Project A-Ko: The First Anime Parody

For over 40 years, the first recognized anime parody has been Project A-ko from 1986. Prior to this, there were fan creations like fandubbed episodes of Yamato and of course the infamous original animated Daicon openings. Chances are, most American otaku are familiar with the title, especially since it became the name for one of country’s longest running fan conventions. The initial theatrical release led to a trio of OVA sequels, plus a spinoff OVA titled Project A-Ko Vs. Battle which is the first anime to tread into “parallel universe” territory when it came to doing a remake. For many, Project A-Ko was one of the first anime titles that they were introduced to outside of TV titles like Speed Racer or Voltron as it was frequently shown at sci-fi cons and displayed on Blockbuster Video, despite the fact that the movie was labeled as an adult title without being a porno.

Speaking of which, Project A-Ko first began as the concept for the hentai anthology Cream Lemon. The film was directed by Katsuhiko Nishijima who went on to do lots of other ecchi titles like Agent Aika. Nishijima also wrote the screenplay with Tomoko Kawasaki who wrote for Southern Cross, along with Yuji Moriyama who eventually directed the equally crazy Nuku Nuku. They all managed to work in enough fan service in a production intended to be a satire of anime during a time when there weren’t many comedy anime films in the mid-80s, although the rapid-fire humor is similar to Urusei Yatsura which most of the production crew had worked on.

The title was borrowed from one of Jackie Chan’s earlier hits, Project A, and this translated well as there is a ton of action shoved in with all the pop culture references. Among some of the anime titles being parodied were from the late 70s on up like Lupin III, Space Battleship Yamato, and Macross, along with a bizarre replacement of the android from Harmagedon with Colonel Sanders. There’s also some poking fun at American comic books, but we’ll get into that later. Even the names of the main characters are joke nicknames the studios used before deciding on their actual names. The animation was meticulously crafted on the same level as a space opera and treated fairly seriously, so if you were just watching this for the first time you might not recognize Project A-Ko as being a comedy.

The story is a love triangle between the super-strong teenage redhead A-Ko, her very annoying childhood friend C-Ko, and the spoiled rich girl B-Ko who is the queen bee at the new school they just transferred to. The relationship between A-Ko and C-Ko seems like they are just good friends, but B-Ko wants to take it a step further and make C-Ko her lover, although there isn’t much yuri baiting throughout the story. Lesbian fangirls had best not get their hopes up too much expecting this to be a romantic drama. B-Ko uses her scientific genius to create various mechas to put A-Ko out of the way, but A-Ko’s strength always triumphs, so B-Ko uses her secret weapon, a power armor bikini capable of mass destruction which begins the second half of the film as being one giant showdown between the enraged schoolgirls.

The schoolyard brawl is not the only focus of the plot as it takes place in the futuristic Graviton City which was built on the remains of a crashed spaceship from 16 years prior that left a huge crater behind. A stranger in sunglasses named D is an agent for an alien empire who is looking for their lost princess who happens to be C-Ko, even though the movie starts out making you believe that their original target was A-Ko which would explain her superhuman abilities. D reports to the alien space captain who is a joke version of Captain Harlock and Char from Gundam constantly thirsty for alcohol. The huge alien battleship makes it way to Graviton City to reclaim their princess while plowing through all of Earth’s defenses, and the strange part is that it’s all done largely straight like another sci-fi invasion epic. This was due to Japan having not the stranglehold they had on copyrights that they have now, like how Who Framed Roger Rabbit could only have come out in the 80s when all the characters were available to shuffle between different license holders.

The two plots finally converge with D abducting C-Ko, forcing A-Ko and B-Ko to put their duel to the death on hold and make their way up through the spaceship where it’s revealed that all the aliens who look like men are really women. This idea alone is what separates Project A-Ko from your average parody by revealing that an entire invading force were all really warrior women with a huge laundry cargo hold filled with smelly undies. The ship crashes on top of Graviton City where its left dangling precariously on top of the highest building in town. The next day, most of all the damage to the city has been repaired overnight just like at the end of any Power Rangers episode, and we finally discover where A-Ko gets her fantastic strength from. It’s briefly revealed that A-Ko’s parents are none other than Superman and Wonder Woman who got married and moved to Japan, although they’re both apparently permanently retired since they didn’t do zilch during the alien attack from the day before.

Aside from poking fun at DC superheroes, Project A-Ko was a smorgasbord of pop culture references. There are spaceships that are just the Valkyries from Macross, although with no cool robot mode. Transformers gets tagged too when B-Ko builds a convertible robot to stop A-Ko which is completely incapable of piloting once its robot form. The most estranged bit in this comes from Fist Of The North Star where one of B-Ko’s flunkies is a huge muscular schoolgirl version of Kenshiro who has a masculine voice when she’s flexing up but a normal girl’s voice when she’s talking.

Project A-Ko was given a wide release in the 80s through Central Park Media which used the original Manga Entertainment dub from England. After the first movie, CPM dubbed all the other OVAs through Ocean Group in Canada, so if you were a regular watcher of Ranma and Dragonball during the 90s then you’ll recognize a lot of voice actors in it. The film was reaching for an international audience through Shochiko in Japan as the soundtrack had songs done entirely in English composed by American musicians Joey Carbone and Richie Zito, one of these was actually sung by Samantha Newark who was also doing the speaking voice of Jem around the same time. The movie would regularly be featured on the old Sci-Fi channel during their anime showcase marathons. You might have seen this film labeled Supernova in various other regions where it’s rewritten that A-Ko is really bionic instead of a superhuman. Most of these editions were censored leaving out some of the blatant nudity that was rampant in the 80s, although the film doesn’t have an obligatory shower scene.

This film is one of the first anime that highlights women as the main characters. For one thing, the main romance plot is between three females with no central Archie archetype for any of them to fawn over, although most of the feelings between the leads are platonic, however B-Ko seriously has some less than innocent plans involving C-Ko. Project A-Ko helped established females as assertive strong figures which that eventually go onto influence other anime like Alita, even though A-Ko and B-Ko’s focus is about bickering teenagers instead of standing up to some opposing evil force.

Project A-Ko has been released several times over the last few decades into English and has been picked up by numerous US distributors. It was first released by Central Park Media throughout the 90s and most of the early 2000s. Afterwards, the rights went to Eastern Star which is an imprint of Discotek Media, and has subsequently become available on different streaming formats, most of which are for free. Perspectives on the movie differ over time with some of the older otaku loving it when it first came out mostly for the cheesy humor but then looking back on it later as just being a big piece of schlock. Modern day anime fans have come to appreciate the high-grade animation, even though a good portion of the film’s fan service might turn off possible viewers and seen as being degrading to women even though the entire story is about strong women fighting each other and not for the love of some dull guy. There is gratuitous nudity in most uncensored editions of the film.

The current Perfect Edition of the film has a horde of features including clips from the unreleased Project A-Ko CD-ROM game and numerous commentaries. Project A-Ko made a big enough impact among American fandom to not only get its own English tabletop game, plus a comic book adaptation drawn by Ben Dunn from Ninja High School which is another title worth looking up if you liked this. Depending on how much you appreciate the animators’ attention to detail, you’ll probably have fun with this over multiple viewings, but it’s not unreasonable to see today's youth finding it dated and just loaded with panty shots.