In my quest to view what Japan has to offer, I have unwittingly stumbled upon a few monstrosities. One goes by the name Sky Girls.

For those of you that have never heard of this series, the opening theme song is featured on Dance Dance Revolution Supernova 2 under the title “Baby’s Tears.” During the minute-and-a-half that it takes to play this song, you will notice a few things: this is obviously a lolicon show, there are mechas and everything you see makes no freaking sense.

I’m going to pause here for a moment, because one of the characters featured in this theme song is some dude with a blond afro. I honestly thought Nabeshin had found his way into the program, but no – this is an actual character who plays a “serious” role in the plot… by hitting on the girls.

Blond afro-guy hitting on a main character.

Moving along. I had the misfortune of viewing the first OAV, known amongst “fans” as Episode 0.

The narration in the beginning, which takes about three times as long as your patience does to wear thin, explains that these hostile aliens called The WORM waged savage war on humanity. We sent all our brave, strong men out to fight The WORM and it really looked like we won. However, victory cost us most of our military-aged men.

So as we started repairing the earth and trying to rebuild our population to epic proportions, The WORM returned to defeat us. But we had so few military-aged men left! What were we to do?

This story focuses on a little test group of three mecha-piloting women.

A mecha like that totally protects the pilot from damage. Yep.

Why are you looking at me like that? Of course women have never piloted mechas before! Women have never been in the military. And this is obviously a universe where Rei and Asuka don’t exist, despite the fact that the three pilots in Sky Girls look like they’re wearing sexy replicas of the Evangelion uniforms.

So the episode finally gets to its slow, half-dead start when we see a bunch of old guys in military uniforms sitting around, discussing how the project is going to lose its funding if they don’t prove that these girls aren’t useless.

We finally get the chance to see the girls…. swimming. Yes, on a military base in the middle of the ocean, they’re slapping on sunscreen and frolicking in the waves. These are our heroes, ladies and gentlemen.

The girls are doing what they do best.

And they carry on swimming for the next five minutes. Seriously. Nothing happens, and when it does happen, they’re still swimming.

It won’t come as a surprise to you that The WORM choose this moment to attack. Red alerts go around the base and they have to summon the girls, which takes way longer than should be deemed necessary.

When the girls finally show up for the debriefing, they’re told that they’re finally going to pilot the mechas and they seem earnestly surprised.

Then we get a review of the girls: Eika is the leader, Karen is the smart one and Otoha is the wild card that can use a sword. Good to know you’re fulfilling all the stereotypes, show. I was worried you might actually put some effort into this thing.

I don’t think they listened to a word you said.

So the base GETS ATTACKED and these girls still haven’t even suited up yet. They run around the base like they have no idea where they’re going, which gives you enough time to meet blond-afro-man, Ryohei. Ryohei’s special ability is to hit on Otoha and survive getting beaten to a pulp.

Let’s stop a moment. The military base got attacked about ten minutes ago and the girls haven’t even suited up yet. Meanwhile, Ryohei is a perfectly fit, military-aged man and what does he do on this base? He REPAIRS THE MECHAS. Yes, that’s right.

We also get to meet a boy named Takumi who must be around the same age as the girls. What does he do on the ship? Oh, he’s the chef’s assistant. He’s also the communications officer monitoring the mechas, so he’s not unintelligent. Surely if it takes the girls this long to get ready, they could just throw this guy in their stead?

Ryohei and Takumi are the two guys on the right-hand side.

So finally, blessedly, the girls suit up. And while they’re suiting up in the locker room, they talk. Like, endlessly. And it’s not even about anything pertinent – I’m pretty sure they talk about how Ryohei is a pervert.

Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen.

So they put on some weird nano-gel that protects them for only a limited time and, thank God, because otherwise they’d be out there fooling around another twenty minutes while the base sinks.

They go to get in their mechas and the ENTRANCE IS BLOCKED.

How long is this episode again? We’re seriously almost 20 minutes in.

GIRLS, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

Ryohei risks his life or something and gets the girls to their ships. They FINALLY pilot the mechas and fly out to confront the beast.

Immediately, Otoha gets tail-whipped and crashes into the water. She doesn’t come back up. … Well, so much for our wild-card guys!

Everyone is freaking out because Otoha is probably drowning (note: she is!) and the remaining two girls continue to stand around doing nothing as they panic about their friend.

Hey old military dudes: Ryohei and Takumi are still options and they probably won’t gossip about boys. Just a suggestion.

Karen and Eika decide to fight on without Otoha, when suddenly – aha! – Otoha wakes up and flies out of the water. She then slices the offending WORM until it is dead.

Peace is restored, so how does this episode end? We find the girls SWIMMING again!

It’s good to see the balance is restored.

So the majority of the episode is devoted to the girls frolicking, then panicking. It takes them about twenty minutes from the first attack to finally get out and fight the monster.

I have one suggestion for the old military geezers: CANCEL THE PROGRAM. Obviously these girls are not cut out for fighting monsters. You have two perfectly capable guys on your site and you have them feeding the girls and maintaining the mechas. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

This show is honestly so bad I almost enjoyed it. It awakened a feminist fury in me and my friend, Pyro, when I’m relatively certain that we’re both not feminists.

To share in our suffering, I texted a third party, telling him that he should watch this show. His response was, “This is pretty good, but when does it pick up?”

My response was, “Never.”