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Brain Powered - Birth (Vol. 1)
Bandai // Unrated // May 21, 2002
List Price: $44.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Movie
Conceived by Yadate Hajime and Mobile Suit Gundam creator Tomino Yoshiyuki, as well as animated by Sunrise (Cowboy Bebop, Visions of Escaflowne, etc.), Brain Powered is a very confusing series during the 9 episodes in this DVD release. Tomino once said that Brain Powered (BP) would outdo Neon Genesis Evangelion (NGE), but I think he was a bit too hasty in his statement. BP might be better than NGE if it could get over its biggest problem: the total confusion of the viewer. Granted, NGE was not the most logical series, but at least it made some semblance of sense. This series jumps around too much and never really explains very much in these first 9 episodes.
There are a couple pluses in this series though. The animation is good in a Gundam sort of way. I can easily see features in Isami Yuu, the main male character, that parallels many male characters from the various Gundam series. The animation is relatively smooth and I did not notice any sort of errors at all. This series seems to be traditionally animated without the 2D/3D animation that is usually used in anime of this era (1998/1999). The other plus is the addition of Yoko Kanno as the composer. She has once again created a catchy opening song. The first episode seems to be overpowered by music over even the voices, but everything settles down from there. Kanno has done music for such anime series as Cowboy Bebop, Visions of Escaflowne and Macross Plus. This woman can do no wrong with music in my opinion and she is one of the lone pluses so far in this series.
BP is the story of Utsumiya Hime, a girl, and Isami Yuu. Hime falls upon a huge metallic plate one day. The plate "revives" itself and turns into a mech that are termed by everyone as "Brain Powereds". The problem here is they also like to use the term "Antibody" for the BPs. You can also add to that the "Grand Chers" that basically look like BPs but are considered superior to them. The BPs are under the supervision of a ship called the Novis Noah. This ship was commissioned by the United Nations to go up against a group called Orphan that supervises the Grand Chers. Orphan in itself seems to be a confusing point. Some people say it is a ship that can do interstellar travel and wants to control all the plates on Earth. It also seems like Orphan wants to destroy the Earth, but who knows why. From the back of the box, they are calling Orphan a relic. Novis Noah can only travel on water, but they think they can defeat Orphan. It also seems as if Orphan is looking for something called a B-Plate. It looks like every other plate, but it has something special to it. We are not let in on what it contains though of course.
Add to this fact that there is a LOT of intra-family problems going on in this series. Yuu works for Orphan at the beginning along with his dad, mom and sister. When he meets Hime he starts to think that Orphan's ideas are not the greatest. The story then goes forward a year and Yuu is trying to get out of Orphan. He even steals a BP from Orphan (umm…why do they have what they hate?) and goes over to the Novis Noah where he meets Hime. Later on there is another Orphan child named Johnathan that tries to take over the Novis Noah. We find out that his mother is actually the captain of the Novis Noah and that she inseminated herself with a genius' sperm to have Johnathan. She also carries around a card that Johnathan gave her as a child. There is a LOT of issues going around in this show so far. This just adds to the confusion. I can see where they are trying to parallel NGE in this, but they just make things far more confusing here than they were in NGE in my opinion.
The interesting characters in this show so far are Yuu, Hime, Johnathan, Yuu's sister Eco (but she wants to be called Grace, be interesting to see the story behind this one) and Yuu's childhood friend Kanan. I would also like to point out that there are a lot of sexual ideas in this show. The characters go into and control BPs and Grand Chers via their crotch area. The opening animation is also made up of the female characters flying through the area totally naked. This was cut out of the VHS version from my understanding, but it is in the DVD version. Although this series is somewhat violent there really has not been any blood spilled yet.
I really want to continue seeing this show to see if anything starts to make sense after a while. If there is anything I have learned in anime it is to be patient and let things play out. This series does not flow as well as something like Visions of Escaflowne, but I am willing to give it a chance. This release is a great deal since you get 9 episodes on 2 discs. There will be 2 more releases coming up to finish up the series. The episodes here are:
1. Departing from the Ocean Depths
2. Fated Reunion
3. Yuu's Battle
4. The Hometown Flame
5. Friend or Foe
6. Double Revival
7. Rejection
8. At the Port of Call
9. Johnathan's Sword
The DVD
Video: This is a television presentation, so it is displayed in Full-Frame. I saw no visual errors while watching these 9 episodes. Each episode runs 22-25 minutes, so this is a long DVD to watch. This show is from 1998/1999, so no defects were expected. The animation is not cutting edge, but is good nonetheless.
Sound: Since this is a television show, this is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0. The first episode really took me aback because of the powerful music over the muted voices. After that first episode everything settled down and I could hear the voices again. There is no noticeable directionality to the surround speakers in this show. There has not been any huge battle yet between the BPs and Grand Chers, so I may have to wait to hear some good surround effects. This has both Japanese and English audio. I listened to the English side and checked the Japanese side here and there. The English voices are not too bad and they do not seem to be overacting the part.
Menus: Short animated clips in a box with music in the background.
Extras:
Textless Opening and Ending: This is the Opening and Ending credits without the text in them. This is a very standard extra on anime television shows and I am glad to see that Bandai included it here.
Trailers: Mobile Suit Gundam, Saber Marionette J to X and Betterman. Having never seen the latter two, I was really interested in Betterman. I honestly know nothing about it, but it does look interesting.
Final Thoughts: The extras are not very vast, but there are rarely anime television series that have a lot of extras. Brain Powered at this point is a confused mess. It may continue to be a confused mess if I go by what some of my friends that have seen the whole thing say, but then again they do say things are explained. The characters kept me watching this show because are easy to sympathize with and are easy to like. I recommend this because of the value (9 episodes for $45) and because the story was getting better toward the end of this 2-disc set. We shall see how episodes 10-18 fare in the next release.
