Lately, you have been hearing about findings that attractive people tend to have desirable genes and posses stronger attraction potential through their DNA. What if there is this single gene that can attract every available mate in your presence? For short, you can attract anybody from your wildest dreams.
One such individual had that killer DNA and he was known as "Mega-Playboy". In the early 90's the Mega Playboy came of age, seduced 100 women, and they all gave birth to a male, thus creating 100 more Mega-Playboys. When they mature, they all posses the "Mega-Playboy" DNA and they each mated with 100 more women that gave birth to even more "Mega-Playboy�fs". Let's say there is such a great population problem in the future, that a DNA operative was hired to travel across time to give the Mega Playboy a gene modifying bullet that eliminates the original "Mega-Playboy" gene sequence, thus saving the future from overpopulation.
Karin Aoi is the woman that signed up for the job. When she accomplishes her mission, all she wants is a wonderful husband, a cute pet, and a sweet sweet home with a garden. After she travels back to early 1990's Japan and finds a teenager named Junta, she couldn't believe that the poor sap would become the Mega-Playboy.
Junta Momonari is your basic romantic comedy anime male lead; the average guy who isn't too athletic, not that tall, has strange hair (spiked like Yugi from Yu Gi OH but made way before Yugi was conceived), attends high school, has a female childhood friend, and is attracted to girls. Unfortunately whenever he gets excited by a feminine presence, his stomach doesn't agree with him and becomes sick. That means the poor dude cannot kiss, touch, or even look at a female or even her panties without vomiting profusely. He tries his best to hold it back but messes up every time. Earlier in the first episode, Junta was invited to lovely Tomoko Saeki's apartment. We first see Tomoko when she was taking a shower, and she asks Junta to hand her a towel after she finishes. As she exits, she does a striptease and asks him to give her some loving. Junta becomes sick and ruins a chance of a lifetime. Being upset that her body sickens Junta, Tomoko kicks him out and Junta is heart broken.
Karin realizes that Junta is the Mega-Playboy; so she takes him to a coffee house, tells him what the situation is, shoots the DNA bullet at him, and knocks Junta out so his DNA would be modified in the process. Just as Karin goes back to her time navigation pod and goes about in her future success, her boss tells her that she sent the wrong bullet back and chances are that Karin created the Mega-Playboy.
When Junta regains consciousness and he eventually discovers when he comes across with various women in his life (either Tomoko, his childhood friend Ami, and even Karin herself), he sometimes goes through this transformation into a guy who says all the right things, stands up straight, eyes look more serious, pushes all the right buttons, and has high confidence and charisma, and he's very polite to the ladies. In the Metamorphosis volume, Junta does not know how to activate the Mega-Playboy gene at will but all he knows that something happens and his gene kicks in. The effect goes away whenever Junta is distracted from his romantic train of thought and a comedic train wreck occurs.
DNA^2 is based on a five volume manga by Masaku Katsura, the creator of the manga/anime series Video Girl Ai and the Japanese only 'I�f's'. He is known for his highly detailed and beautiful character designs and character driven romantic comedy hijinks. If you are not familiar with anime romantic comedies, here is a crash course: a guy falls for a girl, other girls fall for that guy, sexual tension increases between childhood friends, sexual tension leads to slap stick and sight gags, plenty of fanboy friendly T&A, a rival male wants what the male lead has, you scream "awww" when romance happens, and somehow there is a conclusion at the end of the series.
The show first aired on Japanese TV in 1994 with 12 episodes and 3 other episodes were made for the Original Animated Video series. Back then, shows were hand painted on animation cells and seeing DNA^2 in motion show a warm, hand crafted, detailed feel. The high tech looks round and fantastic, DNA transformation energy portrayed as rays of colors and some brief lighting changes, and the animation coloring reflect the personality of each character (light hues for being in love while darker hues for jealousy).
Like most televised anime, there is a catchy opening theme (with fast moving animation) to pep you up for the upcoming episode and closing theme is a ballad (with low frame rate animation) that winds you down after a frantic episode. DNA^2 opening and closing themes are performed by two of the most well known Japanese pop groups: �eL'Arc~en~Ciel�f and �eChage and Aska�f. �eBlurry Eyes�f, performed by �eL'Arc~en~Ciel�f, is a very upbeat, catchy tune that combines mellow male Japanese vocals with a semi hard rocking romantic beat. If you never heard of them, �eL�fArc~en~Ciel�f performed �eSpirit dreams inside�f in the �eFinal Fantasy: The Spirits Within�f Soundtrack�f, which was the second song in the ending credits. �eTonight, a little embrace�f, the ending theme, by �eChage and Aska�f is a piano ballad about a guy reminiscing the times when he was in love. Chage and Aska has been around for a long time in Japan, and made music for such Hollywood movies like "Something There" for �eStreet Fighter: The Movie and �gTime�h for �eJudge Dredd�f. Listening these two songs is worth the two minutes each episode for not skipping the opening and closing theme on the DVD.
The Junta 'puking face' sight gag never looks obscene or gross because the animators (and the original manga artist) make Junta's expressions hilarious and you can't help but feel sorry for the guy. Compared to American Pie and other popular 'sex comedies' in American pop culture, the comedic 'sexual situations' in DNA^2 are fairly mild. With brief scenarios that involve a female character taking a shower (with no explicit nudity), lingerie clad ladies, and a young woman wanting to make love with somebody; it is nothing that isn't shown prime time TV and it is okay for teenagers to watch this show.
