They Shouldn't Have That Much Fluid In Their Whole Bodies

Recently, my sister and I watched the complete DVD release of Teknoman, a series which I'd only ever seen an even-more truncated version of. (Teknoman is an adaptation of Tekkaman Blade, which was, or so I've read, 49 episodes. The Teknoman dub that aired in the United States was only 26 episodes. The longer international dub, which is the basis for the DVD release, is 43. Incidentally, if you check the labels, I've actually talked about this series a fair bit.)

Curious to see if there was anything else to see, I naturally scoured YouTube, which usually at least has some kind of information on the subject. I already knew about Tekkaman Blade II, which by most accounts is off-putting to American audiences, but I kept hearing about other material.

Eventually, I found that there were three "specials" or OVAs related to the series.

One, "Missing Link," was actually a trailer for a longer OVA that never got made, and wasn't much worth watching. Another, "Burning Clock," was a completely ridiculous emo character scene/reinterpretation, which was distressing to watch because a character watches his mother burn to death in front of him, and then her charred body somehow continues standing and starts falling apart afterwards.

The last one (as listed arbitrarily by me), "Twin Blood," was better, admittedly mostly because the bar was low, but also because in its own way it was actually pretty awesome.

(WARNING: Pretty mindlessly violent and gruesome.)



Intense violence? Sure. I can't really say I much care for that aspect of it, although the fountain of blood when Blade gets impaled is kind of hilarious.

Completely inconsistent with the series? Yeah. It reminds me of the Escaflowne movie, which my sister describes as "totally spoiler-free, if you're interested in watching the series later."

Cool anyway? Of course. I do have to admit that the character animation from the original series wasn't always terribly dynamic, and the designs here actually sort of make more sense than what was in the series. (The characters were transformed into superhumans by aliens; the aliens were always depicted as entirely organic, which makes the Tekkamen's obviously technological forms a bit odd if you bother thinking about it.)

So, yeah, worth watching for the cool fight and especially the animation.

The only other part of the "Tekkaman Blade Specials" that is remotely worthwhile, in my opinion, is a line from "Missing Link" which is made completely ridiculous by context: A character is having sex (or trying to, anyway) with Blade, and screams "You call yourself the hero of the Solar System?!" apparently because she's disappointed (in context, it looked like he was disinterested because of depression). And that's not because it's good, it's because it's so bad it's hilarious. (That's also why I didn't bother linking anything for that video.)

-Signing off.