Yuri is totally bummed. She just started 6th grade and has been elected to capture and eliminate the aliens that are constantly invading the school...GROSS!

About a year and half ago, when I first saw Alien 9, or Alien Nine, what ever the hell you want to call it… I’ll just stick with CPM official naming of it. (Since that’s what I’m taking a look at). I thought it was going to be 2 hours of humans kicking the crap out of aliens… how wrong I was. It seems that after watching this, Alien Nine is much more than sci-fi OVA, more than your typical Shoujo series. And certainly more emotional that I thought it would be.

Based on the manga by the same name, by Hitoshi Tomizawa. (who I swear does not get much credit these days.) Sometime in the not so distant future, Aliens started invading Earth for a certain reason. But it’s become such a common thing, that schools have had the students take on the aliens rather than calling in the Marines. Yuri Otani has been chosen (More like drafted) in the schools anti-alien force along with Kumi Kawamura and Kasumi Tomine. However what’s quickly discovered is that Yuri doesn’t exactly fit in with the group. She’s too normal. She hates aliens and everything in association to them. To top that off she doesn’t exactly enjoy the idea of having a Borg (No not a Borg from Star Trek) on her head. The Borg’s basically from a symbiotic relationship with the girls. The Borg protects the girls from attacks from the aliens when they go after them, and in return, the Borgs feed of the girls by liking their backs. (Eating skin cells I guess) It’s quite similar to the relationship between Ants and Aphids. As the days good on, we learn that Yuri is totally spooked out by having to go after aliens, while the the other girls have no problem with it. I’ll stop there, as to not to spoil you… Expect for one last thing. When you get to the end credits of the final episode… Don’t hit the stop button… You’ll be missing something… important.

One thing that many people tend to miss, or even over look, is some of the hidden themes found through out this. There’s a lot of symbolism used, throughout it, especially with the Borgs and what they repent. As I mentioned in my preview I did awhile back, I won’t get into too much detail since there is just SO much to talk about. But I’m quite sure you’ll find this link here, very informative in regards to what I’m talking about.

As with most OVAs, the animation quality is truly amazing, more so with the detailing with the CG. And the drill attacks that the Borg unleashes, kinda blows your mind after watching it for the 10^th time or so. The animation is also fluid and lively, matches up rather nicely with the character designs.

I wasn’t too shocked on the video and audio for the DVD. After watching the check disk at Anime North 2003, we saw that it had flawless video along with clear audio and clear audio. Needless to say, it’s more or less the same here. My only major gripe with the audio was that it was provided in stereo sound. I would have loved to hear this in 5.1 sound, but that’s CPM for ya.

Having watched this series about 10 times (3 times on DVD) all while listening to the Japanese audio, I decided to hear what CPM has done with the English audio. I had my doubts, this is an extremely emotional anime, and I wasn’t sure if the English VAs would have been able to handle it. But after watching the first episode, I was somewhat surprised. The English voices were somewhat good, certainly not as good as the Japanese, but it was much better than I thought it would be. However, I mostly watched this in Japanese, so I can’t really comment too much on the job done. But from what I heard, it seemed like a valiant effort, but in end, the Japanese voices are the way to go.

The menus were quite impressive as well; I practically enjoy the quick animation with the drills at the start. The layout for the menus are also done great, access to everything is right there at the start. And the extras? Wow! I didn’t think CPM had it in them to produce so much for this. What we have is, an Art Gallery and Sketch Gallery, which provides some good pics. But like all CPM image galleries, they are done like a video that scrolls through the images rather than making them click able images. Also on the disk is Behind the Scenes video showing the English voice actors doing their thing. This was done pretty good, a spot with the Japanese VAs would have been nice, but at the same time, was likely asking for too much. Other features include promos and Taro Maki commenting on the Alien Nine saga.

Once all 4 episodes are done, you can help but want more of this. But there isn’t as far as anime is concerned. However, CPM has the licence to the Alien Nine Manga, in which the first two issues has already been released as of this typing. The nice thing about the mangas is, it DOES pick up were the OVA leaves you hanging. And it is more in depth for certain things that the anime didn’t get around to covering. So don’t’ get all depressed thinking, that’s it, that’s all. Other than that, all I have to say is that this is a really remarkable thing to have in your DVD collection. One of those DVDs that you can toss to your friend and say “Take a look at this, you’ll love it.” On second though, ask your friend just to buy it… You might not get your disk back for awhile.