Rating: **
Review Date: 6/11/11
A bizarre orgy of George Bush era sensibilities and Republican excess. It's hard to imagine a time when this anime series was actually relevant. Cleopatra Corns is a sixteen year old girl who should be in high school, dreaming about boys, and learning how to drive. Instead, she's the CEO of the world's largest financial group, which also happens to control the world's economy. How scary is that? But she doesn't really care for any of that and simply uses the resources of the company for her own needs, like rescuing damsels in distress from pesky oil barons, recovering stolen diamonds, making friends with psionically enhanced genetic experiments, and averting global destruction with the power of love and friendship.
Cleo is your typical bumbling airhead heroine who always comes out on top due to her overly enthusiastic good intentions and overflowing optimism. She also sees a fair amount of action and isn't afraid of using guns or beating people up. Nobuteru Yuuki's angular character designs are immediately evident, giving the animation a uniquely 80's look and feel. The series is full of lighthearted action, and no one ever gets hurt as a result of the massive destruction on display. Outrageousness abounds, including putting out an oil refinery fire with ICBMs and blowing up a space shuttle that had been hijacked. A plane also crashes into a New York skyscraper, which creates some eerie imagery in a post 9/11 world. While the series moves along at a brisk pace, I never found the stories or characters to be particularly interesting or engaging. On the plus side, I never found the characters to be annoying, which is more than I can say for most modern anime shows. Overall, it's harmless fluff with a nice dash of 80's nostalgia.