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Today on the Magical Girl Project, we have the other Proto-Magic-Warrior OVA that came out in 1985 alongside Genmu Senki Leda and which also features a chainmail-bikini-wearing sword-swinging heroine: Dream Hunter Rem.
Dream Hunter Rem is a peculiar case of a series that started out as hentai but switched to ecchi after the first episode. I've heard of this happening in between adaptations, like a porno game or OVA that gets adapted into a clean tv series, but never within the same series. In Rem's case, the switch happened because the creators found out that people liked the plot. Hey, I guess some people really do "read it for the articles"! Having seen the first episode, I now understand why: the porn bits are actually rather sparse and not very good, while the plot and premise are much more interesting. The show also spawned a two-episode sequel, New Dream Hunter Rem, which came out in the early 90s.
At this point I should admit that all my opinions on this show should be taken with numerous grains of salt because I could only find it in unsubbed form. It's kind of difficult to analyze a show when you can't understand what the hell anyone's saying, but I'll try anyway!
Rem is a green-haired teenage (?) girl who moonlights as a paranormal private detective. Basically she enters peoples' dreams and does battle with the demons that possess and torment people while they sleep. In the dream world, she wields a laser sword, and in the real world, she has a revolver loaded with silver bullets and a couple of rocket launchers mounted to her car. She's assisted by her adorable sidekicks, a kitten and puppy who can transform into larger ferocious versions of themselves during battle, and she also has a Buddhist monk friend, Enko, who always swings by in the nick of time to save Rem whenever she's in a sticky spot, although the show uses this device way too frequently for my liking. I guess it's because this is an ecchi show, and the male viewers like seeing cute girls get tied up, but the show's over-reliance on having Tuxedo Monk rescue Rem from James-Bond-esque death traps kind of undermines her status as a badass action hero.
However Rem does get in some pretty memorable moments of badassery, like when she's about to get chomped by a huge toothy monster, so instead she dives into its mouth and slices it apart from the inside, or in the hentai pilot episode, where she's getting tentacle-raped by a monster's glowing laser-tentacle-wang, and she retaliates by shooting the laser-tentacle back out of her cooch and spearing the monster with it. Like, holy shit, girl must do a lot of Kegels. She also has some very impressive driving skills. Seriously, she would not be out of place on the streets of Los Angeles.
As far as its place in the MG genre, Dream Hunter Rem is a Proto-Magic-Warrior show like Cutey Honey and Devil Hunter Yohko, and therefore it doesn't adhere to all the conventions we've come to expect in Magic Warrior shows because, well, those conventions hadn't been established yet. For starters, Rem is naturally magical, as opposed to being given magic; in fact, her magic comes from her ancestors just like Devil Hunter Yohko's does. Also, the show starts in medias res; unlike in most MW shows which open with the heroine receiving her powers, it's clear in the first episode that Rem's been doing this for a while now. Rem does have the requisite cutesy sidekicks, but they actually help out in fights rather than dispensing wisdom, guidance, and new gadgets. Speaking of gadgets, Rem has no transformation trinket, although she does have a very brief transformation sequence, and instead of magic wands, she uses conventional weaponry, though she does use a magic flute in one episode.
As a side note, I'm intrigued that all four of the pre-Sailor-Moon Magic Warriors (Cutey Honey, Rem, Yohko, and Leda/Yohko) used the same thing as their main weapon: a sword.
Also similar to its Proto-Magic-Warrior peers, Dream Hunter Rem is very enthusiastic with the gore and tits. Rem gets all the flesh melted off her bones twice (although she quickly pops back to life again which is pretty funny) and the show is a bit torture-porn-ish in places, since most of the demons' victims are attractive young women whom we get to see ripped apart in loving detail. At one point, Rem also gets impaled by three giant phallic spikes which made me rather suspicious. On the tits side of things, in addition to Rem's amusingly inadequate "armor" and the frequent strategically-placed clothing damage she sustains, there's also an episode where Rem attends a girls' school and of course they milk that for all it's worth. Though I guess I can't really complain about that one because woohoo LesYay!
