Let me tell you what I think a perfect world would be like. To me, a perfect world would have three things: world peace, instant ramen is discovered to be the cure for cancer, and Masami Obari has been aborted before his unholy creations could have a chance to taint our world with their filth. Unfortunately, our world is full of imperfections, and none of my wonderful ideals can happen. So, the least I can do is at least warn you, the wonderful and uninformed reader, of the horrors that lie within the demonic concoction known as Voogie's Angel.

Like the rest of the crap Mr. Obari conjures up while sitting on the toilet, Voogie's Angel shares a distinct art and animation style that isn't featured anywhere else. Nevertheless, describing such a totally unique style is actually pretty easy. For Obari's female characters, simply take a skeleton and add two canteloupes (or honeydew melons, if you prefer that flavor) and you have the complete design. For his male characters, all you need to do is fit a layer of skin over an hourglass--instant Obari! Also, like just about every single one of his other flops, the main character in Voogie's Angel, Voogie, wears a red suit.

The story of Voogie's Angel is broken into two separate arcs: the first episode and the final two episodes; for example, the first episode is almost entirely comedy, or at least what passes for comedy in Obari's twisted mind. Take this situation, for example: Rebecca is a weapons fanatic and is always surrounded by guns and the like. Unfortunately, she has a problem with live grenades, and there always seems to be one of those feisty little guys without a pin just rolling by her at any given time. When one of those things go off--and let me tell you, live grenades really seem to have an attraction to Rebecca--hilarity most definitely ensues. Regrettably, these little stupid gags are the only thing that make the first episode even mildly interesting, because if you take them away, all that's left are five ridiculously ditzy girls running around in skimpy clothes with their breasts bouncing all over the place. By the time the episode ends, only one thing has actually been accomplished: the character introductions.

And what amazing characters they are! Why, there's one for just about every single archetype. Midi is the cute little robot girl that everyone loves and gets along with; Merrybell is whiny, yer still overwhelmingly energetic; Shiori is the quiet type that would rather sit around and knit instead of use her psychic cyborg powers to save humanity; Rebecca is an ex-model with ridiculously large breasts and an attitude; and Voogie is the angsty girl that always has sophisticated existential musings.

Speaking of which, that's just about all the final two episodes are about. Angst-ridden existential musings. "We're not just tools! We're human beings!" and "We may be cyborgs, but we'll never give up our human pride!" are just two examples of lines that pop up approximately every five seconds. Interspersed between the existential scenes (which are done in black and white for dramatic effect) are poorly-written "dramatic" action sequences that would make even the lamest B-movie actors cringe in terror. But hey, at least Masami Obari has the whole half-naked, gun-toting, large-breasted dynamic down.

It became fairly obvious about half-way through the second episode that I was meant to cry, as the dialogue was obviously written to be depressing, and, strangely enough, it worked. My tears flowed like a fine wine on a hot summer's day, but I didn't cry because I was sad--no, I was crying because I was laughing so hard. The scenes were *so* badly written that it was impossible not to. For example, there is one scene in which the SE (which looks exactly like humans) breaks out its weapon, simply referred to as the "hypercannon," which is able to transcend both space AND time in order to blast humanity's military into little itty bitty pieces. The humans lead an attack on the hypercannon with their air forces and all planes other than the commander's are wiped off the face of the planet by just one shot from the hypercannon. The commander then has a flashback detailing how much he really cared for two particular men that were just vaporized, breaks out in tears, clutches their... uh... dog tags..., and then does a kamikaze attack on the hypercannon a la Independence Day.

Voogie's Angel, however, wasn't all bad. Well, actually it was, but this review was just getting way too negative for my tastes, so I'll at least try to conjure up a good point: the animation. I have to give a hand to Obari--he actually knows how to animate awkwardly drawn characters. The first episode in particular shined in this aspect, and I'd even go so far as to say that at least 90% of the show's budget went toward animating the ditzy girls in the first episode if I wasn't just pulling that number out of my ass.

In the end, however, nothing is actually accomplished. Potentially riveting story elements are dropped even more quickly than they are introduced. All that happens is two completely inconsequential bad guys die at the hands of the ruler of the SE and the angels manage to get over their existential crisis. The reign of the SE isn't quelled whatsoever, and their reason for claiming the Earth as their own isn't even expanded upon. In one hilariously melodramatic scene, one of the minions claims that the SE came to Earth to save it from the resource-wasting, warmongering humans. The angels look in stunned disbelief and wonder what they're fighting for, when their leader simply says to them, "Don't listen to him! He's lying!" And that's the end of that. If only I could forget about the story in Voogie's Angel as easily as its writers.