Fight! Iczer-1: Tentacles threaten Earth, Lesbians our only hope!

Drunk on confidence since I've made it through three consecutive favorites, I feel it's a nice break for us all to follow up an Utena review with another lesbian treat.

It's a science fiction FACT, Maser Cannons are no replacement for lesbians. Their powers defy physics and logic as they overcome plot holes and common sense.

Such is a case with an old anime favorite of mine, Fight! Iczer-1!







(A video summation of Iczer-1 in all three episodes)

From what you see here, this is like Toho tried replacing live-action rubber monster with Anime Lesbians.

I support this decision entirely.

Iczer-1 is some combat android thingy girl that with the addition of gelatin can become God. Does it compute? Shit, I hope not! She shows up on Earth to stalk a girl named Nagisa and protect her from horrible tentacle creatures that eat her family and look to conquer the Earth, I assume, for the cheap real estate.

Iczer-1 saves Nagisa and convinces her to become a battery for her giant robot, this gives her a significant advantage over the Cthuwulf Champion, Cobalt as Iczer-Robo makes short work of her putting her girlfriend Sepia back on the market. Rowr!

As the invasion goes forward, the bad guys make a xerox copy of Iczer-1 named Iczer-2, whose giant robot, Iczer-Sigma, uses the previous baddie Champion's girlfriend as as a battery creating a powerful opposition to Iczer-1's progress.

Eventually, after some wild monster slaying, robot killing and random warping, Iczer-1 makes her way into the enemy stronghold to face "Big Gold", evil genie and the head of the Cthuwulf (I'm not making this up) invasion force.


(A trailer for Iczer-1 displaying all the important aspects of the OAV you see Robots, Lesbians, horrible monsters and more delights than one package can hold!)

The story is monumentally stupid and it can be summed up on a napkin. There. I said it.

Still, the girls are cute and the story is an unusually addicting and enduring piece of anime tripe that has been kept in demand and circulation for some time. I had the video tapes originally from early dubbers US Renditions, the DVD currently on the market is distributed by Animeworks and the kept the dub from the original because... why not, I guess?

Speaking of the dub, there's a funny story about that which I'll go into more at a later date. But it's actually pretty good considering the quality of the anime it's attached to. It's no poetic epic, but it's classic mindless anime actions driven by senseless use of nudity, girls kissing and awesome scenes of action, robots and monsters.

I adore this doofy action flick and I think you might as well, it's a softer taste of anime for new initiates and a delicious flavor of awesome for older nerds who haven't seen it.



(Opening for Iczer-3 AKA Iczer Reborn)

Iczer-3

So at the end of the original, Iczer-1 killed Big Gold and absorbed her vile powers in order to reset the story and the entire fate of the Cthuwulf fleet, in addition she vowed to safeguard and lead the Cthuwulf girls.

In this series we return to the freshly reset Earth after a bungled encounter with one of Big Gold's "spawn" that manages to injure Iczer-1 enough that she is forced to recuperate and deploy her bite-sized doppelganger, Iczer 3, in her stead.

Why, you ask? To basically rinse, wash and repeat the formula of the original.

They flesh things out a bit more, not that this really amounts to much since it just means they need one additional napkin to plot out the script, but it has less of the sterile charm the original had.

Finding Iczer Reborn is damn near impossible to find anymore because as I recall the title was another of many held by CPM before they tanked and they barely printed the DVD anyway. Lame.

I'm a little conflicted about this because it's actually pretty good! Almost as good as the original, but with much better budget and visual quality overall. Less sexy, but I'm sure that was intentional being that its protagonist is a pint sized iczer-kid.


(AD Vision's trailor for Iczellion, don't think it carried over when they became ADV Films. Probably for the best.)

Iczellion

Naturally, when people can't leave shit well enough alone they throw it in the toilet at a bus station, hold it under until it stops breathing, pull it out to resuscitate it and then show its sputtering remains off to a nearby crowd claiming that they have renewed interest in a series they literally just worked very hard to kill.

And HEY, what timing! Here's the last nail in the Iczer-Franchise coffin, Iczellion!

So Nagisa's grandaughter is a... wrestler? Yeah, okay, I'll bite. She sort of looks like Nagisa with green hair and... oh whatever. Little robots pop into pieces becoming armor and somehow this bizarre shit factors into the Iczer universe because they say so.

You could write Iczellion's story on the back of a gum wrapper...


A very SMALL gum wrapper.


Part Guyver, Part Tekkaman Blade, Part Bubblegum Crisis, Iczellion takes from better series with both hands and can't end fast enough to cover up its questionable ties to Iczer-1. Yet ANOTHER fucking Invasion is launched on Earth. This time it's by incestuous aliens who bought into the Big Gold Franchise after they killed off the previous wielders of the Iczellion armorbots causing the Iczellion units flit about Earth finding new and eccentric wearers to strip and adorn.

Then stuff happens.

Then it ends. Thank god. Unfortunately, they leave the entire farce open for a sequel that never came and still lies in the bin of obscurity collecting dust and disinterest.


To date, the franchise has sat in stagnation, the only big change being that Animeworks acquired the original anime OAV series, Iczer-1, a few years back. We can hope for more, but I wouldn't expect it and if Iczellion is any indication of future projects then PLEASE let it be.

Please.