Area 88 I’JP: Treacherous Skies

Reviewed By: Carla Land

ADV Films DVD

Review based on volume 1 (episodes 1-3)

Rating TV PG

What it’s (basically) all about: Area 88 is a desolate desert at the end of the world where a civil war is being fought in the skies by mercenaries pilots being paid for each kill. Every pilot has his own story, but Shin Kazama’s is almost unbelievable. His only goal in life is to make $1.5 million in kills so he can get out of his three year contract and return to his fiancée in Japan. Despite the heat, the anti-aircraft missiles, and the danger, he has a good shot at pulling it off- as long as he doesn’t die first.

Nitty Gritty: For a show about war, there is surprisingly little violence outside of the obligatory dogfight-per-episode minimum. Explosions abound, but there is little death onscreen and once on the ground everyone is in relative safety. There is also a surprisingly little amount of foul language used- as in almost none. At one point in the subtitles a group of men are teasing a younger pilot telling him to go home and drink his mother’s breast milk, and that’s pretty much the only vulgar thing on the whole disk.

If you have fighter pilot fans in your library, this one will be a big hit. The attention to detail is high, and since every mercenary had to supply his own equipment when signing up there is a myriad of different planes to looks at. The show is mostly episodic at this point, so there’s not a lot of plot that goes from one episode to the next as you get to know the characters.

The disk opens with promos for Anime Network (which advertises “bad ass babes”) and Newtype-USA. Other special features include an hour long interview with the Japanese director and screen writer (all subtitled and including spoilers for those who haven’t seen all twelve episodes of the series); production sketches; clean opening/ closing animations; aircraft specs; character bios (which give us more background on Shin than we get in the show); DVD credits; and previews for Peacemaker, Gilgamesh, Elfen Lied, Full Metal Panic? FUMOFFU; Gantz, and Yugo the Negotiator. There is more violence in the previews than in Area 88, but they are still appropriate for teen audiences.

Update: One last thing to note is that this is a remake of an Area 88 series from the early 1990's. I've been told the earlier version is superior, but also unavailable

Survey says: It’s appropriate to house this in teen collections.

Personal Ad: My husband is a plane buff, so he got a kick out of this. I wasn’t that into it at first, but it slowly drags you in. Later episodes will get into why Shin is actually there, and the interview with the director and screenplay writer mentions “The Count of Monte Cristo,” so there is bound to be some plot twists along the way.