Anyway, I'm enjoying these old Magic Warrior shows. It's fun to see what the genre was like before it really became a genre. And I'm amused to note that there's one way in which Rem does adhere to genre tradition: she dresses almost entirely in pink and red.
Dream Hunter Rem is a peculiar case of a series that started out as hentai but switched to ecchi after the first episode. I've heard of this happening in between adaptations, like a porno game or OVA that gets adapted into a clean tv series, but never within the same series. In Rem's case, the switch happened because the creators found out that people liked the plot. Hey, I guess some people really do "read it for the articles"! Having seen the first episode, I now understand why: the porn bits are actually rather sparse and not very good, while the plot and premise are much more interesting. The show also spawned a two-episode sequel, New Dream Hunter Rem, which came out in the early 90s.
At this point I should admit that all my opinions on this show should be taken with numerous grains of salt because I could only find it in unsubbed form. It's kind of difficult to analyze a show when you can't understand what the hell anyone's saying, but I'll try anyway!
Rem is a green-haired teenage (?) girl who moonlights as a paranormal private detective. Basically she enters peoples' dreams and does battle with the demons that possess and torment people while they sleep. In the dream world, she wields a laser sword, and in the real world, she has a revolver loaded with silver bullets and a couple of rocket launchers mounted to her car. She's assisted by her adorable sidekicks, a kitten and puppy who can transform into larger ferocious versions of themselves during battle, and she also has a Buddhist monk friend, Enko, who always swings by in the nick of time to save Rem whenever she's in a sticky spot, although the show uses this device way too frequently for my liking. I guess it's because this is an ecchi show, and the male viewers like seeing cute girls get tied up, but the show's over-reliance on having Tuxedo Monk rescue Rem from James-Bond-esque death traps kind of undermines her status as a badass action hero.
However Rem does get in some pretty memorable moments of badassery, like when she's about to get chomped by a huge toothy monster, so instead she dives into its mouth and slices it apart from the inside, or in the hentai pilot episode, where she's getting tentacle-raped by a monster's glowing laser-tentacle-wang, and she retaliates by shooting the laser-tentacle back out of her cooch and spearing the monster with it. Like, holy shit, girl must do a lot of Kegels. She also has some very impressive driving skills. Seriously, she would not be out of place on the streets of Los Angeles.
As far as its place in the MG genre, Dream Hunter Rem is a Proto-Magic-Warrior show like Cutey Honey and Devil Hunter Yohko, and therefore it doesn't adhere to all the conventions we've come to expect in Magic Warrior shows because, well, those conventions hadn't been established yet. For starters, Rem is naturally magical, as opposed to being given magic; in fact, her magic comes from her ancestors just like Devil Hunter Yohko's does. Also, the show starts in medias res; unlike in most MW shows which open with the heroine receiving her powers, it's clear in the first episode that Rem's been doing this for a while now. Rem does have the requisite cutesy sidekicks, but they actually help out in fights rather than dispensing wisdom, guidance, and new gadgets. Speaking of gadgets, Rem has no transformation trinket, although she does have a very brief transformation sequence, and instead of magic wands, she uses conventional weaponry, though she does use a magic flute in one episode.
As a side note, I'm intrigued that all four of the pre-Sailor-Moon Magic Warriors (Cutey Honey, Rem, Yohko, and Leda/Yohko) used the same thing as their main weapon: a sword.
Also similar to its Proto-Magic-Warrior peers, Dream Hunter Rem is very enthusiastic with the gore and tits. Rem gets all the flesh melted off her bones twice (although she quickly pops back to life again which is pretty funny) and the show is a bit torture-porn-ish in places, since most of the demons' victims are attractive young women whom we get to see ripped apart in loving detail. At one point, Rem also gets impaled by three giant phallic spikes which made me rather suspicious. On the tits side of things, in addition to Rem's amusingly inadequate "armor" and the frequent strategically-placed clothing damage she sustains, there's also an episode where Rem attends a girls' school and of course they milk that for all it's worth. Though I guess I can't really complain about that one because woohoo LesYay!
Anyway, I'm enjoying these old Magic Warrior shows. It's fun to see what the genre was like before it really became a genre. And I'm amused to note that there's one way in which Rem does adhere to genre tradition: she dresses almost entirely in pink and red.
