Grrl Power is a comic about superheroines. In it, the hero Sydney ("The Mighty Halo") has acquired a set of orbs that float around her and give her up to two (one orb per hand) of several superpowers at a time. The orbs are also leveling up; Whether they're getting more powerful themselves or merely unlocking more of their potential to Sydney as her sync rate improves and/or she proves herself worthy is unknown.
One such unlock a little while ago was a passive ability: auto-featherfall. Even when not holding the flight orb, she can no longer suffer falling damage.
This struck me as a really weird line they crossed to go entirely unremarked-on in the comic. Maybe it's because she's surrounded by other far more inhuman creatures - were-bunnies, vampires, elves, a ton of supers, aliens, demons, and more - but I dunno. I would have had a bit of a think about it. Having the relationship she now has with gravity makes her substantially less human than someone with green skin or gills.
A friend (@joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh) and I have started watching random old OVAs recently and this is the second of those. One of the things about this is that because these OVAs are often weird one-off experiments or directors stretching their legs or such, it can be hard to have context for them. I am feeling that especially hard with Grrl Power here, which is an ostensibly simple comedy OVA that is, just beneath that, one of the more puzzling things I've ever seen.
So we've got these three schoolgirls who run an odd-jobs agency. One of them, Ao, is deaf, so all three of them know sign language, leading to some very nicely animated hand motion to convey that, which is nice. (The OVA looks fantastic overall, I'd say, actually, that's probably the least complicated thing about it. Lots of wacky spaghetti-noodle wild takes and big, sweeping landscape shots.) The first half of the OVA is them doing various bits and bobs, the second half centers around them trying to convince a kid named Riku (or that's what they call him, anyway, that's not actually his name) that he needs to attend school regularly. They do this by having him live with them for a day and showing him how they do things. This results in the entire back half of this OVA's sole episode being devoted to showing how good the girls are at being self sufficient, down to growing their own food, contrasted with Riku who is a spoiled layabout.
And if you're picking up some Odd Vibes off of that setup, you're right on the money, because much of the second half of this OVA feels very....libertarian? In a way that I honestly more associate with certain kinds of independent American art than I do anything from Japan, but that could just be me being unfamiliar with the people over there who do this sort of thing. I would honestly say the second half of this almost feels preachy; there's a big point made about how you can't just up and decide to live off the grid, you have to really know what you're doing---the girls as mentioned grow their own food, they know academic material well above their grade level, and they want to buy an island and turn it into a private nation someday (?!?!?!)---which is all well and good but, again, it honestly feels bizarrely preachy.
Which is offputting when combined with some of the more off-color jokes (there is one particularly gross instance of toilet humor. Also at one point Riku tries to be a cheerleader and the baseball team he's cheering on boo and attack him because he's a guy, which I understand that 2004 was a good 20+ years ago so things were different then, but jeez. Also there's a Latin American laborer character which, I don't know *what* to make of that but it was an early example of something that made me kind of wonder what we were doing here.) This may seem contradictory when considered with the deaf character, but honestly if we take the show at its word here---and I see little reason not to---I think her being deaf is supposed to be a kind of "look! Even disabled people can make it if they're wily enough!" kind of thing, which is a bit gross.
Maybe I'm reading way too much into this and the people who made this just thought a bunch of little girls saying this stuff would be funny. To be fair to them, it kind of is, just because of how bizarre and incongruent these concepts are, but it definitely makes the wacky slapstick of much of the first half feel a little weird in hindsight.
Weird little thing overall. I can't say it was wasted time because the whole thing is only 22 minutes long but I don't know I'd really recommend it either.
