But Gundress is also different from the usual Shirow-disowned crap. Gundress is special. Why? Because Gundress might be the worst anime film of the last twenty years. And that's saying a lot.

In a move that mimics Shirow's fondness for cyberpunk, Gundress takes us to the 21st-Century stretch of Bayside City, where the film's opening minutes reveal an illegal weapons deal at the docks. However, the trade is soon broken up by Angel Arms, an all-female SWAT team equipped with straight-out-of-Appleseed Landmate mecha. (Sadly, this version of Angel Arms has nothing to do with the Neo Geo game Shock Troopers: Second Squad.) Over the course of a confusing and horribly animated shootout, the women gun down most of the criminals and arrest a weapons smuggler called Hassen.

While the easygoing Hassen sits in a glass cell at the city's police department, we're formally introduced to the members of Angel Arms, which most resembles a Shirowian interpretation of the Bubblegum Crisis cast. Our heroines include the mercurial but vapid Silvia, the childish, annoying computer geek Michelle, the blandly serious Kei Yung (yes, an actual Korean character in an anime production), the blond-and-not-much-more LAPD emigrant Marcia, and the team's businesslike, personality-free leader, Takako.

Much of Gundress, however, centers on the group's silver-haired combat commander, Alissa. The other members of Angel Arms regard her with a simultaneous measure of respect and concern, and the reason for this becomes clear when a pack of terrorists show up in Bayside City to assassinate Hassen. Alissa, it seems, is a former terrorist herself, and the newly arrived villains are headed by her erstwhile lover, Jean-Luc Skinner, who looks rather familiar . . .

On the left, Jean-Luc Skinner. On the right, what's-his-face from Final Fantasy VII.

Though the basic story isn't inescapably horrid, Gundress never grows past a wireframe of a plot. Alissa and Jean-Luc aren't defined beyond their introductory motivations, and the members of Angel Arms are equally dull. However, this doesn't prevent the script from pelting the viewer with shallow, unconvincing melodrama and tired subplots such as Marcia's inability to shoot a hostage-taking terrorist, which might make her the film's deepest character.

Not content to legitimately borrow Shirow's Landmate mecha-suits, Gundress also takes a few pages from his other works, swiping building architecture from Dominion and a Fuchikoma-like sidekick from Ghost in the Shell. Shirow isn't the only one imitated, either; an island fortress out of the Patlabor movies pops up in the film's climax, which sends Alissa into a virtual-reality abstraction (another Ghost in the Shell echo) to confront both Jean-Luc and her misguided feelings for him in a scene that might prove interesting if it made the slightest bit of sense. And in case Gundress hasn't sufficiently insulted an audience by this point, the movie draws the curtain with a joke about . . . sexual harassment. And everyone laughs. And I want to kill something.

Even a decent story wouldn't help the film's animation, on par with that of a low-level TV series of the early ‘90s, or possibly a particularly tight-budgeted episode of the original G.I. Joe cartoon. Motion is stiff, visual goofs abound (watch the chess board in Hassen's cell), and the continuity is sloppy, with Alissa's face changing in appearance from one scene to another. The characters scarcely resemble Masamune Shirow's original art, and some of them are downright ugly. I especially hate the squat and irascible police chief whose goofy appearance was apparently intended to be comical but instead makes him look like a ranting, freakish, google-eyed midget.

It's only fair to mention that Gundress sports decent voice acting in both Japanese and English. Jane Alen is a suitable Alissa, the husky-voiced Zan (Outlaw Star's Aisha Clanclan of the C'tarl-C'tarl) makes Kei more likeable than she probably should be, and James Lyon is as effective as the underwritten part of Jean-Luc permits. The only quirk that arises is an inexplicable decision by the Bang! Zoom dub studio to transliterate Jean-Luc's name as “Jan-Rock.”

Perhaps expecting that viewers would want to know how Gundress turned out to be so awful, Anime Works packed the DVD with a documentary feature that depicts the film's apparently clueless directors, character (re)designers, and mechanical staff sharing a vague, noncommittal conversation about the movie. While the clip is almost as wearisome as the film itself, it's of note that Masamune Shirow appeared to put more thought into the heroines he designed than the makers of Gundress put into the entire film, or that the writing studio ORCA (which also crafted the mediocre Landlock and the Kayashiya Hammer manga series) ignored Shirow's suggestion of making Kei the main character.

Gundress went far beyond the usual failure of bad anime films. It was even released to theaters unfinished, complete with an apologetic note promising audience members free VHS copies of the complete film. It would've been kinder to send them blank tapes. Shoddily made and profoundly boring from start to finish, Gundress is best forgotten by Shirow, his fans, and just about everybody else.