Anime: Abunai Sisters: Koko & Mika

On November 16th 2020 I came to know about Abunai Sisters and being the way I am I just had to watch it, add it to my list and write about it. What I’m doing here is completely pointless because nobody in their right mind would bother to watch it or talk about it and thus nobody will read this. Newer viewers wouldn’t bother with it mainly because they wouldn’t know about it and also because it’s old by now.

As for the rest, they wouldn’t bother with it because a look at the poster, the score and the synopsis is enough to tell you that it’s not worth watching, even those like me who ocassionaly like to torture themselves and check out some of the worst anime of all times wouldn’t normally bother with it because it’s not as infamous as other titles such as Mars of Destruction, Skelter Heaven, MD Geist, Pupa and the likes.

But even if it’s pointless I’m writing this because I can and because I wanted to write a review for quite some time. And hey, if at least one person read this, then it was worth it.

With that said, there’s really nothing much to say about it, one look at the poster and the synopsis and you get the deal, two female agents who somehow are also celebrities protect some crystal from the villain from Spirited Away and her companion, a pervy version of Mr. Incredible’s boss. No really, the bad guys look like them.

Here’s where the first problem arise, how can secret agents be celebrities at the same time? Shouldn’t they be discrete? Well I guess being famous could be a facade, who would suspect of two famous women to be secret agents? Even then they sure don’t seem to be secret agents, as all they do in the show has more to do with their celebrity life rather than their work as secret agents. The series don’t tell you anything about what is this agency their work for, which is their rank there and what do they do there, heck, it doesn’t even appear.

You won’t even know who their enemies are and why do they want the “booby stone” as they call it, ok it is mentioned in the show that said stone brings eternal beauty or something but it sure doesn’t look like it when you watch the series.

You won’t even know why are these sisters celebrities, as all they do is goof around in their big mansion, located in some private tropical island with the worst security of all times as it allows the bad guys to appear and reappear every single time. They never sing, or dance, or do anything really. No personality nor backgrounds at all.

And of course, nothing in the series makes sense as the sisters have booby powers which allows them to increase their sizes and attack with them, while also have a booby alarm as they call it, which usually works, warning them about danger, but sometimes it doesn’t for plot convenience. Not story at all either.

But look at me, talking seriously about a show which clearly does not require to do so as is just a silly comedy, I am just as ridiculous as the series itself. Well, even if I am to judge the show that way, it is also terrible on that level, as the jokes consist in repeating the exact same formula in each one of the 10 episodes, the sisters are just chilling around, the bad guys appear with bad disguises and try to take the stone, the booby alarm sounds and make the sisters’ breasts bounce like crazy and they stop the bad guys with their own gadgets, the end.

There was an instance where, although the formula and the result were the same, they did it by playing volleyball which was fine for a change, until they ruined even this by doing the exact same thing in the exact next episode, only with ping pong, thank you so much show, for ruining even the tiniest variety you had.

If I am to compare this with episodic cartoons which repeat the same formula from…just about any era, even them have more variety with how their formulas play out in each episode. Heck, there’s not even a reason to compare it to cartoons, there’s Pucca, which began as a 2 minute per episode webseries, meaning, it has shorter episodes than this, and even that one has more variety than this.

The jokes themselves, apart from the nonsensical situations, have to do with an attemtp to make fun of celebrities’ life and first world problems, but it’s so explicit about it to the point of telling you the joke directly while the character saying it looks at the screen, it’s not subtle at all, thus is not funny at all, thus it fails as a parody.

I can’t even recognize the ecchi in the show as unique or creative, as we’ve seen boobs making crazier things and being even more deformed in anime, both before and after, even the likes of Valkyirie Drive: Mermaid, Manyuu Kikenchou, Seikon no Qwaser, Queen’s Blade, Eiken and just about any ecchi you either know or don’t know about is way better than this at least on that level and you are more excused to watch them than Abunai Sisters.

The sisters themselves are based after two real japanese sisters who are apparently models by the way, and thankfully they don’t look anything like their counterparts in the show. I don’t know what’s the deal with those sisters and if they were at the peak of their popularity in 2009 when this came out to excuse its existence but this show surely doesn’t work even as a promotional material, it makes them look stupid, superficial, and just plain ugly. We’re talking about Charlie’s Angel videogame for PSX levels of bad publicity here, if not even worse.

As for the production values, what’s there to say? They are atrocious on every aspect but if you are cursed enough to be reading this, don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is the worst CGI of all time. There are worse looking cartoons and videogames as well as there are worse looking anime, such as Urda and Digimon X-Evolution. Even then, those products are excused for coming out way earlier than this series and Urda was even made by a bunch of unprofessional noobs, while Abunai Sisters came out in freaking 2009 and was made by such a big studio like Production I.G, which made visual masterpieces both before and after this monstruosity. There just isn’t any show by them that looks as bad as this.

The sound is even worse, as there is barely music which is forgettable at best, and the sound effects are old and weak by 2009 standards. But the worst aspect is the voices, apparently there is a version with normal voices, but no, in the only one avalaible online they sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks, the fact that is english dub only makes it even worse because there are no subtitles to help you understand what is it that they are supposed to be saying.

Ultimately, being a Production I.G work is the definitive factor that makes Abunai Sisters so bad and so disappointing, if it was made earlier and by a worse studio, I would give it even a 2 out of 10. No really, once you watched so much bad stuff as I did you appreciate that, as a parodical comedy, this atrocity at least does not try to take itself seriously in the slightest, unlike things like Mars of Destruction, Skelter Heaven, Roots Search X, MD Geist, Midori, Pupa, Ousama Game, Evil or Live, Dies Irae, Hand Shakers or the most recent Kyouchuu Rettou or Gibiate (among lots of other examples), which try to be either serious, or dramatic, or deep, or epic, or horror and they all fail terribly at it. Nor does it insult a good and popular IP, as Souten no Ken does with Hokuto no Ken.

