Dirty Pair - The Original TV Series

In the space-faring far future, you call the World Welfare Works Association if you have a problem. But if they send over the “Lovely Angels”, Kei and Yuri, you now have a new problem. There’s a reason this dynamic duo have earned the nickname Dirty Pair—wherever they go, they leave a mess, even if they happen to have a success rate for their assignments that far outstrips the damage bills they run up.

Adapted from Haruka Takachiho’s long-running series of light novels (the first couple of which are now in English thanks to Dark Horse), Dirty Pair walks a fine three-way line between hard action, Hollywood-level SF and light comedy.

Most of the episodes follow the basic pattern of the Pair being hired to investigate a problem, with their clashing personalities driving (or at least exacerbating) the conflict, and with them always being exonerated by their employers’ master computer. Kei, the feisty redhead, throws caution to the wind and banks endlessly on her sex appeal, which she’s confident has the power to turn the heads of any male in the room. Yuri may be the more demure and reserved of the two, but don’t mistake that for “passive” or “timid”. She has her own fire—it just comes out differently under pressure.

The vast majority of the series aims for broad comedy and action, with the SF elements in the show mostly there as fodder for humor. E.g.: when a supercomputer runs amok, they take it out by beaming a spaceship into the HAL 9000 wannabe’s central core. They pose as rivals on a planet that resembles a frontier town, and wind up having to “duel” each other (it degenerates into a catfight). At one point while on their way to a double date, they’re accosted by police who’ve mistaken them for a pair of bank robbers … and end up mistakenly abducting a whole gang of children in the process.

A few episodes tilt towards the more serious. At one point Yuri receives a message from an old flame—old as in they were both kids the last time they saw each other—which turns out to be a plea for help from a slave-labor camp, where Kei discovers a few things about the boyfriend that might be best left buried. It’s surprisingly affecting, especially for a show that’s mostly about stuff blowing up. It’s not hard to see how later character-driven SF anime like Cowboy Bebop might owe a thing or two to this show, from both the moments of sudden heart to the in-jokes. (Everything from Alien to Flowers for Algernon gets referenced here.)

Anime fans have long known about the Dirty Pair from their other adventures in a series of OVAs and a Nineties-era TV series, Dirty Pair Flash, all released domestically. But the original TV series long remained unseen, known about only by word-of-mouth or through bootlegs. It’s great to have it out in a domestic edition at last, and works as a reminder that a fun show doesn’t need to be the product of any particular year.