The first episode begins with a cold open set in Washington DC. The action unfolds in medias res as President Cole evacuates the White House,surrounded by his bodyguards. The samuraiGennai Hiraga appears on top of the White House and annihilates it using a mysterious power. Later,it is revealed that the Library of Congress has also been attacked,although this takes place offscreen.[7]
Meanwhile,the story moves to Jinbo-cho,Tokyo. Yomiko Readman,during one of her crazed bookshopping sprees,claims an ultra-rare German first edition book,"die Unsterbliche Liebe" (or "The Undying Love"),which contains handwritten sheet music within its pages. Once outside,she is immediately attacked by a superhuman-like clone of Jean Henri Fabre riding a giant mechagrasshopper. He attempts to steal her book,but she fights back and wins,exhibiting a superhuman ability to manipulate paper. A man in a suit walks up to her moments later,asking "The Paper" to accompany him. We learn that Yomiko is an agent of the British Library Special Operations Division,a spy organization tasked with locating and protecting rare books worldwide.[8][7]
A field agent team,consisting of Yomiko and American operative/trained mercenary Drake Anderson,is sent to investigate the attack at the Library of Congress. Upon arriving in New York City,Drake and Yomiko meet fellow agent Nancy Makuhari (a.k.a. "Miss Deep"),who also has been sent by Joker to investigate. Yomiko and Nancy are assigned to work together,and various comical moments occur throughout the episodes as personality clashes occur between Nancy's suave,femme fatale character and Yomiko's extreme bibliomaniac,childlike demeanor. During the investigation,the three Library agents foil another attempt to steal the book,this time perpetrated by a clone of Otto Lilienthal.[9]
In London,Joker and the British Library staff uncover evidence that someone has created various super-powered clones (or "I-Jin") of famous historical figures. The I-Jin,led by a clone of Ikkyu Soujun,are trying to steal the sheet music in Yomiko's book to reconstruct Ludwig van Beethoven's supposedly lost "Death Symphony," which causes anyone who hears it to commit suicide. The symphony figures in a plot to eliminate most of humankind,which Ikkyu sees as foolish,selfish and generally unworthy of life.[10]
The Library team discovers that the I-Jin have built a rocket which,when launched,will play the supposed "Death Symphony" over worldwide radio frequencies. A fleet of US Navy ships are ordered to destroy the base located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,but the warships are sunk by the base's weapons. Nancy is revealed to be a double agent,and escapes to the I-Jin Base. Yomiko becomes bent on finding her despite her betrayal,but she is taken hostage herself by none other than Nancy,revealing that she is an I-Jin clone of Mata Hari. Yomiko is imprisoned in a secret room within the I-Jin base,but when Ikkyu asks her to join the I-Jin,she refuses. Ikkyu reveals his plans to Yomiko,and then seemingly kills Nancy before her eyes. As Yomiko watches in horror,another Nancy steps out of the shadows and kisses Ikkyu passionately. The lovers depart,leaving Yomiko to die in the rapidly flooding room.
As Yomiko struggles to free herself from Ikkyu's trap and Drake battles the I-Jin versions of Fabre and Hiraga,Ikkyu's Nancy is confronted by the Library's Nancy,who survived Ikkyu's attack. The clones fight each other,ending with one Nancy floating faceup in the water at the bottom of the launch platform. The rocket launches with Yomiko,Ikkyu and the surviving Nancy aboard. As Beethoven is about to play the Death Symphony,Ikkyu gloats over his Nancy's defeat of the Library's Nancy,but she suddenly turns on him and kills him. When he dies,she reveals that she was able to pose as her clone by switching her gun from her left hand to her right. Yomiko destroys the strings of the organ as British and American forces seize the I-Jin fortress. Yomiko plans to evacuate them both from the rocket using her book as a parachute,but at the last second Nancy does not jump,preferring to stay behind on the rocket,telling the dead Ikkyu,"You were a cold,heartless bastard... but even you don't deserve to die alone." The OVA ends with Yomiko visiting Nancy's "little sister" in a secure nursing facility run by the Library staff. She has lost most of her memory due to brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation,and asks Yomiko to tell her about her "older sister."[11][12]
Codenamed "The Paper" (or "Agent Paper" in the English dub),Yomiko Readman is the story's main character working for the British Library's Special Operations Division. She has the super-natural ability to control paper. Outside of the Library she is a substitute schoolteacher. Yomiko is a bibliomaniac with a somewhat meek,childlike demeanor who prefers to retreat into reading wherever she can. She resides in Jinbōchō,Tokyo where she frequently buys tons of books. Despite being half-British,Kimberly Yates does the dub for her in an American accent in the OVA.
