Reviewed on May 31st, 2006

Visually

Outlaw Star visual wise in my opinion is alright but they could've done better. Even though maybe it was just the crappy DVD I got which made parts of show distorted and fuzzy? Well even though I was bothered with bits of distorted parts I found it great.

Audio

I didnt really find the music though very much ear-catching though other people may like it. Check the show out for yourself to see if I'm wrong. As for the voices I was quite content with them. Some voicings just seemed to fit but overall it was bearable.

Storyline

Gene Starwind seems to live a nice and comfortable life. As the brawn of Starwind & Hawking, a small troubleshooting shop, he plays cards, fights, picks up women at night, then sleeps in and waits for his kid partner, Jim Hawking, to do the work in the morning. Jim is clearly the shop's brains of the outfit, but Gene is the one with celebrity status. He's also the less satisfied of the pair--secretly he watches ships arrive and take off from the local spaceport and longs to be on one of them. Gene gets his chance when a classic femme fatale calls Starwind & Hawking to request some expensive, esoteric nanotech equipment and a bodyguard. Gene decides he likes her body, volunteers to guard it himself, and promptly finds himself fighting off a cadre of vicious attack robots and weird magic-slingers who shrug off bullets. Once the woman drops her pretenses, Gene and Jim discover she's a lone thief in deep trouble.

They also learn--a little too late to back out--that she has her own spaceship, and a pressing need for a crew to help with it. Unfortunately, would-be spacer supreme Gene had a horrible experience in space during his childhood, and he gets violently nauseous the instant he's in her ship. But intermittent fainting and Jim's constant raw mockery are the least of Gene's problems. The universe is divided into three factions: the Space Forces, the Pirate Guild who prey on them, and the freedom-obsessed Outlaws, who disdain alliances with either side. Gene's new captain, Hilda, is an Outlaw who's managed to earn the rabid wrath of the other two groups by stealing a powerful ship that comprises both their technologies. Which means she's being attacked by phenomenally powerful forces roughly every five minutes or so. Now if Gene could just stop throwing up long enough to help her fight back.

DVD

The DVD comes with a few extras but I really think its not worth getting. If you plan on buying the DVD go ahead I wasnt to fanned over it when I got it. So I just ended up watching the show on Adult Swim at night.

Overall

Outlaw Star is a good beginning anime for someone who is not familiar with the genre and who is still able to see everything with unjaded eyes. But for anyone who's seen Ellcia, or even Cowboy Bebop or Queen Emeraldas, this is likely seem like a remake of better shows.

by Aidan