Spoilers below. Reboots get a bad rep and not without reason. Often theyre associated with lazy cashins overthought redesigns a lack of originality or some combination of the three. Birdy The Mighty: Decode is a reboot of sorts. More properly its an adaptation of Birdy The Mighty II itself a reboot of the original Birdy The Mighty manga. Thus most properly Decode is a reboot that is also an adaptation of a reboot. Quite confusing Somehow though through all these changes of hands Decode manages to avoid most of the pitfalls associated with franchise rebooting and forge a strong story all its own. The original Birdy The Mighty OVA was a pretty succinct tale. Having no room for extraneous storytelling meant that it was punchy often literally tothepoint and direct creating a simple fun romp more or less devoid of deeper themes but undeniably excelling at what it set out to do. Decode is a much larger story and right from the beginning far more wrinkles are introduced than in the original. In contrast to the OVAs where each character was in all respectsmotive especiallyquite simple Decode has more room to be spacious and its characters have more angles. For one thing there are simply more of themas many characters are introduced in the first episode as are introduced throughout the OVAs entire runand for another the story has more space to give them each a bit more going on. In the original OVA we dont learn very much at all about Birdys time before she came to Earth aside from some brief flashbacks which were never elaborated on. In Decode her pursuit of an alien criminal is the prelude and by the time she finally encounters Tsutomu at the end of the first episode shes already been on the planet for several months and has adopted a cover identity as an idol/model while searching for the alien superweapon later revealed to be a biological parasite known as the Ryunka. But Decode isnt content to simply differ in terms of scale. Around the end of the third episode it becomes pretty clear that this series aims to have stakes and the early death of Birdys assistant the octopuslike Tuto is a fairly sharp jab although I suspect whether it truly connects will depend on how tied youthe viewerwere to the character. The fourth episode in a fairly sharp turn is effectively a miniature court drama and its here where Decode leaves the selfcontained world and thorough action focus of its predecessor behind for good. The effect of all this is that Decode is in its first half especially a bit all over the place. Decodes cast balloons from substantial in the first episode to borderline excessive by the series halfway point with so many characters many of whom arent terribly visually distinct it can be hard to keep track ofmuch less care aboutall of them and some clumps particularly Tsutomus male classmates and Birdys fellow space cops kind of blend together into indistinct blobs. Others stick out more especially Keisuke a downonhis luck conspiracyobsessed reporter Tsutomus classmate and love interest the waifish Sayaka Birdys enigmatic nominal compatriot Nechla her mentor the dinosauresque Scherzo and several compelling villains such as Kinzel Hower a jackalheaded terrorist who makes a big impression despite only being in a small part of the series and chiefly Satyajit Shyamalan an IndianAmerican businessman who pivots from rather boring in the series first half to quite cacklingly insane in the second and of course theres the cryptic alien Gman Gomez one of the few characters who returns from the OVAs more or less unchanged. In addition to the glut of characters Decode has a habit of mixing comedy fairly serious stabs at drama action a pretty shameless amount of fanservice and from time to time light horror. This is not inherently anything bad many anime mix and match elements of different genres to great effect many of the alltime greats in fact and while its hard to call Decodes use of this technique bad its not exactly stellar either. It often feels like a lot happens in single episodes and the large cast means that many plot threads are often running at the same time which taken all together can make individual episodes sort of run together unless they focus on a smaller subset of those elements and without fail the best do. In particular the action is never anything less than stellar. From expertlydone fights especially Birdys confrontation with a battle droid dressed as a maid in the 9th episode and a neat sequence in the second shown from her perspective in firstperson. The drama too is surprisingly compelling at times despite a habit of leaning on the melodramatic and on odd plot contrivances in a few instances. Its hard to fault the series too much for this given that these are problems that are more or less endemic to action anime. As the series nears its conclusion its focus tightens and much of the comedy is ditched in favor of a narrower focus on the action and drama. It also does get rather dark which is probably not a surprise per se given Tutos early death but when the series begins adopting elements of the world story a genre that flattens out and equates persontoperson emotional issues and broader often worldendangering threats particularly Tsutomus relationship with Sayaka developing just as Birdywithout Tsutomus knowledgeconfirms that she is the Ryunka you really understand just how far from the relatively straightforward romp of the OVAs we are in terms of tone episode 11 in particular is downright stomachturning. But perhaps smartly Decode avoids going fullon Evangelion by scraping together a happy ending near the last possible minute I might add suffice it to say things end decently though not perfectly for our protagonists and in the end what happens is that despite their wildly different aims and the decade between their releases Decode ends up being oddly similar to its OVA ancestor in a pretty important way. It aims to hit a few particular points and despite the mixed execution early on it ultimately hits them almost exactly. Could Decode be better? Almost certainly with a few of its plot contrivances ironed out and its cast trimmed it could be great instead of merely quite good but it is very hard indeed to knock a show for being just a compelling story from beginning to end. Birdy is more or less a superhero and I think that Decode is best considered in those terms. The OVA is a golden or silver age story simple and full of fun action. Decode is more akin to a modern comic the spirit of those old stories is kept intact while the specifics are updated for a different audience. If you liked the OVA and dont have a total aversion to anything dark youll probably find a lot to like in Decode too.