Codenamed "Miss Deep",Nancy also works for the British Library. She is a slick,suave,femme fatale type character (which ends up becoming a personality clash with Yomiko) who has the special ability to pass through solid objects by absorbing herself,hence the codename "Deep". She says that she doesn't like her codename,as it "makes her sound like a porn star". She is actually revealed to be created as the first of the two I-Jin based upon Mata Hari.
Drake is an archetypal tough,no-nonsense experienced American soldier. A veteran of the American Special Forces,Drake now works in the Special Operations Division as a field support operative. Drake has a young daughter Maggie (who is not actually seen in the anime) whom he loves very much,and it is reflected upon his soft spot for children.
Joseph Carpenter,also known as "Joker," is the chief director and president of the British Library and its Special Operations Division. He is the boss of Yomiko Readman as well as other agents,including his rather clumsy assistant,Wendy Earhart. He represents a stereotypical posh Englishman and is somewhat calm and collected. Joker actually created the I-Jin program to fulfill a mysterious need not covered in the OVA,however the I-Jin run free out of Joker's control.
Wendy is a young British woman in training to be an agent for Special Operations. She serves as Joker's secretary and personal assistant who retrieves knowledge for him. She is somewhat clumsy but devoted and enthusiastic as well as cares for Yomiko.
Historical figures used in the OVA
Gennai Hiraga[16] was the original figure who destroyed the White House and appears multiple times throughout the series. He unleashes a mysterious power in the form of green lightning bolts which is used in the series to cut the entire electricity supply of New York City,disable aircraft and destroy buildings in Washington DC. In the final episode at the I-Jin fortress,Yomiko and Gennai engage in a sword fight,using a paper sword and a lightsaber-type weapon respectively. He dies when Yomiko uses a $100 bill to rupture a liquid nitrogen coolant line,whereupon he is frozen solid and shattered.
Jean Henri Fabre[16] first appears in the beginning of the first episode,when he attempts to steal the "Immortal Beloved." He rides a giant mechanical grasshopper and can control bees and other insects to use as weapons. Like the insects he studied,juvenile Fabres are shown moulting from one form to another,growing from child to adult in a few days. Two Fabres are shown in the series;[15] the first Fabre apparently dies by crashing into a Tokyo office building,but actually moulted and escaped,taking the form of a child until he fights and is killed by Drake Anderson within the I-Jin base.
Mata Hari,a First World War spy,is the basis for Nancy Makuhari. When Nancy began to work for the British Library Special Operations,Ikkyu created an exact clone of the Nancy in every way except the fact she uses her left hand. The only surviving I-Jin with no memory of her actions after Nancy nearly killed her,Mata Hari plays a role in the TV series.
Otto Lilienthal,[16] also known as the "Glider King",appears in the first episode where he snatches Yomiko's book while she is in the Library of Congress. The Library team chases him to New York City,where Yomiko builds a giant paper airplane to engage Lilienthal in aerial combat. Yomiko and Nancy defeat him by attaching a paper grappling hook to his glider,which then crashes into the Statue of Liberty.
Genjo Sanzo[16] appears in India,where he splits the water in a river to reveal submerged buildings. He wields an extensible staff,breathes fire,and can fly by floating on clouds. During the showdown,he manages to severely wound Nancy,but is defeated when an enraged Yomiko hurls thousands of index cards at him. He survives long enough to give Yomiko's book to Jean-Henri Fabre,but is then killed by Ikkyu Soujun.
Stephen Wilcox[16] appears in the third episode on the I-Jin fortress,making a minor appearance as the builder of many of the I-Jin machinery,including Otto Lilienthal's Glider,Genjō-sanzō's heart mechanism (never directly stated,but very likely),and the I-Jin Fortress itself,which appears to be steam-powered instead of,or in addition to,nuclear-powered as Joker implies (nuclear power plants use steam heated by a reactor,so they are not mutually exclusive). He is portrayed as being built into the Fortress and visibly insane. He is killed with Jean-Henri Fabre by Drake Anderson.
