Assemble Insert. © 2001 Masami Yuuki/Tohokushinsha Film Corporation.

Assemble Insert.
OAV series, 1989-1990. Director: Ayumi Chibuki. 60 minutes. Price & format: DVD $24.95 bilingual; video $19.98 dubbed. Distributor: The Right Stuf International.

1989 was a good year for cartoonist Masami Yuuki. Two of his popular comic book series about powered armor suits ("giant robots") used to commit crime in Tokyo were adapted for direct to video animated series. One, Patlabor, a drama (but with lots of human-interest humor), became a major hit. The other, Assemble Insert, was a screwball comedy. It only lasted for two half-hour OAVs (released in December 1989 and February 1990, animated by Studio Coa -- or maybe Koa or Core; as long as you pronounce it "ko-a," they're happy), but it was never intended as more than a light diversion.

Tokyo is in the throes of a crime wave. Demon Seed, a diabolical gang dressed in business suits with Ku Klux Klan headdresses, under the leadership of Dr. Demon ("I am a very traditional mad scientist!"), is robbing banks and smashing up police cars with their mighty powered armor suits. They are opposed by the Counter-Demon Seed Special Operations Agents, a squad whose Chief Hattori is glumly aware that he has been given the oddballs and losers from throughout the Japanese police force. He decides that what they need is a superhero, so he stages a Hollywood-type talent contest to pick one. They end up with 15-year-old Maron Namikaze, a shy high school student whose mother pushed her into it. Since Special Operations is so poorly funded that they cannot even afford air conditioning in their sweltering office, Hattori decides to develop Maron simultaneously as a superhero (with an invulnerable costume developed by Dr. Shimokobe, an obsessed comic-book fan) and as a teen pop singing star. Maron's first encounter with Demon Seed is so devastating to them that they disappear into hiding. With no crime left to fight, Special Operations concentrates on turning Maron into an Idol Singer. This displeases Dr. Shimokobe, who wants to see lots of classic battles between superheroes and supervillains; so he invents even better giant robots and gives them to Demon Seed so they can return to crime. (Shimokobe dumps the robot suits at their Addams Family-esque haunted house headquarters while wearing a Santa Claus suit. "But it's Summer...") Well, you get the idea.

Assemble Insert was a hit at American anime fan meetings in the early 1990s as a hilarious bootleg video. Screenings were usually interrupted every couple of minutes so fans in the know could explain the in-group jokes to the rest of the audience. It is reasonable that the American commercial video release does not keep stopping to explain these jokes, but here is where the DVD could have really taken advantage of its "extras" capabilities to annotate the story. Alas, this American release does not even translate the title song lyrics (which include Maron's apology for forgetting her lines). Enough of the humor will be understood by anime fans to keep them laughing, notably the visual references to Gigantor, Atragon and other Japanese sci-fi hits, the lampoon of show-biz pressure to create and merchandise new teen Idol Singer sensations, and comparisons of Yuuki's character designs here with those in his Patlabor. But without an explanation, who will know that chain-smoking Chief Hattori is a caricature of the editor of the comic book that published Assemble Insert, and his buffoonish cops are caricatures of Yuuki himself and his cartoonist pals (including now-famous anime director Shoji Kawamori)? Or that the two girls who appear in a brief live-action parody of a really low-budget TV commercial are the real voice actresses of Maron and her Idol Singer rival? Licensed anime releases are supposed to replace old bootleg fan videos, but this release of Assemble Insert may create a market for the notes from the early '90s fannish translations.