Yuri Anime: Project ICE OAV

November 18th, 2007

Let’s get this out of the way, shall we? ICE sucked. It was so “wtf” that it quite defied description. And the sad part was that I could see where they were going with it (except for a few key things like, say, the plot) but it was so shoddy from beginning to end that it was hysterical. I laughed until my stomach hurt.

Let’s see if I can even begin to explain what happened.

Nope.

In 1982 a woman with big hair and animated in a 1982 style gets hit by a truck.

In the future when all the men are dead, the women have apparently all become crazed lunatics (gosh, we really suck without men, huh?) and inexplicably dress like refugees from Rose of Versailles.

The ICE of the title is a commodity, a virus, a weapon and a giant translucent shell wrapped around a maid. Oh yeah, and a hope for the future!

Stuff happens and monsters appear and people run around and shoot each other and the monsters, and there’s a ball in the middle of everything, then the monster’s mother shows up and everyone dies.

There’s some Montague and Capulet politics in there, but seriously, no one cares.

Our protagonists are Hiromi, a eyepatch-wearing seasoned warrior with Big Ass GunTM, and Yuki an annoying girl from (of course) the opposing house, who has quite possibly the worst voice actress ever.

The writers of the OAV seemed to be laboring under the assumption that they are Gainax, so the entire, mostly inexplicable, end was lifted from Evangelion – and that was after the big space fight that was lifted from Star Wars.

There was pretty much nothing good about ICE. The premise was okay, but as I’ve said a few times recently, pretty much every premise has *some* potential. It’s how anything is executed that makes it good or bad.

In terms of execution, ICE bit. The animation was heavy-handed and pretentious, the characters were a joke, the plot was barely developed and complicated with meaningless scenes that were never given any real relevance, the voice acting was seriously bad and well…the best thing was that the giant piece of CGI at the end that attacked was helpfully labeled on the defenders’ screen “Mother Monster.”

Yuri. It’s a society of all women. So of course the most prominent lesbian is the evil psychotic one. Duh. Julia was amoral, hedonistic and animated by the “B” team.

Our protagonists developed a strong bond (although where, I’m kind of a loss to say – they were together for a few hours, tops.) And out of the blue, right before she died Murasaki confessed her feelings to Hitomi.

Ratings:

Art – 5, except for Julia, who was a 2
Characters – 4
Story – 4
Yuri – 5
Service – 2, but god help you if you found something titillating in this

Overall – 4

I keep getting people asking me what they missed and the only answer I can come up with was, “that it was a crappy anime, done by talentless people on a low budget.” You got a better answer, I’d love to hear it.

20 Responses

  1. Fuyumi says:

    Oo, thanks – to think I nearly wasted time on this thing.

  2. Anonymous says:

    It’s unfortunate that ICE turned out to be like this. Talk about being rushed…

    I also believe that it was hinted the Murasaki had a thing for Hitomi? It wasn’t so outta the blue for her to confess…but still, with such under developed characters mostly every character choice felt out of the blue.

    ICE was a disappointment.

  3. Anonymous says:

    The animation and the voice acting (especially the voice acting) certainly sucked big time, and the writers probably had no clue what they were doing when they wrote the last episode, but I still found myself enjoying ICE quite a lot (definitely a lot more than, say, Nanoha StrikerS). I guess I kind of handwaved all the flaws as being essential for creating this “incredibly obscure OVA from the shadows of the eighties” atmosphere – kind of like something that would be featured in Anime News Network’s Buried Treasure column, getting “R6 – Import long out of print. No fansubs are known to exist.” on the Obscure-O-Meter.

  4. Procrastinating Puyo says:

    The first 2 episodes were pretty interesting, although after watching all 3, I’m just as confused as you are. The most memorable thing in this OVA was the part where one of the woman’s heads exploded. I don’t dig gore, and it really paints me to see a good character die. But it just happened so suddenly and totally caught me off guard, which I found funny.

  5. Anonymous says:

    this serie sucks for real man. i’ve watch it and i’ve regret

  6. Anonymous says:

    Mind explaining what you mean by “Loser Fanboy,” hmm?

  7. Anonymous says:

    Erica. You don’t know what ICE really was meant for, do you? It’s not just some blob of ICE, It was the stuff that will enable the women to conceive once more. No wonder you didn’t like the OVA. Watch it again

  8. Anonymous says:

    Spoiler in this comment….
    I liked the first two episodes as well, and was hoping the third would wrap things up. But they never explained why Hitomi didn’t sleep and why she had this woman in her head, watching everything. And was that woman supposed to be Yuki’s mother?

    Oh well. I thought it could have been better, but it sure had a pretty theme song.

  9. Alex says:

    I found it to be not so great, the endling lest me completely lost. I especially didn’t understand what was the huge yellow pin thing with the green gem in the middle for??????????

  10. Anonymous says:

    At the end I fell out of my seat laughing at the ridiculous, completely thoughtless ending. Definitely Gainax-esque.

    The very-basic plot could have gone somewhere if it weren’t for the retards writing this thing, oiy!

    Got an hour and half of your life to waste? Watch this OAV.

  11. vee says:

    Huh. I actually liked this. I’ve watched it three times now and I’d happily watch it again.

    Granted, I could have lived without half the main characters dying at the end.

