In this action/fantasy reminiscent of The X-Men and Speed, Get Backers features two wise-guy punk kids who go up against corporate criminals and Yakuza gangs.

Get Backers. V.1, G & B On the Case. V.2, Find the Fine Arts. V.3, Into the Limitless Fortess. V.4, Battles With the Past. V.5, Virtual Apocalypse. V.6, Back in Business. V.7, Venus, Interrupted. V.8, Memories, Mementos, and Monkeys. V.9, Return to the Limitless Fortress. V.10, Get Back to the Fortune.
TV series (49 episodes), 2002-2003. Directors: Kazuhiro Furuhashi & Keitarou Motonaga. V.1-9, five episodes/125 minutes; V.10, four episodes/100 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: A.D.V. Films.

Ban Midou and Ginji Amano are a couple of Tokyo street youths who have teamed up to create the Get Backers Recovery Service. “If it was taken, we’ll get it back.” They find lost objects or, since this is dramatic anime, they more often re-steal stolen items to return them to their rightful owners. Their home is Ban’s shabby Volkswagen Beetle, and their office is the Honky Tonk Café, except for when Paul, the manager, won’t let them in until they pay their overdue tab.

Two wise-guy punk kids against corporate criminals and Yakuza gangs sounds dramatic enough, but Get Backers is a superhero action fantasy in the genre of The X-Men and the Keanu Reeves movie Speed, the one where a passenger-filled bus must get up enough speed to leap over a break in a freeway overpass. Ginji can generate electricity like an electric eel to paralyze or fry his adversaries. Ban has both a super-strong grip and a hypnotic stare that can make his opponents believe whatever he wants them to for one minute.

That should make them invulnerable, except that their main opponents have extraordinary powers, too. Get Backers introduces Ban and Ginji against such “normal” adversaries as a crooked cop and Yakuza gangsters. Episodes #3 to #5 are a story arc in which the “recovery team” is hired to retrieve a stolen item being sent to Tokyo via a “transportation team” that is just as super and far more ruthless; Kuroudo “Doctor Jackal” Akabane who can produce knives from within his body, Himiko “Lady Poison” Kudou whose name says it all, and Gouzou “Mr. No Brakes” Maguruma, their unstoppable driver. The Get Backers have never failed to recover whatever they are hired to get back, while their opponents have never failed to deliver whatever they are hired to transport. The irresistible force meets the invulnerable object, with a subplot establishing that Ban and Himiko know each other from their mysterious past.

In episodes #6 through #8, the Get Backers are hired to help a blind violinist retrieve her stolen Stradivarius from a villain who has gotten Threadmaster Kazuki and Shido the Beastmaster to protect it. Both are former friends of Ginji when he was the leader of the deadliest street gang in Tokyo. Again, the action is heavily laden with cryptic hints like “the Last Children” as to where and how all these youths got their powers.

Get Backers was a 49-episode TV series by Studio Deen broadcast from October 5, 2002 through September 20, 2003. Its strong points are reminiscent of Lupin the 3rd: likeable protagonists and engaging character interaction, a good mix of humor and drama, action that builds suspense through short multi-episode story arcs, witty dialogue and a very good jazz score by Taku Iwasaki. There is some character development; one adventure’s enemies may be the next adventure’s allies and vice versa. But some aspects are overly melodramatic.

Ban and Ginji are just a couple of guys with superpowers who use them when necessary, while the others have made themselves into flamboyant super-villains. There is too much emphasis on the mystery of the continuing characters’ pasts. The questions about how they first met and how they got their powers are dragged out for so long that viewers will feel jerked around by the later episodes, and not all the questions are answered by the series’ end. If you like superhero comic books for older adolescents and young adults, and action movies like Speed and Die Hard, you will enjoy Get Backers.