy
on the web says that this is the “R-rated Chobits”, so what do I know?
Sounds like fun, eh? Yeah the stuff in ‘ ‘ stands in for stuff that I
shall not mention-draw your conclusions there, just take my word on it. The 3
episodes of this OVA follow Akira and Mimi (the android/bio-computer) as they
deal with everyday life juggled with well having Mimi around. The first episode
has them dealing with an out-of-control bio-computer in addition to introducing
the characters of this little romp. Besides the main couple, there’s Shimada,
Junpei and Futoshi. Of course, they have very little to no impact on the
storyline, hence why just one statement on them.
This being an erotic piece, one would expect/assume a lot of sexual
scenes in the style of a typical romance novel one find at the local grocery
store (I don’t read those by the way). Not true here, for you see, the editing
has a weird habit of either taking out the critical parts or substituting it
for symbolism/convenient censorship. The result is that any sexual scenes
aren’t really titillating but are rather unintentionally hilarious. There are also not a whole
lot of them, so calling hentai doesn’t do it justice.
The science fiction is nominally better. It is severely dated, as
evidenced from the loads of information on computers dispensed within the other
2 episodes. That’s because the other two episodes take place largely in
‘cyberspace’ or the inside of a computer network. I actually like this as the
erotica blends well with the comedy. You see, Akira and Mimi end up going there
since Mimi isn’t really a person (duh!). So, they are going to hack into a
government site and insert false info about Mimi to elude suspicion. But, they
ran into Forte, a high-grade bio-computer who doesn’t take kindly to our couple
sneaking into her database.
But before punishment happens, another nemesis appears, the Nakinotsh
sisters (pfft hahahaha xD). Seriously, I get the feeling the writer of this was
a huge Microsoft fan, not that I’m complaining though (been a Microsoft user
since childhood). They plan on doing something nefarious to the Japanese market
of bio-computers, similar to taking over the world. Oh, and they are
stereotypically Amero-centric (God Bless America!). Two of them (Quadra and
Centris) show up in episode 2, with a third one (Performa) shows up in the
third and last episode. All of them are dealt with by end of the last episode,
but promise that they will be back. Haha, fat chance xD.
So, some other things of note for “I Dream of Mimi”: The English dub is
absolutely hilarious. And quite a surprise too, as it features V.A.s like Angora
Deb, Megan Hollingshead and Jessica Calvello (under a pseudonym-odd). For the DVD, they include a outtakes track,
which is very funny. The animation and music are stock-standard 90s with some
neat early CGI, and very high quality more so then really necessary. Finally
the opening is the best earworm of music you’ll ever listen to.
Now, I have a problem with recommending “I Dream of Mimi”. You see, it
is very hard to find nowadays. I managed
to find it at a local video store (now a dying out species) for about five
bucks last fall. Later, I checked to see if it’s available on DVD online. On
Amazon.com, last time I checked, the VHS for it was available for about nine
bucks (currently unavailable). Thankfully, someone posted them up on Youtube
for anyone truly curious to watch this. It is very funny and entertaining, yet
doesn’t take itself too serious. It is also fairly short, running a bit under
90 minutes with only 3 episodes. The manga that this is based off of hasn’t had
an overseas release, and I doubt it ever will. Good luck finding it!
Well, that’s all. I am still sticking to the Sunday release schedule,
as much as I can. Expect a schedule for next month on May 31.
Laterz,
The Eclectic Dude
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