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Year:     1996
Studio:   AIC
Feature:  3/5
DVD:      0/5

Burn-Up W is a video with four episodes that may be part of an animated series. The story is about a special police unit called the Warriors (hence the W in the title), a team of  of five women and a man, all of them drawn from other departments in the police department.

Headed by Maki (voice of Tiffany Grant) the team consists of Rio (voice of Amanda Winn) as the combat expert, Maya (voice of Renee Foresman) as the weapons expert, Lilica (voice of Kimberly Yates) as the computer expert, Nanvel (voice Carol Amerson) who is introduced in the second episode as the robotics expert, and the incompetent male Yugi (voice of Jason Lee) who has no specialty.

Rio is the main character who is constantly bedeviled by excessive debts. She's always looking for ways to get more money and is usually spending that money even faster than she gets it. Yugi is constantly chasing after Rio. The other characters have very little depth compared to Rio.

The main arc is about virtual reality goggles that the main villain wants to sell. They are very addictive and have hidden properties that are revealed in the third episode. Meanwhile the first two episodes deal with a hostage situation and a missing person situation with the main plot sort of in the background.
Everything heats up in episode 3 when a VR goggle is found by the police. The bad guys stage an assault of the police building and the Warriors are the only people who can stop the three attackers. Episode 4 continues the fight and ends the video on a mixed note since the main villain has not been caught.

One thing is that this video is aimed at a more adult audience. There is a little bit of nudity. All the women (except for Maki) are busty and wear relatively revealing clothing. And they jiggle a bit too. Still, it's not too bad and the animation is good and the action is good. This being part of a series the characterization is rather undefined which is too bad.

The series also tends towards humor which I'm not a big fan of. Rio is not that sympathetic a character and it's only later on when something really bad happens that you start to see she's not quite all that shallow. Overall it's an interesting video but a bit short and undeveloped.

Copyright (c) 2004 Kevin C. Wong
Page Created: November 21, 2004
Page Last Updated: November 21, 2004