Conceived by Yadate Hajime and Mobile Suit Gundam creator Tomino Yoshiyuki, as well as animated by Sunrise (Cowboy Bebop, Visions of Escaflowne, etc.), Brain Powered is a very confusing series during the 9 episodes in this DVD release. Tomino once said that Brain Powered (BP) would outdo Neon Genesis Evangelion (NGE), but I think he was a bit too hasty in his statement. BP might be better than NGE if it could get over its biggest problem: the total confusion of the viewer. Granted, NGE was not the most logical series, but at least it made some semblance of sense. This series jumps around too much and never really explains very much in these first 9 episodes.
There are a couple pluses in this series though. The animation is good in a Gundam sort of way. I can easily see features in Isami Yuu, the main male character, that parallels many male characters from the various Gundam series. The animation is relatively smooth and I did not notice any sort of errors at all. This series seems to be traditionally animated without the 2D/3D animation that is usually used in anime of this era (1998/1999). The other plus is the addition of Yoko Kanno as the composer. She has once again created a catchy opening song. The first episode seems to be overpowered by music over even the voices, but everything settles down from there. Kanno has done music for such anime series as Cowboy Bebop, Visions of Escaflowne and Macross Plus. This woman can do no wrong with music in my opinion and she is one of the lone pluses so far in this series.
BP is the story of Utsumiya Hime, a girl, and Isami Yuu. Hime falls upon a huge metallic plate one day. The plate "revives" itself and turns into a mech that are termed by everyone as "Brain Powereds". The problem here is they also like to use the term "Antibody" for the BPs. You can also add to that the "Grand Chers" that basically look like BPs but are considered superior to them. The BPs are under the supervision of a ship called the Novis Noah. This ship was commissioned by the United Nations to go up against a group called Orphan that supervises the Grand Chers. Orphan in itself seems to be a confusing point. Some people say it is a ship that can do interstellar travel and wants to control all the plates on Earth. It also seems like Orphan wants to destroy the Earth, but who knows why. From the back of the box, they are calling Orphan a relic. Novis Noah can only travel on water, but they think they can defeat Orphan. It also seems as if Orphan is looking for something called a B-Plate. It looks like every other plate, but it has something special to it. We are not let in on what it contains though of course.
Add to this fact that there is a LOT of intra-family problems going on in this series. Yuu works for Orphan at the beginning along with his dad, mom and sister. When he meets Hime he starts to think that Orphan's ideas are not the greatest. The story then goes forward a year and Yuu is trying to get out of Orphan. He even steals a BP from Orphan (umm…why do they have what they hate?) and goes over to the Novis Noah where he meets Hime. Later on there is another Orphan child named Johnathan that tries to take over the Novis Noah. We find out that his mother is actually the captain of the Novis Noah and that she inseminated herself with a genius' sperm to have Johnathan. She also carries around a card that Johnathan gave her as a child. There is a LOT of issues going around in this show so far. This just adds to the confusion. I can see where they are trying to parallel NGE in this, but they just make things far more confusing here than they were in NGE in my opinion.
The interesting characters in this show so far are Yuu, Hime, Johnathan, Yuu's sister Eco (but she wants to be called Grace, be interesting to see the story behind this one) and Yuu's childhood friend Kanan. I would also like to point out that there are a lot of sexual ideas in this show. The characters go into and control BPs and Grand Chers via their crotch area. The opening animation is also made up of the female characters flying through the area totally naked. This was cut out of the VHS version from my understanding, but it is in the DVD version. Although this series is somewhat violent there really has not been any blood spilled yet.
I really want to continue seeing this show to see if anything starts to make sense after a while. If there is anything I have learned in anime it is to be patient and let things play out. This series does not flow as well as something like Visions of Escaflowne, but I am willing to give it a chance. This release is a great deal since you get 9 episodes on 2 discs. There will be 2 more releases coming up to finish up the series. The episodes here are:
1. Departing from the Ocean Depths
2. Fated Reunion
3. Yuu's Battle
4. The Hometown Flame
5. Friend or Foe
6. Double Revival
7. Rejection
8. At the Port of Call
9. Johnathan's Sword
The DVD
Video: This is a television presentation, so it is displayed in Full-Frame. I saw no visual errors while watching these 9 episodes. Each episode runs 22-25 minutes, so this is a long DVD to watch. This show is from 1998/1999, so no defects were expected. The animation is not cutting edge, but is good nonetheless.
Sound: Since this is a television show, this is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0. The first episode really took me aback because of the powerful music over the muted voices. After that first episode everything settled down and I could hear the voices again. There is no noticeable directionality to the surround speakers in this show. There has not been any huge battle yet between the BPs and Grand Chers, so I may have to wait to hear some good surround effects. This has both Japanese and English audio. I listened to the English side and checked the Japanese side here and there. The English voices are not too bad and they do not seem to be overacting the part.
Menus: Short animated clips in a box with music in the background.
Extras:
Textless Opening and Ending: This is the Opening and Ending credits without the text in them. This is a very standard extra on anime television shows and I am glad to see that Bandai included it here.
Trailers: Mobile Suit Gundam, Saber Marionette J to X and Betterman. Having never seen the latter two, I was really interested in Betterman. I honestly know nothing about it, but it does look interesting.
Final Thoughts: The extras are not very vast, but there are rarely anime television series that have a lot of extras. Brain Powered at this point is a confused mess. It may continue to be a confused mess if I go by what some of my friends that have seen the whole thing say, but then again they do say things are explained. The characters kept me watching this show because are easy to sympathize with and are easy to like. I recommend this because of the value (9 episodes for $45) and because the story was getting better toward the end of this 2-disc set. We shall see how episodes 10-18 fare in the next release.
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