Ikkyu Soujun[16] is the leader of the I-Jin,and first appears in the second episode. He is romantically involved with Mata Hari/Nancy;creating a clone of her to serve as a spy to pose as her within the British Library's special operations team. He dies at the hands of Nancy aboard the rocket at the end of the series.
Ludwig van Beethoven appears in the final episode,when he is sent off in Ikkyu's rocket to play his "Death Symphony" at an altitude where it can be heard worldwide. His fate is unknown after Yomiko cuts the strings of the organ,but it is assumed he dies in the crash of the rocket.
Production
SME Visual Works (now Sony Music Entertainment Japan) first approached writer Hideyuki Kurata in 1998 to create an OVA,specifically "a 'female spy story'." Kurata has cited the manga Ushio &Tora as a major inspiration for building the action sequences in the early developmental stages. Once he came up with the central idea for a character,"a woman who loved books" and "would scatter paper everywhere," he drew from historical figures to fill the roles of her main antagonists. While Kurata initially planned to use such figures as Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers,he was forced to abandon this idea when he realized "American historical figures tend to be protected by things like portrait rights." To avoid lawsuits,he revised his idea to include German historical figures as an alternative and submitted his pitch to SME,which was immediately green-lit. Koji Masunari was brought on board as director while Taraku Uon and Masashi Ishihama were hired as the character designers (Ishihama would also act as chief animation director). Production was well underway when SME suggested that the creative team release a light novel series "to attract a wide audience" for the OVA release. Through SME's partnerships with the publishing companies,Shueisha and Super Dash Bunko,they hired Kurata to pen a novel series before the OVA was set to be released. Although,Kurata has also contradicted these details:"A novel had always been part of the master plan."[17]
Kurata's friend,Yōsuke Kuroda,and the owner of Studio Orphee,encouraged him to start with "a novel to act as the original work [for the anime]," which Kurata agreed to do. The workload was split between Kuroda (who offered to write the OVA episodes),Kurata (who worked on the manuscripts for both a novel and manga series) and Uon (who designed the rough drafts of the characters as Kurata fleshed out his concepts). Uon was initially unaware of the genre chosen for the series (a spy thriller);his designs used City Hunter as a mood board,therefore the characters were drawn in a hard-boiled detective style before he was asked to change it.[17] As animation director,Ishihama was tasked with the redesigns,which he found challenging. "I was just a newbie designer at the time," he said. "I had to figure out how to draw Uon's art my way;" Uon was an artist he greatly respected.[18] Ishihama would later recall how difficult he found it to stay true to Uon's original sketches while adding his own flare to the characters.[19] Although Kuroda never received a character design credit,Uon would name the former as the creator of the key design elements that he took inspiration from,especially of Yomiko's distinct hairstyle (i.e. her parted bangs) and wardrobe. Later,Kuroda would exit the project due to other commitments.[20]
Kurata has stated that he worked on the series backwards:he started with a draft of the second novel since the first novel "wasn't coming together" and from there,once he discovered who his characters were,he asked Kuroda if he could take over as screenwriter for the OVA as he was attached to them (the latter agreed).[20] The first R.O.Dlight novel,illustrated by Taraku Uon,was published in 2000,introducing Yomiko Readman,Nenene Sumiergawa and the core cast of the British Library while the first volume of the R.O.D manga was released the same year,illustrated by Shutaro Yamada,in order to promote the OVA. Both works of literature borrowed ideas from one another,such as Yomiko working for Joker and her meeting Nenene (only featured in the novels and manga and not onscreen in the OVA) as a substitute teacher,though were treated as separate entities,featuring the same characters but following a different story arc and canon. Likewise,only the anime - the OVA and TV series - were created as direct continuations of each other.[3][2] Kurata explained:"'R.O.D was always intended to be a mixed media project,so each incarnation tells its own separate story,but you are able to gain a deeper understanding of the 'R.O.D' world as a whole by experiencing all of them together."[6]