    The LFB rating should probably be upped, if only because of the somewhat annoying repeated pans over the scantily clad maids that Julia had just finished having her way with.

    What’s the deal with the hair?! Is there something wrong with showing a character’s entire face?! As someone who hates having hair on her face/in her eyes, this particular issue drives me up the wall.

    And I couldn’t quite work out whose mother Aida Hitomi was (Yuki or Kisaragi’s). I think I’m coming down on the Kisaragi side, if only because Yuki’s voice-over kept featuring a completely different pregnant woman and there were definite suggestions that no man was involved in Hitomi’s pregnancy … but then again, if that’s the case, why was Yuki appearing to Hitomi in the past? Yes, quite puzzling.

    Nevertheless, I enjoyed it.

    Murasaki’s confession was really *not* out of the blue. Her feelings for Hitomi were signaled pretty heavily right from the start and I was entirely unsurprised when she confessed.

    I thought the progression of the Yuki/Hitomi “relationship” was nice. Yuki shared a moment of beauty and wonder with Hitomi, who I’m pretty sure was all tapped out in that department. It was enough for them to form a bond, though I’d hesitate to label it a romantic one. Maybe if they’d gotten a few more weeks to get to know each other, but as it was it was just the burgeoning of something unspecified but sweet.

    I liked the uniforms. Granted, it’s highly unlikely any future military organisation would use them, but to me, they looked pretty cool :).

    The plot was pretty straight-forward, I thought. Both Julia and Kisaragi wanted to decided humanity’s fate, one for a future, the other for extinction. Julia, blinded by her zeal, has committed atrocities in the name of the future, and seeks salvation in what may actually be humanity’s destruction. Kisaragi, a tortured product of genetic engineering herself, wants to see in the last days of humanity’s reign on earth, and will happily remake the earth to do so if necessary. She has found nothing redeeming in humanity, for women have proven themselves just as willing to wallow in greed and destruction as men are. Julia forces a confrontation, and Kisaragi fires up the terraforming facility, using her own blood, which is not completely human, and will therefore remake the Earth in an image not compatible with humanity. In the end, Yuki, who was originally willing to accept the extinction of human-kind if that was their fate, decides to take a chance on creating the future that Hitomi died for.

    The ICE of the title is a nano-mechanical substance for creating life. It creates babies using the genetic material of the women encased in it, and it defends itself at all costs.

    And while I agree that most of the voice-actresses lacked … well … any range at all, I thought the non-AKB48 voices were quite decent. In fact, I really liked the voice for Hitomi (the Guard Captain). I can’t believe she’s the same woman who voiced Arisugawa Kintaro from Marimite OVA 2!

    So, all said, this one’s on my happy-to-watch-repeated-times list :).

    P.S. My apologies if I’ve already posted this. I tried using Opera and it didn’t look like it worked, so I’ve tried again using IE.

  12. Anonymous says:

    THanks so much I alsmost wastes time watching this, now for me to get back to project arms,(yeah i though they might be related but in the only way they are is they are both shows thats it) thx again

  13. Anonymous says:

    So to tell you the truth… I wish I had read this review before wasting my time on this anime. Seriously… I kept watching thinking it had to get better… to my surprise it actually got worse as it went one. Really, I did not think it was possible…

  14. Anonymous says:

    hummm….i can see that people don’t really like this anime. well me either, I just didn’t understand it at all. but I really like the drum music at the end of the 3rd part.
    Any one knows the name of that drum part? or where i can download it?

  15. michael909 says:

    I loved it… Especially when they encounter the first ICE and unknowingly the robots start to take off heads and arms with their lasers…. HOT….
    Michael

  16. Rinu says:

    We discussed this anime – which is unique in very bad way – a little, so I wanted to read your full opinion since I tend to not read reviews before actual watching that.

    And ahahaha, there is one – and probably only – thing I really love about these types of cine stuff. I can read someone’s opinion and if it hits right weakpoints (and I know you can do that), it is a guarantee I will experience a pretty darn good laugh.

    Thanks for bringing to me this little source of joy.

    PS. Actually, I would welcome to read a story with similar background and with author’s real attempt to describe it from a believable and realistic point of view. It’s interesting because of many reasons and it’s shame you get basically only a crap like this or a version with really low number of women, which logically leads to thematically different thing.

  17. I love how in the end, they suddenly did one of those Charlie Chaplin-esque, silent movie homages. It was so…

    *sighs*

  18. Anonymous says:

    ok from your description you realy didnt get what was going on at all ice is a process to let women give birth the “giant translucent shell” is too protect the women as she gives birth and the monsters and “monster’s mother” were part of a teraforming machine if your going to write about an anime at least watch. It is actualy a very interesting ova if you have patience oh and once youve watched all 3 watch the first 5 mins of ep 1 again it should explain everything if you dont get it

  19. Anonymous says:

    i can honestly say this anime kept me entertained…wast great wasnt bad…the story line was different
    and unique.i think if they didnt squish all this into into 3 episodes then it might of been way better…
    like at least 12 ep and this could of been better that way we might of been able to understand cause its more time to explain it all…

  20. Anonymous says:

    A mi si me gusto este anime :D
    & no me interesa lo que digan de el :)
    Es un anime que me pareció muy raro pero me gustó.

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