Plastic Little

Now this is what a one shot OVA should be like!

When this came out in Australia all those years ago, it was classified R (NC-17 to you Americans) simply because of all the nudity that was in it. Reading about it, I totally missed the sci-fi aspect and imagined that it was anime about two girls who lived together quietly and had lots of baths and then one of them went crazy and killed some men in dark suits to protect the other.
If you ask me, the anime I created in my mind was actually pretty good. The Japanese film love/JUICE was like that without the violence.

What I ended up with was nothing like my imagination, but it turns out that the real Plastic Little turned out to be enjoyable nonetheless. There's just something about it. It's about "Pet Shop Hunters", who ride their ships through the sea of clouds to find rare animals to sell to collectors. Tita is the seventeen year old captain of this crew, and when she saves the life of Elysse, daughter of a great scientist, the government tries to kill them all.

The plot isn't important in Plastic Little, it's the feeling. What a feeling it gives: the energy of the anime industry before there simply stopped being any money to go around.
Urushihara Satoshi's designs are very attractive, and he is a man who is renowned for his attention to the details of the chest. Character exposition in a giant bath allows for endless pans from chest to face, and everytime a woman gets shot they have to be patched up ... so his talents certainly don't go to waste.
The city in the clouds was a beautiful place, and the atmosphere was just amazing. The ideas of flying ships that were also submarines was cool, and no time was wasted on explaining the world. It was just as it was. The action was well done, and the friendship between Elysse and Tita was warm.
The few moments of humour, and the nosebleeds ... it was all worthwhile. The score was also quite good, although the DVD menu played a piece that was unfortunately nowhere in the OVA itself.
The characters were broad but nice ... the whole project just gave me a nice feeling.

47 minutes of enjoyment, without any sour aftertaste, Plastic Little is a whole. It's hard to wax lyrical on such a simple pleasure.