Around 1995, Japanese animation (anime) began pouring into North America, Europe and across the globe in video form. Most of these titles were unknown outside of Japan and never covered by animation journals. Whether a title is highly popular or very obscure, a high-quality theatrical feature or a cheap and unimaginative direct-to-video release, they all look the same on a store shelf. Therefore, Animation World Magazine will regularly review several new releases (including re-releases not previously covered) that have merit.

Alien Nine's producers ran out of money after the fourth episode. Real fans will have to read the manga for the rest of the story.

Alien Nine
OAV series, 2001. Director: Jiro Fujimoto. 100 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.99. Distributor: Central Park Media/U.S. Manga Corps.

Some anime is mysterious and confusing in a good way. Alien Nine starts off fine, but it is frustratingly incomplete unless you are willing to read the cartoon-art novel to continue the story.

In the near future (2013 if you add the dates up), attacks by alien feral animals on Earth's elementary schools have become such a routine occurrence that students are assigned to capture them as a school chore, like taking out the trash. This is not considered dangerous because the children are issued intelligent alien "'borg" symbiotic partners to protect them. The borgs, which look like giant talking frog heads or lizard heads, perch on their heads and live on their hosts' body wastes.

At No. 9 Elementary School, the alien fighters are one girl from each of the three sixth grade classes. 11-year-old Kasumi and Kumi are volunteers who think it is cool to get excused from classes to race around the school on roller blades with tranquilizer guns chasing creatures that range from mouse-size to horse-size (many drawn as recognizable "tributes" to famous literary sci-fi aliens, such as the Pierson's Puppeteers from Larry Niven's stories), with their symbiotic partners as an eye-catching uniform. Their third partner, Yuri Otani, is their total opposite; a girl who considers all aliens yucky, who is humiliated by having to go around in public with a giant slobbery frog sitting on her head, and is disgusted by having to take it into the bathroom to eat her wastes. She was stuck with the job because none of her classmates would take it.

Yuri equates all aliens with the deadly chest-bursting monster from the old movie, especially since those she is assigned to catch usually look like giant spiders and centipedes. She is usually so scared that she either faints or her terror triggers her borg into overreacting and killing the alien instead of capturing it. Although it is obvious to all that Yuri is totally unsuited to the post, the school's cheerful Alien Party Advisor Ms. Hisakawa refuses to release her.

Alien Nine starts out as wacky humor, nicely mixing the bizarre and mildly gross-out situations that 11-year-olds like with a cryptic, but apparently well-planned sci-fi plot. It is a bit annoying that the protagonist is such a crybaby that you want to slap her, although it gradually looks like she may have a justification to be. Are the aliens really "picking on" Yuri more than on the others? Is Ms. Hisakawa, who is less human than she originally seemed, targeting Yuri for "special attention" -- and if so, for benign or malevolent reasons? Do comments about the children "getting used" to their symbiotic partners have a sinister biological double-meaning?

Unfortunately, as is revealed in the DVD's extras, this anime project ran out of money after the fourth 25-minute episode. Alien Nine was produced by the new GENCO company, with animation by the J.C. Staff studio, and released as four OAVs on 6/25/01, 9/25/01, 11/25/01 and 2/25/02. (The original Japanese trailers are also among the DVD extras.) GENCO founder and exec producer Taro Maki, in a video interview, admits that the ending is "ambiguous" and that he hopes to raise funding to continue the anime.

Meanwhile, a commercial blurbed, "The story has just begun!" advises you to buy CPM's English-language edition of author Hitoshi Tomizawa's original Alien Nine manga to find out what happens next. There are many anime direct-to-video productions that break off in mid-story; Alien Nine is more forthright than most in admitting what has happened. If the American release is popular enough, maybe production can afford to resume.