What begins as a standard lightly dramatic action series turns several shades darker by the end of Part One, and so much more violent by Part Two that the suggested age rating is bumped from TV-14 to TV-MA. Thematically, the second half also delves more deeply into the smiles and trials of Birdy’s past, which plays an increasingly significant role in the present.
Seemingly done for artistic effect at moments of high emotion, this often comes off more as a distracting money-saver that pulls the viewer out of the story at a time the actors and writers have put their all into trying to keep you in it. Action scene motion appears choppy as though skipping frames and goes from merely simplified in Part One to super-deformed and off-model in Part Two. Visually, the second half’s color palette is less washed-out and watercolor-like than its predecessor’s. While they share casts and a contiguous plot, Parts One and Two differ from one another in a few key points. The in-episode music is appropriate and unobtrusive and, of the four openers and closers, the second season intro “kiseki” by NIRGILIS is the most memorable. As for audio quality, the volume waffles on episodes 5 and 6 on Part II. In their defense, the characters are supposed to be annoying and over-the-top it’s just more pronounced in the dub. That’s quite a feat when your two leads are sharing the same body and holding involved conversations in their head.īoth the sub and dub voice actors are well-cast, though in the latter Birdy’s Shion persona is a bit obnoxiously perky and Tsutomu’s classmate Masakubo is a screecher. Happily, the writers leave it at that, allowing them to have their own emotional lives and attachments outside of each other, which keeps the story from feeling too insular and gives it some breadth as well as depth. They understand each other well enough through the necessity of living each other’s daily lives that they cut one another some slack and develop a close friendship. Secondly, he has no problem asserting his will and expressing his opinion to his host. First off, while he’s (conveniently) temporarily living alone, Tsutomu has a life and family and friends. Excellent at her job(s), she never loses her aura of believable innocence and vulnerability, making her more accessible to the viewer than if she were just a cool beauty.Īlso, this is not the usual case of average-boy-finds-himself-cohabiting-with-hot-alien-babe-who-instantly-falls-in-love-with-him. She may put up with bouncing and giggling for photo shoots, but when she’s on the hunt she means business, her heeled boots sending off sparks and ringing out like heavy lead pipes as they hit the pavement. But it also lets her kick some serious backside and use her brain. The show sports some obvious fanservice in the physical person of Birdy, with her painted-on policing outfit and her side job as an airheaded idol. In Part Two (Eps.14-26), as Birdy and her body’s timeshare partner try to bring six escaped terrorists to justice, a mysterious vigilante takes matters into his own hands and stirs up truths Birdy may not be prepared to face.īirdy the Mighty: Decode is difficult to categorize. Between keeping up appearances at Tsutomu’s school, posing as bimbo Shion Arita, and trying to save the world from total destruction, Birdy’s got her work cut out for her. To save him without compromising her investigation, she ships his body off to get repaired while lending his consciousness her own genetically engineered super-soldier form, which she transforms to look like him whenever he’s in the driver’s seat. While confronting her prey, she accidentally kills innocent high-schooler Tsutomu Senkawa. 1-13) of this sci-fi action series, federation agent Birdy Cephon Altera tracks a couple of unscrupulous criminals back to Earth, where she goes undercover as a pin-up idol to apprehend them and recover the dangerous weapon they’ve stolen.