Najica Hiiragi is leading a double life. The public knows her as a very wealthy businesswoman and one of CRI Cosmetics foremost perfume designers. What they dont know is that she also operates as a secret agent utilizing her years of training clever tactics and borderline superhuman sense of smell to serve CRIs Intelligence Agency. For her most recent assignment shes been tasked with rounding up a number of rogue humilites which are biologically engineered android homunculi possessing various levels of artificial intelligence. Paired with her own humilite partner a young looking redhead named Lila Najica has been tasked with training her new assistant as an agent while the two combine their efforts to navigate the intricate scenarios that their targets have constructed for themselves and bring them back alive at all costs all while uncovering the capabilities true origins and complex psychological layers of their targets as the lines between humanity and artificial intelligence begin to blur. Najica Blitz Tactics does not have a very promising pedigree behind it. Im going to set aside the primary reason most people know about this anime for just a moment to instead look at the creators behind it pretty much none of which Ive discussed in a review before. Najica was produced by Studio Fantasia a now defunct anime studio that never really managed to make a strong mark on the world. During their existence from the early eighties to the mid twentytens ignoring all the anime productions they helped out with and just looking at the anime they produced by themselves they mostly put out low budget OVAs and ONAs that Ive personally never seen but most of which is probably some degree of hentai? Beyond that theyve only produced a handful of well known titles including Aika Strain and Rumbling Hearts which should tell you all you need to know about the visuals in Najica especially since all these titles share the same director. Katsuhiko Nishijima is a very interesting figure in the anime production field as a good amount of the anime he has worked on have been borderline hentai and almost all of his main directorial jobs have been under the employ of Studio Fantasia. I dont know if he worked FOR Fantasia or if they just kept hiring him because they really liked his work but it genuinely seemed like he and Fantasia were a good fit for each other so it could be either one. Out of the titles I mentioned before... Aika Strain Rumbling Hearts and Najica... Theyre all fairly low budget titles that at least attempted to have serious stories while at the same time delivering indulgent amounts of fanservice that usually take the form of frequent panty shots and nudity thats either conveniently censored or uncensored but in some way badly drawn or just presented in a way that undermines the tone of the series well talk about that later. One thing I definitely admire about Nishijimas work at least out of what Ive seen is that while he usually isnt working with a ton of resources he at least makes an effort to not let that issue get in the way of the visuals. If youve been reading my reviews for a long time youre probably aware that one of my favorite anime trends is when a director is really smart in the way of budgt management finding ways around their limitations or even using clever tactics and corner cutting techniques to their advantage and to his credit Nishijima really really tries to do this. The effort is appreciated but Ive seen it pulled off way better. Najica is more than anything else a secret agent action show so there pretty much has to be a good amount of well animated and exciting action scenes which there definitely are but in between them its just a little too obvious that the cheaper moments exist to compensate for them. Well the animation isnt perfect the budget could have been managed a little better but the soundtrack is fucking sick. There are only three purely instrumental anime openings I never skip those being Triguns Baccanos and this one and you better believe this one gets stuck in my head just as hard as the other two. The whole OST has a really cool jazzy big band type of feel to it. If this series had been popular enough to garner a stateside soundtrack release I would buy a copy in a heartbeat. The English dub was an early ADV effort making this dub yet another vintage ADV time capsule and its also really strong. Kira Vincent Davis plays one of her most grounded roles to date keeping within a low register to play the strong yet sultry title character Najica and while multiple classic ADV actors have to play humilites in various stages of selfactualization and social development growing while dealing with human nuances they cant understand Monica Rial plays her character throughout an entire series of a similar developmental path and she pulls it off beautifully. All right weve gotten this far I guess its time to address the elephant in the room. If you knew about this series before today its probably because of this AMV Hell 4 clip. https://www..com/watch?v=YJjpLjv4o18 Look I like fanservice. Going back to my teenage years the ability of manga and anime to show the kind of content you could never get away with in American comics and cartoons was one of the main reasons I started getting into this particular medium. Having said that it is entirely possible for fanservice to be detrimental to a series. One of my favorite examples of this is Sankarea where the story makes you feel REALLY fucking bad for the female lead since she has an abusive father who exploits her body for forced nudity and then the series abruptly turns around and shows her frolicking in the shower inadvertently putting the audience in the shoes of her insidiously perverted and narcissistic father. Thats an admittedly extreme example but there are plenty of other anime out there that had some serious or poignant point