When watching DNA^2 you have an exclusive seat in watching the lives of Junta, Karin, Ami, Tomoko, and everybody else is involved with young Junta's life. Within the first three episodes, there is enough character development that you actually care about what happens to each person, what they want from the situations, laugh with their comedic pitfalls, and just to see how they interact with each other. I don�ft want to give any spoilers on what exactly happens when these characters interact because the joy in watching DNA^2 is finding them out yourself.
The Disc:
The video transfer has an analog feeling on the print. Like in analog animation, the film is captures the various hues and colors with great contrast when it needs it and some muting when the moment requires a soft look. To mildly annoy some, there is some minor damage with the print by nicks and scratches with minor dust and dirt here and there. You could hardly notice the aliasing and color blending on the MPEG2 transfer unless if you can notice those things on an ultra high-resolution monitor. The DVD contains the original Japanese aired credits with the Kanji (Japanese characters) lyrics on the bottom of the screen in the opening and closing credits. When watching the DVD, the experience is similar to Japanese fans buying the analog Laser Disc episodes when it came out on Japan.
The navigational menu is very attractive and simple to use. Each menu contains an animation from the show. The 'Title menu' really stands out; it has a cool DNA molecule strand moving on the left, the title of the Series and the DVD volume are on the top, menus on the right, scenes from the show are being displayed on the background and DNA structures are on the foreground without obstructing the menu. Each of the transitions between the main menu and a root menu is an anime clip in English. The 'Pick A Scene' menu has 6 monitors on each side with a small moving clip in each menu, and the screen navigation menus are in the center of the screen. One thing that Central Park Media DVD based menus that really find it convenient is that they have the 'Language' option as the first thing on the menu. Anime fans know that they want to pick English or Japanese with Subtitles before watching the video. After selecting the language, the video starts automatically with no delay. Beware of the spoilers inside of the menus revealing a minor punch line with animation and audio, but the punch line is funnier when seeing the buildup in the main video.
There are two language soundtracks in the DVD, Japanese and English, and they are both on 2.0 Dolby Digital. Don't worry about not being on 5.1 Digital because it is a TV series and I don�ft think even the original audio master to be remixed in native 5.1 sounds. When listening on surround sound, most of the dialog is from the center channel and there is plenty of music and ambient effects. The Japanese and English dubbing are very clear and have great voice acting. The Japanese voice actors are well experienced and bring to the characters to life. The English voices have the distinctive English anime sound, the voice acting isn't as serious as in Final Fantasy X but the voice cast isn't afraid of sounding really silly or being too into their roles. The English dub cast pronounces the Japanese names in the proper Japanese context without 'localizing' the sounds to remind you that you are watching Japanese animation that takes place in Japan. There are some minor aspects that may put an ultra hardcore Otaku in disarray (mentioning XXX Porno for a hentai video or pronouncing Ka-RIN as KAR-in) but I can assure you that the English dubbing is very faithful to Japanese script. On the subject of scripts, the English subtitles are in an easy to read yellow font and the lyrical translation of the songs are in a green font. Encoded on the video there are four instances �ehard�f subtitles (as in you cannot remove the text on the DVD) are used to translate Japanese text building signs.
The are a few special features on the Metamorphosis volume of DNA^2 compared to most anime TV series DVDs. The Art & Sketch Gallery is a one-minute slideshow that has 8 animation cell pictures, four pieces of conceptual artwork and 2-character cutout styled pictures of Karin and Tomoko. There is a "What is DNA?" info screen on describing what is DNA and what does it contain. It is convenient that there is highlighted blue text describing key terms like nucleotides, adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine just in case you have a biology exam the night before. The Mega Playboy quiz is quite original, if you ask me, in terms of DVD extras go. There are five multiple-choice questions about dealing with women with a selection of three possible answers. You can get up to 15 points and there are three possible endings. I recommend you watching the show first before taking the quiz because the questions would be even funnier. Also, there is a PC DVD ROM (only compatible with Windows) special features program. You can either select the Gallery (similar to the DVD video gallery but you see the entire animation cell), the script to each episode on the DVD, vocal cast and production credits, or web hyperlinks. In the Sneak Peeks section, there are five previews to other Central Park media anime series and a teaser for the Big Apple Anime Fest 2003 on Labor Day Weekend. Unlike in most anime DVDs; there are no linear notes, character profiles, translation profiles, or even text less opening/closing animation in the first volume. Fortunately, most of the characters are simple enough to understand so you don't need to have a character bio right away.
bottom line:
I am very familiar with the anime scene in North America but I never heard of DNA^2 until a few weeks ago, DNA^2 is an almost forgotten relic from a gone by era of cell based anime. From what I've seen in the first three episodes of DNA^2, it is the start of a solid anime romantic comedy where sci-fi is light, comedic situations that brings out the character in the cast, and moments when you heart starts to sink. Paying $30 for a three episode DVD in a part of a 15 episode series may be a bit much for a casual anime fan, but the price is worth it if you enjoy watching cell based animation with great theme music and a comedic plot based on a Masaku Katsura manga. I recommend this show if you are into romantic comedies or if you enjoy watching anime with somebody dear and near your heart.
By - Matt Cohick
