What Am I Watching - Blazing Transfer Student

Synopsis - Takizawa is transferred to a school where every conflict is solved through fighting. He very quickly experiences this himself when he meets the hall monitor at the entrance of the school. The hall monitor, the school bully and Takizawa must fight if they want the lovely Takamura Yukari.

Review - The second I heard "BURNING FIRE!! FIGHT!!!", I knew that I was in for a treat. Goddamn, that opening is epic! So many badass lines like "Who's that? Who? It's me! I'm the transfer student you've heard about!"

This series is awesome (and in my opinion manly) in every sense of the word. The action is awesome, the comedy is awesome, and the art is awesome. But I'll start with the characters while I'm babbling on about this show.

Takizawa is a nice character. He is obviously a parody of your Ippo characters and what not, and it works. The greatest characters in my eyes are Jonichi Koichi and Ibuki Saburo. They are amongst the best characters I have ever seen in a series, for their machismo alone. The opening scene summed up my feelings for Jonichi Koichi, as he verbally (manly)  abuses the main character with lines like "If your teacher told you to die, WOULD YOU!!?" as Takizawa demanded he move so that he can get to class on time. His last question, "If he told you to marry Hitaka Noriko, WOULD YOU!?" (in which Takizawa said he would) had me rolling on the floor laughing. You see, Hitaka Noriko is this fine lady here:

She is a voice actress who has starred as Shiine in Akazukin Chacha, Princess Yarda in Anpanman, Akane in Ranma 1/2 and, well, Takamura in Blazing Transfer Student!!! So, in a way, it made sense. Then right after, Takamura arrives and tells Jonichi that his foot was planted outside school grounds (it was.), which results in Jonichi getting his pride absolutely roasted by lightning. Stuff like this happens throughout the OVA and they are all equally as funny.

The bully has a penchant for screaming out the names of his moves (INSECT-KILLING PUNCH~!) and/or cheating. For example, when he faces the main character in the classroom, he ties the boxing gloves together so that he can't fight. (though that could be down to Takizawa being too dumb to notice). He also stuck his gloves on a pole and used it to win a fight, without getting disqualified. Speaking of penchant for screaming out the names of moves, that pretty much costs Saburo his match, though I won't go too much into it because it is well worth watching how ridiculous it is.

The story as I said before is just silly. You have your lead, who was just transferred into a high school that seems rather normal. Okay, we're getting somewhere. Every conflict in said high school must be resolved via sports and/or combat. Wait, what? The same girl that the male lead is into, is being fought over by the two guys you don't want to mess around with, the school bully and hall monitor (!). And there you have it, the story. It's so ridiculous it works. Granted many directors would have failed, as we have seen with parody anime titles in the past, but Kazuhiko Nishijima did the manga series justice and put out an awesome effort.

The Japanese is fantastic and grasps the epicness of the scenes within this show. The big audio highlight, if you haven't noticed is the opening, as it is epic, manly, and everything in between. Seriously, it's an awesome opening.

The art is tremendous as well. It captured the style of Ashita no Joe perfectly, and the thick outlines are lovely. I feel brashness when I watch this show. The animation is also better than what I expected, especially in the fight scenes.

According to Wikipedia, Blazing Transfer Student was only released on laserdisc (most OVAs were released on both VHS and laserdisc). If that were the case, I can see why many people never heard of this. However, it still sucks how this series, a worthy homage to series like Ashita no Joe and Hajime no Ippo, never got licensed in America, while trash like MD Geist and Birth got released here. The jokes were clever, the action was epic (~!) and the art could get to anyone today. A proper parody, this one's getting a positive score from me.

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Story - 8

Characters - 8.75

Content - 9

Animation - 8.5

Music - 9

Voice Acting - 9

Overall - 8.75

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