A three episode OVA series that is both as wacky and as slickly produced as anything you've ever seen.
Read Or Die is a fun, sophisticated steam-mecha romp somewhat along the lines of the recent crop of superhero action movies like Batman, Spiderman, and so forth. Yomiko Readman is a bookworm with a special talent for origami... she can stop bullets with a playing card, or cut through steel catwalks with a sword made from a 10,000 Yen note! She takes an assignment from the British Library special forces that pits her skills against the Zen monk Ikkyu and Ludwig Von Beethoven, among others.
Really impressive animation, beautifully choreographed battle scenes, and just enough plot and character development to hold things together. Not great anime, but definitely worth a watch. Should be very popular with U.S. audiences. You decide if that is a recommendation or not.
There is a rather amusing twist to the weapons-from-nowhere trick in Read Or Die. Yumiko drags around a large suitcase full of paper wherever she goes, often pulling it around on one of those wheeled dollies like people use at the airport.
What you see happening in the illustration above is that Jean-Henri Fabre, riding a giant grasshopper, is trying to wrest a book with marginalia by Beethoven from Yumiko, and she has no intention of letting him get away with it!
R.O.D. The T.V.
In October 2003, a new series was released by Fuji T.V., officially titled R.O.D. The T.V.. R.O.D. The T.V. is based on a series of manga spun off from the Read Or Die series (Yomiko reappears at the halfway point), and are set 4 years after Yomiko's disappearance (her time spent with Nancy while Nancy convalesces). We finally meet the mysterious nenene responsible for the little post-it notes all over Yomiko's apartment, in the form of Sumiregawa Nenene, an author inspired to write by Yomiko's love of books, and unable to write during the 4 years of Yomiko's absence.
Anita rescues Sumiregawa Nenene from a jealous rival author!
The heroines of R.O.D. The T.V. are the three King sisters, Anita, Michelle, and Maggie (named after Anita Mui, Michelle Yeoh, and Maggie Cheung... with good reason!) and they are as charming as Yomiko, and almost as talented with paper!
The King sisters finagle a job as bodyguards for Nenene, who is astonished to find that they are paper users, and who thinks that, just maybe, they will lead her to Yomiko.
Episode 1 of R.O.D. The T.V. is a tour-de-force of thrilling action, with the sisters rescuing Nenene from attacks by a twin pair of jealous Chinese rival authors (who also coincidentally seem to be talented terrorists. Hmmm...) through virtuoso displays of paper manipulation.
Subsequent episodes move back-and-forth deftly between character development and breathtaking action, we learn more about the paper sisters and Nenene, and the enemy, and we see some beautifully choreographed battles between paper users and the more conventionally armed. The action is well paced, evenly building throughout the second half to a fantastic climax.
There are 26 episodes of R.O.D. The T.V., very fine fansubs have been done by Anime Station and AonE, and commercial DVD's are expected from Sony in 2005-2006.
The fantastic climax is predictable, but still fantastic.
When the sisters go on a search for Sumiregawa Nenene's best friend, they get caught up in a plot with a very high-powered government agency called the British Library. The person who controls the British Library is called Joker. He is trying to bring back a very powerful being who could control the world if brought back to life.
What happens in between is very exciting and entertaining.
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