Exterminating the Lovely Angels
A Dirty Pair Affair
By Sean Dillon
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| Art by Katie Mitroff |
This started out as me thinking about what I’d do with a Dirty Pair movie. It was one of those thoughts you come up with when you are trying to distract yourself from doing the work you’re supposed to do. It was completely different from the form it is in now (for starters, the exterminating aspect was referring to Daleks as well as the Buñuel film, but mostly about the Daleks), but enough is in there to require mention (for the record, I thought of Quentin Tarantino directing it mainly because my sense of humor includes “Directors with Nausicaän sensibilities making a Dirty Pair movie” [Hello, future me here. Since writing the pitch, my view on whether or not Tarantino’s a Nausicaän director has shifted to being capable of being in the Nausicaän mode as well as the Keiyurian mode, even within the same film. Were I to write a pitch like this today, I’d probably include other directors like Rachel Talalay {who is very Keiyurian}, Boots Riely {also Keiyurian}, and Guillermo del Toro {because this list needs at least one purely Nausicaän director, albeit in the sense that Tarantino's purely Keiyurian}. Also, I don't bring it up in the pitch, but the reason for the subtitle is to both refer to my favorite Dirty Pair OVA, Affair of Nolandia {though, as the Black Suit shows, I've cooled on it} and for the rhyme]). Admittedly, this is still in the rough stages of the process (I don’t think I give Yuri a lot to do and the textual villain is still vague).
Thematically, the story is about the nature of doing a Dirty Pair in an era filled to the brim with 80’s nostalgia pieces from JJ Abrams’ Star Trek to the upcoming Ghostbusters movie, among several others. In addition, it would also look at the growing force of militarism, patriarchy, and all that jazz. But at its core, the tale would be about two women constrained by the folk memories of who they were in the 80s breaking the chains that bind them from admitting their feelings towards one another. As with the best of Dirty Pair, it’s a love story. (Before you point out how Red Eyes Are a Sign of Hell is my favorite Dirty Pair story, I will concede that story being defined as a love story would be a bit of a stretch. But on average, the best Dirty Pair stories are love stories.)
The frame story opens with a woman with a red pixie hair cut drinking at a dingy bar that looks like it came straight out of a pulp detective novel, with only the smallest amount of sci fi trappings. She is not in a good mood. Her bartender, a woman with a black ponytail, pours the woman another glass, her 8th, she thinks. In the background, an instrumental version of Bob Dylan’s When the Deal Goes Down plays, providing both a melancholic as well as a nautical tone to the scene. Eventually, the bartender asks her patron what her name is. Kei, she replies. They talk about a variety of things, ease tensions and infer mutual attraction. Soon, the bartender asks Kei why she’s at the bar.
Kei: Oh, um… my, ah, my partner died.
Smash cut to opening titles, probably a slightly less upbeat but still poppy version of Russian Roulette; more Somebody That I Used to Know than Dance Apocalyptic.
At this time, I don’t have much of a main plot, probably just some sort of mad scientist making an army for Lucifer or something that would require the 3WA to work with a military outfit. Mughi is more in line with his look from the original short stories, save for the detail that he’s pink (because the modern day equivalent of Mughi is Lion from Steven Universe, a show that you probably should watch at some point as at least two characters are blatantly Lovely Avatars and it’s your best case for modern children’s fiction being utopian, with its older sister show Adventure Time making a relatively good case against it. (Remember that Adventure Time post I made a month back? At the time I wrote this, the person at the heat of that article was still a major influence on my views of the show. Depending on when I wrote it, I might have just unfollowed them.) How it does this is actually very interesting, the advertisements for the show portray the series as about to go grim dark with the gems turning out to be evil or Steven cutting himself off from his friends and loved ones because “he has to be responsible” before the show flat out states “no this is Steven Universe, of course we aren’t going to go grim dark, that would be rubbish. Here’s a musical number about how awesome Love is as well as a good scolding about keeping secrets from those closest to you to ‘protect them’”). Yuri has blue hair in this adaptation and tends to make a lot of snark at the military’s expense. Kei narrates, though her words don’t always match with what’s happening and is in practically every scene.
