Hurricane Polymar: Holy Blood

At the cry of “Polymar, Transform!”, a boy who looks like a total klutz wearing a red helmet becomes the legendary Hurricane Polymar (very much like Tribal when he puts on his fantastic little glasses, even more maraglio than mine. And he has the nerve to criticise me?!? – Goku’s note). You’ll say: “Eh… something this old!! Who gives a damn??”. Well, no, you ignorant lot, if you don’t know it, the NEW OAVs are out (hurrah from the whole editorial team, with actual cries of amazement). Tatsunoko (which keeps churning out remake after remake, see “Kyashan: Il mito” – Ryo’s note), in these episodes sums up the whole old series with a few changes: the most obvious one is that Teru is no longer the assistant of the legendary private detective Joe Kuruma (and she isn’t even remotely like that Marilyn Monroe-ish bombshell she was before, sigh! – Ryo’s note), but his landlady. Takeshi, instead, is still the detective’s assistant; in reality he is a martial arts champion and the son of the Tokyo police chief (what a coincidence). One fine day, this fine specimen receives his red helmet (honestly, they could have drawn it a bit better) by parcel post from an old school friend, and with that gadget he spends the whole blessed day beating up the Plutonians, who are not aliens but a new human species created in a lab, with the not inconsiderable advantage of gills, which let them breathe underwater.

The shark men (or Plutonians, whichever you prefer) intend to bring down Neo Tokyo (what other city would it be! – Ryo’s note) with a series of bombings, so they can build their amphibious empire. Of course the one who throws a spanner in the fish-things’ works is Takeshi/Polymar, who beats everybody up as usual and sets off the bombs where people can’t get hurt. The plot doesn’t stop there, though: Takeshi isn’t the only one to possess Polymar’s powers, one of the biggest villains has them too, making life harder than expected for our friend in the red tights. If we add that Polymar isn’t quite as invincible as in the original series and that one of Takeshi’s brothers (invented for the occasion) is actually the big boss of the villains, I’d say we are facing a series that is not very original, but convincing enough. The artwork of these OAVs is to say the least exceptional, with strong, bright colours moving through gloomy settings that recall quite a bit the atmosphere of the first Batman. The fight scenes are lightning fast and ultra-sharp:

in short, graphically Tatsunoko has outdone itself once again. The real sore point of the whole production is the character design, which calling ugly is a compliment: Takeshi has become so loud and tacky that Goku looks like a refined gentleman next to him, Teru has become a pain-in-the-neck little girl and the legendary Joe Kuruma has become so ugly that the old “Inspector Zenigata” look was ten times better, and then some. In short, it just doesn’t work. We strongly recommend these tapes to those who liked “Kyashan: Il mito” and to old Hurricane Polymar fans, because even though the futuristic sci-fi story is in the end always the same, the artwork and the music make them worth watching. For the otaku: there is a quotation from Judo Boy (also an old Tatsunoko series) in the OAVs. Can you find it?