Superdimensional Century Orguss 02

Director
Fumihiko Takayama
Production
Bandai, Big West, MBS
Country of origin
Japan
Format
OVA
Running time
6 episodes
Year
1993

Super Diemensional Century Orguss 02 - DVD

By Joseph (Joe) Wood
17th Dec 04

Orguss 02 is a sequel to a thirty-five episode series conveniently named Orguss. Unfortunately Orguss has yet to make it to British shores. Orguss 02 is still highly enjoyable without any knowledge of Orguss, the opening screen may not make sense at first but things are explained extremely well later on.

Set two-hundred years after the events in Orguss, at a time when the countries are at the same sort of technological level as we were post World War One. A discovery is made; robots that have a space for a pilot, these discoveries are named “Decimators”. The discovery of Decimators leads to a number of violent wars, leaving two dominant opposing countries, Revillia a country lead by a royal family and Zafran lead by a dictator.

Lean, a young mechanic and his boss are repairing Decimators found on the seabed for Revillia's navy. Soon Lt. Manning turns up from the imperial guard saying that Lean and his boss can go home early if they are prepared to repair a Decimator on the way back. While on the way back their plane is attacked by a Zafran Decimator, Lean pilots the Decimator, and with Manning’s instructions, defeats the Zafran Decimator against all odds. Lean’s boss is killed however and upon learning his boss’s family are in desperate need of money Manning convinces Lean to join the imperial guard. Lean then joins Manning to infiltrate a Zafran Decimator mine town. Manning finds that the Zafran people have uncovered a huge Decimator, and are searching for a girl who is somehow connected to it. Lean in the mean-time meets this girl. The giant Decimator is activated, and Manning fails to pick up Lean and the girl, opting to escape on his own, leaving Lean and the girl behind enemy lines.

Orguss 02 is a six half an hour episode series and suffers from a slow start, it’s not until after episode three that things begin to pick up. At first the story seems very familiar, upon showing a friend he remarked about five minutes into the first episode “I bet he ends up piloting a robot and saving the day!” Lt. Manning is a dead ringer in appearance for Han Solo, and Lean is very much like Luke Skywalker’s clone. The whole thing is presented in an extremely fresh way, and while you may be right about where this is all going half the time you’ll be quite surprised at the other half. The main characters are all well developed throughout the episodes and you can’t help liking them.

The DVD from Manga Entertainment contains both English and Japanese language options, although the subtitles seem to follow the English dub more closely with subtitles like “K enough said”. The English dub also removes a lot of the fairly decent background music, and keeps the opening music the same where as in the Japanese version the opening music changes.

Orguss 02 is rewarding if you can get through the slow start and can be watched easily from start to finish in one sitting. By no means a essential purchase but a good one to have in your collection.

-- Joseph (Joe) Wood 17th Dec 04

Superdimensional Century Orguss 02 Images