As I mentioned previously, the Lovely Angels have to team up with a military outfit, which led by one Admiral Carson D Carson, the main antagonist and most unsympathetic character of the film (how unsympathetic? His theme song is a cover of Summertimedone by Linkin Park [them specifically because of the invocation of the live action Transformers movies and their connection to Michael Bay’s fixation with the military] [That's not really a good signifier for his metatextual villainy and is kind of mean to Linkin Park fans]). While he is not revealed to be working with Lucifer, he is nonetheless the antagonist of the film by dint of his goals. You see, much like Michael Keaton in Jackie Brown, Carson thinks of himself as the protagonist of the story (think Chris Pratt in Jurassic World). Or rather, that he should be the protagonist of this thrilling military Science fiction story instead of these two women. He is tactically aware that this is a Dirty Pair and wants to thrust control away from the angels and make Kei his love interest, because she’s the less womanly of the two and it’s up to him to tame her. That he is not immediately beaten down by the Lovely Angels in the first ten minutes is solely due to him being the only other character returning from a previous Dirty Pair story wherein he actually succeeds in becoming a deuteragonist. So as a man of Science fiction who has tasted power, he wants more. (In narration, Kei will try to mention him as little as possible, not even saying his name, while Yuri will, in private, speak of him with word combinations that would make James Rolfe blush)
Collectively, most people see Kei and Yuri as horrifying and bloodthirsty, due to their status as sci fi action movie heroines. They are, of course, highly indignant of this viewpoint and would much rather explore strange new worlds and help people than blow shit up, though admittedly it is fun. Individually, they’re seen as a Tom Boy and Girly Girl. While they don’t express their feelings about this directly, it is clear from body language and some of their word choices that they don’t feel this is who they truly are.
It all comes to a head when Kei and Yuri are about to enact a plan to stop the plot of Lucifer that could actually work and with relatively little property damage. In fact it would have worked, were Carson not to see that it would have worked, thereby depriving him of his role as the protagonist and relegating him to merely a love interest (such a role is too unmanly), and thus “accidentally” goes in guns blazing, making the situation even worse. It doesn’t stop the problem the Lovely Angels were sent to solve, just make what they were trying to do not work. At some point, Kei and Yuri get slightly separated (as in Yuri is a few feet away from Kei) when Carson drags Kei out of the fight. Ostensibly it’s to “save” her from a loosing battle, but the reality of it is Carson sees Yuri as the sole thing keeping him from being the protagonist of the story and straightening Kei out. So he abandons her, dragging the screaming Kei forced to watch as row upon row of Lucifer members descends upon Yuri. She fights to escape from his grasp, but he knocks her out, and she’ll awaken in time for the giant finale to help show how amazing he is at being a Military Science fiction Man.
And then I nick a trick from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (or, rather, my redemptive read of the film) and cut back to the bar.
Kei: We won, in the end. The goodies beat the baddies and everyone lived happily ever after. They even gave us some medals.
The bartender considers pouring Kei another drink, but decides against it.
Bartender: You miss her, don’tcha?
Kei looks down at her empty glass, her teary eyes reflected in the little pools of alcohol left.
Kei: Yeah, I guess I do.
The Bartender smiles knowingly.
Bartender: More than that, you loved her, didn’t ya?
Kei looks at the bartender. Perhaps she’s always known who she was talking to. Perhaps it was only in this moment, in this cue, that she allowed herself to know. Perhaps she never knew before, but now does. Perhaps she lied. Perhaps she left something out. Perhaps there was never a Carson D Carson to drag Kei away from Yuri. And even if there was, he never had any real power to begin with. It was always Kei telling the story to us. She was never in any danger of losing control of the narrative. Perhaps Kei and the woman with black hair she’s been talking with have been telling us a story so that we could accept what’s about to be said. Or perhaps I’m just Pollyanna, and I still believe in miracles. (I was really trying to force that reference, wasn't I?)
Kei: Yeah, I guess I do love her.
The bartender lets down her long black hair.
Yuri: I love you to.
Kei has a giant smile on her face: the smile of knowing love for the first time.
Kei: Ha! You do dye it.
And so they walk out together with a Janelle Monáe cover of Summertime to start the credits.
(Happy Holidays and I'll see you on January 2nd with the start of One Must Imagine Scott Free Happy!)
(Happy Holidays and I'll see you on January 2nd with the start of One Must Imagine Scott Free Happy!)
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