Magical Girl Pretty Sammy

I've had the first part for a while now, from my more prolific importing days, hence the absence of the catalog number. I'll be updating that as I see it.

A spinoff from the Tenchi-Muyo series, Magical Girl Pretty Sammy is what I might prefer to call a lampoon of the many Magical Girl anime that infest Japanese TV. You may be familiar with the format if you are into such things as Sailor Moon, as a quick example. Pretty Sammy recasts each member of the regular cast in a new location; Sasami as Tenchi's younger sister, Ayeka as the school head girl, Ryoko as a more mischievous member of the same school, though one thing doesn't change - Ayeka and Ryoko fighting over Tenchi! There are also parts for Mihoshi and Kiyone (the dark haired partner from the Mihoshi special) and Tsunami, and also Masaki as Tenchi and Sasami's karaoke mad mother.

The basic plot is this: Tsunami is the first candidate of the magical realm of Juraihelm, and someone doesn't like it. Hence the arrival of two magical girls on Earth; Pixy Misa is the baddie and Pretty Sammy is the goodie. Simple, really! Actually it's a little more involved than that, but not much more as the Tenchi cast run through injokes galore! Definately one to switch the brain off to, and fun if you do! Can't comment on the dub since I haven't heard it, but it made a refreshing change to hear how the original sounded anyway, especially the end theme; "Baka", which the dub calls "Money No More". If you get a chance, get the Japanese version. It's far better!

Since writing this, I have had the chance to see the dub and I can honestly say that I realise now why some people were a little disappointed by it. Some of the dub was a little stlited to say the least and the part of Misao was totally miscast. While the overall dub was OK, having seen the sub, I would prefer to stick with the sub. Oh well...

Pretty Sammy 2

This is the bit I haven't seen yet, well not until this week anyway. I can honestly say that I er... to use the vernacular... ROTFLMAO! Any Micro$oft hater with any credibility will love this episode as Biff Standard tries to Standardise the world with his (rather slow) operating system, buying out Mark 7 to do it, then getting rather miffed when Tenchi encounters him with a copy of the hated "fastest OS" and enlists the help of Pixy Misa to get it and destroy it! Computer fans, whether Apple, Acorn or Amiga will love this obvious put down for Billy Boy, even if the story is a little naff otherwise (but hey! It's comedy!) This is also one for those MickySoft users that have spent too long abusing their PC's after yet another crash or an impending reload of PatioDoors 95 (replaced by SkyLight 98, more recently by Peephole XP)!

In other words, IN YOUR FACE, BILL, er... BIFF!!! hehehe... (justifies the last star on its own!)

Pretty Sammy 3

Just quickly, the third episode of this short series involves Sammy, Misa, a mysterious person and a large piece of rock from space. Again available as a dub in the UK only, it was distinguished as the first tape to be featured in the new "UK Pioneer Anime" livery box, which I thought looked cheap and tacky. The anime itself is nothing much but fits in with the series in general, and is infinately better than the series that was eventually to be drawn from it - the Pretty Sammy OAV series is a parody, but the TV series it spawned was total dross!

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