Summary: >

The girls from team WARRIOR are back in action. The year is 2023. While some things in the world are peaceful, there are always a certain amount of criminals. And in some situations the criminals are so out of control that even the police can't handle it. Enter team WARRIOR: a specialized, highly advanced team of agents that get to fight with the gloves off. If the police can't handle it then WARRIOR can. But the question is, can the city handle the bill of the aftermath after calling in these special agents?

The team consists of Rio, the blond girl who's all action from fist to foot. Her hand to hand capabilities make her a weapon to be dealt with. Maya is the girl with the guns. While she may be cute and quiet on the outside, she's always looking for an excuse to shoot any form of gun; the bigger the better. Lilica is the newest member of the team and invaluable with her psychic abilities.

These girls may have the skills once they're called up, but there are forces that are scheming something against them. And even if they do have the skills, could they be replaced by something less human?

Thoughts: >

It's funny how this series continues to hang around despite the fact that it gets mediocre reception at best. And having seen pretty much every incarnation of Burn Up, I'm hoping that this series will finally be put to rest. Burn up started as an early 90's anime as a "babes and guns" anime, that took itself way to seriously. Then came Burn Up W in the mid 90s that injected more fun into the concept, but also started with massive fan service. Burn Up Excess came in the late 90s and like it's title says, the fan service was Excessive. Most aspects like the storyline have never been the strong point in the Burn Up series, so there is very little to hang on to. That brings us to Burn Up Scramble: Burn Up for the 21st century.

Burn Up Scramble again takes all the characters and reshuffles them, as Burn Up W did with the original series. So to some extent only the "themes" are really left intact. If you've gotten familiar with the Burn Up series, then keep in mind that there are a lot of changes that went into this series.

[+] Franchise Changes

But lets get started with each point. First of all there is the animation. Now for all of you who do a bit of research on a series, let me tell you that the artwork and most screen caps are Trojan horses. The anime really doesn't look all that great when you watch it. It is true that when you take still shots in much of the anime it looks good, but many aspects are just really badly animated. Character movement is poor, some effects like fire are laughable. But often there are just a lot of shortcuts used all over. And it's weird that in some ways the character designs are great but the backgrounds can be so terrible.

The music is all out bad. And by that I mean noticeably so. And honestly I don't know what the excuse for bad music in such a series is. I mean just throw some cheap techno beats in there and that's really all that's required. But for some reason a lot of it comes across as dull elevator music.

The characters weren't very good either. Rio is still the big boobed blond that has bad luck with men for whatever reason. As such there is still no reason to like this girl just like her other incarnations in the series. Yet at least there were times you would side with Rio when she was kicking ass. This time around even that fell flat for some reason in my eyes. Maya is just all around bad. Her previous version was a crazy beer drinking gun toting maniac that was fun just in concept. Her new incarnation is a very cute, but utterly emotionless girl who you couldn't care less about. Strangely enough Lilica came across stronger being the psychic, instead of the computer hacker girl, but she seems sidelined in much of the series. Yugi is the police chief who has no brain and is just trying to hit up Rio despite the fact that his "girl friend" works in the police department as well. So you take all of these characters and mash them together in a series and you're not going very far. But wait. It gets worse.

You see the story lines (never a strong point in the franchise) are completely BORING. And let me tell you, action based titles that are dull are going nowhere fast. It's a completely formula anime that is so predictable that you almost want to fast forward to the next episode after 5 minutes. And the sad part will be that you're not missing much. Maybe that's why Lilica is psychic because she has the ability to see things in the Burn Up Scramble world as they are absolutely predictable. And no, even the minor "twist" wasn't very good. But each story, came across as drab and without vitality, like it was just going from A to B like it was written by robots. And for that matter there was the comedy which was just sad. There is the constant gag that Lilica (being the psychic) continually revealing embarrassing information about Rio by accident, after which Rio kicks her ass. And as I write that I acknowledge that the description makes it seem far more funny than it is. I actually found it bizarre that it was put in their as an obvious attempt at comedy, but completely unfunny.

So as I mentioned the thing about robots writing this title, it's like robots did the entire thing. They see the formula, but then execute it in a way that has no meaning. The comedy is not funny. The action is not interesting. The music does not add any emotion. The plot does not go anywhere that warrants watching. It's a series that was based off of the fun Burn Up concept, but then forgot the fun. And while I prefer to reserve the "sucks" rating to titles that I completely hate, I must say this one seriously deserves that rating. I mean holy crap there is just nothing really good here. But I don't hate this series. Why? Because it does everything without a soul, and I find I'm strangely indifferent about it. Like this series is so unexciting that it's sort of soothing. Maybe it's a new form of boredom I've never experienced before. In a nutshell: do not watch.

Screen Caps: >