to make but the parade of fanservice they used to keep the audiences attention made it hard to take them seriously. So you may be thinking okay then this is probably the case with Najica right? Believe it or not no. Or at least I dont think so but why not? How does an anime with this much constant fanservice manage to explore some relatively thought provoking subject matter without stabbing itself in the foot? Well to be honest I dont think the fanservice in Najica was ever intended to be sexy. Yes I know Im asexual most forms of fanservice dont work on me like they do for most people but I can usually understand what theyre going for and why people enjoy it. In Najica the fanservice feels almost entirely incidental... Not important or essential to the story by any means and not even really being justified in context just... Incidental like its just THERE like the scenery and the walls of any given room. Like exposed panties are as normal as fucking shoes. Its kinda hard to explain so lets make a quick comparison to another pantiesfueled fanservicefest Strike Witches. I love Strike Witches but that series has this mindnumbingly stupid bit of lore where every female on earth is constantly bottomless... I wont explain it here... But panty shots are part of that animes identity and theyre so transparent about it that if you were to create an edit where everyone was wearing say bike shorts any casual viewer would be like What the fuck is with this direction? Why do they keep shoving bike shorts in my face? Does it think Im turned on by bike shorts or something? Where if you made the same edit to Najica barring maybe a few moments I dont think anybody would really notice. Now you could explain this by saying okay well the director is just really bad at delivering fanservice but I dont think thats true either. Theres a moment somewhere around the middle of the series where a humilite takes a girl hostage in a jet and shes holding her upside down in a 69 position with the girls panties just under her chin legs spread under her arms and I swear to whatever God you worship that this entire scene is played completely deadpan straight. There is no fucking way any of this was accidental. The director had to have known exactly what he was doing and it feels that way the entire series. I dont know maybe Im off base here this is entirely speculation on my part so take this with a grain of salt but I get the impression the fanservice in this showexcept the actual nudity which I think was just sorta awkwardly inserted in to draw an audience was included entirely as a tongueincheek running gag like a subtle parody of shows like Dirty Pair and Kiddy Grade which pretend to take their story and plot seriously while insidiously using fanservice to market to teenage boys and movies like the James Bond franchise where sexiness is just about everywhere you look and nobody ever questions it. Its a shame it doesnt come off that way from the outside looking in because Najicas reputation as That panties anime does a huge disservice to the quality of its writing and the power of some of its storylines. And yes this is a pretty damn well written show. Each episode sends Najica and Lila off on a different secret agent adventure full of intrigue fun action and some genuinely surprising twists that never feel forced or pulled out of the writers ass. Thats not to say there isnt ANY bullshit on display but it stays well within the limits that your suspension of disbelief would normally allow for this particular genre. Each episode is selfcontained enough to stand on its own with its own creative ideas and unique scenario to set it apart from the others but at the same time each episode contributes to the growing mystery surrounding humilites. Theres a lot of extra effort put into both the writing and the direction... Small character moments and little extra tidbits of animation that give the series and its characters a little extra character. Im not going to pretend that this is one of the most profound and deep anime Ive ever seen... Its not not by a long shot... But it does take its subject matter seriously despite how ridiculous the presentation can be. The humilites are constantly defying what you might have thought you knew about them both on an individual basis and with Lila whos character development takes her from misunderstandings and imitating her master to feeling conflicted over the very idea of feeling conflicted. Morality is almost never black and white here and you cant always tell which direction the story is about to go in or who is on what side. This anime is just really fun. Its a fun slice of cheese cake with a tongue in cheek sense of humor pretty inspired writing and just enough substance to be worthy of holding your attention. Najica Blitz Tactics is currently out of print from ADV Films and its manga counterpart is also out of print from ADV manga. I know I just published a review of an that explored what it meant to be human by following the development of a simple and childlike artificial intelligence humanoid but I swear that was a coincidence and besides Najica takes a different approach to this subject matter than Chobits did. It takes a few generally familiar and commonplace tropes... The dynamic between man and machine a grizzled veteran being forced to partner up with a frustrating rookie only for the two of them to bond over time an agent who works by the books being forced into a situation where they have to question their orders etc... And takes a refreshing inspired approach to all of them. I know the production values could be better and the fanservice can seem overwhelming at first but I do believe its worth putting up with this titles many shortcomings to get to the genuine heart and brain lying beneath them. This series isnt for everyone but I enjoyed it. I give Najica: Blitz Tactics a 7/10