Battle Athletes Volume One: On Your Mark
The adventures of teenage girl athletes have been standard fare inmangasince the late '60s, with anime following.Battle Athletesis based on a video game set in the year 4999. Promising girls are sent to a special satellite to train to compete for the coveted title of "Cosmic Beauty," a contest that grew out of the settlement of an interplanetary war 1,000 years earlier. The daughter of a former winner, 16-year-old Akari Kanzaki arrives at the satellite hoping to match her mother's performance. "Chronicle Beginning" sets up Akari and the major supporting characters. Akari is assigned to a team with Kris, a confident, spiritual girl from a back-to-nature commune on the moon, and the terminally shy and whiny Anna. Tanya, an ebullient, food-obsessed African girl, lends comic relief and the icy Mylandah supplies heavy-handed villainy. Training begins in earnest in "Oath Entrant," as the girls compete in zero gravity lacrosse matches: Kris plays skillfully, Mylandah cheats, Tanya hollers, Anna snivels. Akari, who's new to the game, is frustrated by her poor showing but eventually learns the importance of teamwork, patience, and friendship. These lessons mix rah-rah innocence with cutthroat competitiveness and suggestions of lesbianism. Despite the presence of genial headmaster Grant Oldman, the girls get very little formal training. They compete against each other and the high-tech machinery, but the animation is too limited to convey running and the other athletic feats convincingly.--Charles Solomon