At the time,it was one of the most expensive OVAs produced.[21]
Based on the positive coverage the OVA received in various anime magazines,Kurata and the creative team had planned to re-edit the OVA as a feature film with the addition of newly animated content. This proposal was later scrapped and instead,the creators would go on to create a sequel in the form of a TV series.[22][23]
The story of the OVA was immediately followed in the 26-episode TV series R.O.D the TV where Kurata decided to start with a "fresh set of characters."[24][25][26][22][23]
The TV series is loosely connected to the OVA since it follows the Three Sisters and Nenene (of the light novels and manga) instead of Yomiko,[23] though it is revealed that events are directly continued from the preceding anime in episode fourteen.[27][28] The series takes place five years after the OVA, and within this time, Yomiko has disappeared. Meanwhile, her friend and former student Nenene Sumiregawa has been searching for her.[14] (Nenene was featured off-screen in the OVA through post-it notes in Yomoko's apartment.)[29][30][b] Yomiko, Drake, Joker and Wendy all appear in the TV series, however, most of them change significantly in either appearance or character. For instance, Joker displays signs of aging while Wendy is more mature and serious.[31]
One notable difference in the TV English dub is that Yomiko is voiced by Hellena Taylor, an English actress, whereas Kimberly Yates, an American, provided her voice in the OVA. Thus, she adopts an authentic British accent.[32] She also develops a slightly more sensible character.
In the guide book, R.O.D Official Archive published in Japan in 2010 (translated in English in 2012), it was established that although the OVA does not share a "direct correlation" with the original light novels or manga as Kurata considers all R.O.D properties to be independent of one another,[6] many of the elements from the novels and manga were adapted into the OVA and TV series. Specifically, the first novel provides background on Yomiko and Nenene's relationship, and the OVA serves as the setup for the series.[33][c] Further comments have mentioned that the "unusual nature" of the OVA's opening credits featuring a psychedelic spy aesthetic was re-adapted for the television series.[33]
Reception
Eve McLachlan of CBR praised the OVA for not letting down book lovers and highlighted the heroine, Yomiko Readman for proving that "the pen really is mightier than the sword."[34] Charles Webb of MTV argued that the OVA was a "pretty action-packed affair" and had an obviously different tone than R.O.D the TV.[35] Theron Martin of Anime News Network had similar sentiments, noting that the OVA episodes spun a "high-spirited adventure yarn focused on super-powered fights" while singling out the superhero abilities of Yomiko Readman. He further praised the visual and technical aspects, emphasizing the change in tone compared to R.O.D the TV; however, he criticized the "hokey plot and premise".[14]
Matt Lopez of Animerica gave the OVA an "A", naming the work as "unmistakably sweet in the way a kick-butt action series is sweet," noting the devoted fan following the anime had earned, and argued that the premise was simple as a "classic superhero-vs.-bad guy story." He added that the OVA series presented a developed plot, having everything from "in-your-face action to dramatic backstabs and tragedy," elaborating that the series didn't take a "big commitment to watch, just a few hours."[36]
Notes
↑ Hayashi, 2013, p. 113. Kurata: " 'R.O.D' was always intended to be a mixed media project, so each incarnation tells its own separate story, but you are able to gain a deeper understanding of the 'R.O.D' world as a whole by experiencing all of them together."
↑ R.O.D Official Archive, p. 71. "It could be said that Nenene made an appearance in the OVA through the numerous notes she left in Yomiko's room."
↑ R.O.D Official Archive, p. 71. "... the various media loosely [interacts] with one another to expand on the 'R.O.D' world... [K]ey elements, such as Mr. Gentleman's desire to achieve immortality, were preserved in the animes [sic] that followed."
↑ R.O.D the TV, Episode 14. Directed by Koji Masunari, performances by Mika Sakenobe, Mitsuki Saiga, and Hozumi Goda. Studio ORPHEE / Aniplex Inc., 2004.
↑ R.O.D, Episode 1. Directed by Koji Masunari, performances by Rieko Miura, Michiko Neya and Hozumi Goda. Studio DEEN, 2001.
↑ R.O.D the TV: Vol. 7 (USA). Audio commentary by Taliesin Jaffe, Hellena Taylor, Siobhan Flynn and Carrie Savage, Studio ORPHEE / Aniplex Inc. / Geneon Entertainment (USA) Inc., 2005.
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