Even if I am to compare it with another “comedy” is at least better than Twinkle Nora Rock me for making slightly more sense and for having actual animation.

Thus Abunai Sisters is better than all of them for not even trying, but even then it does not deserve more than the lowest score from me for how badly made it is and for how much better stuff there is, it makes even the Charlie’s Angels PSX game look bad (and not terrible), it makes the Charlie’s Angels movies seem passable because the action has more stakes, way better battle choreography and gorgeous women, it makes the Totally Spies! cartoon series seem passable for having better comedy and more explored characters, then there are the ecchi shows which I already mentioned that are simply far more appealing than this.

Heck, even if I try to think in the people with the craziest and the weirdest of fetishes, there is a lot of stuff such as inflation in certain websites which makes this look tame, thus Abunai Sisters does not have any value even for them and excuses my score. (If you are not one of them and you don’t know what that is then good for you, now pay attention to a warning like this for once in your life and don’t google it, seriously, I wish I was as lucky).

It's both really easy and really difficult to claim that something as "the worst" of any particular medium. It's really easy in the sense anyone can hyperbolically claim something is "the worst" based on their personal preferences and/or depending on their hatred of said thing. It can also be really difficult from a critical standpoint, since things can be bad for a variety of reasons, and you can always call something worse.

Usually, most forms of media have SOMETHING redeemable about them, even if they're really easy to hate or make fun of when it comes to their flaws. Personally, I very rarely call something "the worst", even if I absolutely loathe it. But in this case, I think I have to make an exception. "Abunai Sisters: Koko & Mika" is one of the worst things in any medium, let alone anime, that I've ever seen, and it comes in swinging hard for that title.

Abunai Sisters is a short 10 episode OVA released in 2009, barely lasting ~30 minutes total. It barely sold over 250 copies of the DVD. Considering that the first 500 copies to be pre-ordered came with bonuses such as figurines, discounts, and even shout-outs to those first 500 "lucky" enough to have pre-ordered, so it comes off as extra sad that almost no one pre-ordered the thing. But it's incredibly easy to see why no one did, because owning a copy would be one of the most embarrassing things to have in your library, and that includes hentai.

And to make it more insulting, this was produced by PRODUCTION I.G. of all companies. These are the guys who released Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, FLCL, The Sky Crawlers, and a lot more high quality stuff released both before and after the release of Abunai Sisters, which begs the question of how and why this was released. Did someone at the company lose a bet? Or did someone have get an injury to the head and accidentally approve this?

Unsurprisingly, only two episodes of this managed to make it to television. An for a while, those two episodes were the only thing you could get your hands on. At some point, all of the episodes were uploaded to various anime torrent sides. But for some bizarre reason, whoever uploaded them uploaded them with the characters voices pitched up, so the entire thing becomes un-listenable. There does exist a copy where the voices are normal though.

But enough about that, let's just into the series.

When it comes to plot, there is no plot. It's about two large breasted bimbos who happened to be some sort of secret agents and they both get into hijinks where the two bad guys, a woman with an oversized head and her lackey either try to kill them or steal their "Boobie Stones". Yes, you read that right, the "Boobie Stones".

The "Boobie Stones" keeps them young, as well as giving them "Boobie Powers", which save them from danger, and the bad guys want the power of the "Boobie Stones" for themselves. And that's pretty much the entire joke. I can't believe I read that, let alone had to type that out for this review.

And the rest of the series isn't much better either.

The animation is awful. It barely reaches the PS1 era of CGI cutscene. Making the whole thing even weirder is that the animation is motion captured, which means that someone had to go out of there way to act out everything from this series in person. And now I'm just imagining footage and motion capture data out there on some hard drive somewhere in Production I.G., and a part of me wants to see it.

There is no Japanese dub as far as I can tell. You read that right, there is no Japanese dub, only the English dub. And this is one of the worst English dubs that I've heard for anything, with the voices being a mix of nails on a chalkboard, wailing cats, and a bad case of tinnitus. I would say that it makes me want to take a rusty knife to my eardrums if only to never have to hear this atrocious dub ever again, but it's still going to haunt my nightmares.

What little music there is just as grating as the voice acting, with the theme painfully drilling itself into your brain every time you hear it, wishing you had some aspirin every time it appears.

There are so many other anime projects out there that should have got the time, money, and effort thrown at them instead of this. I would question why this was made in the first place, but I think I've found out the reason.

Abunai Sisters was created to promote tabloid celebrities Kyoko and Mika Kano. I had absolutely no idea who they were, so I had to look them up.

Apparently there is some controversy surrounding said sisters, since their lack of resemblance between them as well as their refusal to answer any questions about their age, which resulted in any reporting on their age to be entirely speculation, flamed rumors that they weren't even sisters at all, but just another group of tarento (television personalities) with a gimmick.

There was even a third "sister" who initially made appearances with them, but apparently she withdrew from the public eye, and only makes the occasional appearance.

So if I had to guess, Abunai Sisters was made entirely as a promotional piece, and tying that to a studio was some prestige behind it like Production I.G., would help in promoting the Kano sisters. Apparently there few a few other controversies with the sisters throughout the years too, but I'll leave that for another day, this tangent is long enough.

You might think this might be good to laugh at while with friends while trying to have a drunk night of fun watching something bad to laugh at, but it isn't worth it. There are plenty of so-bad-it's-good anime out there like Garzey's Wing or the ADV dub of Ghost Stories. But if you're a masochist, there are copies floating out there.

If you're curious, I recommend reading the story of how this got made and the people that this is based on rather than watching the anime itself. It's a far more interesting story.