Holding Out For A Hero Part 2: Wild Cardz

Now that we've covered single heroes, let's move onto superhero teams.  Oftentimes it seems that the cooperative forces are more an excuse to sell more toys for a TV series than any real need for the heroes to join forces.  Our first team will be a bunch of card-themed heroines in:

Background:
Released By: Central Park Media
Length: 50 minutes
Year of Production: 1998
Language: Sub and dub, dub reviewed
Available on Netflix:Yes

Wild Cardz and I have a history.  When I started collecting used anime DVDs Wild Cardz was an early addition to my collection.  The more I went back to Suncoast, the more copies seemed to appear until there was a thick stack piled at the end of the anime section.  Almost every used DVD store I went to was in a similar predicament.  Wild Cardz spread like a cancer.  Although with a $5.99 second run release, I guess it isn't too surprising. 

The Heroines
Our four leading ladies each represent one of the suites of cards in a playing deck.  Sunday Spades is the leader of the quartet.  She mainly stays behind the scenes but has a not-so-secret ultimate power she can used when backed into a corner.

She is essentially a super-powered CEO

Jo Diamonds is your run of the mill lead anime character.  She is brash, overly enthusiastic, and believes in the all consuming power of friendship.  She can also run and fly at mach speeds while encased in a diamond-shaped force field.  Jo is essentially a female Cannonball, a la X-men.

Her legs go on for miles, quite literally

Casa Clubs is the muscle of the group who uses her heightened senses for added efficiency.  She is competent at armed and unarmed combat, as well as clothed and unclothed fighting styles.

Seen here using the half-clothed style

Coco Hearts is the final member and a user of Psycho Magic.  Essentially this is illusions made of playing cards.  She can also deploy explosive or electrified playing cards and is fond of attack helicopters. 

She can also get psychic reading from machines, but not easily

Story:
The story opens with a group of art thieves lead by the Red Lobster involved in a high speed chase.  Our heroines procedure to forcibly eject the accomplices before cutting the car in half.  As they prepare to arrest him they announce themselves as the Crown Knights, protectors of the royal family.

Protecting meaningless, overblown figureheads, The Crown Knights!

The next scene shows the knights enjoying a leisurely day off, except for Sunday, as her Super Executive powers refuse to allow her any time off.  Out of nowhere an enormous, flying structure appears, demolishing a bridge.  The denizens of the world argue about what the structure's nature and purpose is, but for those of us watching it is clear we are looking at a giant, aerial, white pawn.

The terrorist like to keep things playful.

Jo is the first on the scene and attempts to board the pawn.  Her infiltration is thwarted by a group of ninjas who attempt to bash her brains in with a large spiked club.  Speaking of clubs, Casa shows up and manages to block the attacks meant for Jo before squaring off with the ninjas.  After a brief, non-decisive skirmish, Coco appears to whisk them away in her helicopter, pursuing the pawn.

The copter is well over its weight and cup-size limit.

As the trio approaches the pawn, it teleports away.  Using their somewhat psychic abilities the team is able to determine it will crash onto a nearby power plant.  Jo leaps from the helicopter and runs at top speed to the approximate landing location.  A ramp lifts out of the highway allowing her to launch herself into the pawn, knocking it slightly off course.  Thanks to her heroic efforts only 60% of the plant was destroyed.  Meanwhile a sketchy female and her blatant Chinese stereotype sidekick discuss their plans.  They want to capture the pawn and use its powers for.....money I guess.  Kind of hard to understand them, especially the sidekick/merchant who is dubbed with an atrocious, but fitting, accent.

Cliches teaming up with stereotypes, best possible combination!

Coco summons a fleet of helicopters to restrain the pawn.  This plan is thwarted by the ninjas who cut the bonds holding the chess piece.  Coco and Casa transform into their official uniforms and start battling the ninjas.  Jo uses this opportunity to launch herself into the enemy pawn repeatedly, seemingly with no effect.  Upon closer inspection, her attacks formed diamond shaped cracks, which Jo instructs Coco to attack with explosive cards.  The chess piece doesn't take this lying down and transforms into a knight.  The merchant's drill ship makes its appearance and uses a rope made of mahjong titles to capture the freshly upgraded piece.

Are you sensing a theme yet?

Jo jumps the merchant ship and begins verbally abusing the chinaman.  Apparently they have a history.   We are given a quick glimpse of a mysterious masked man riding a similar black knight, then back to the main story.  Coco notices the cracks are healing now that the ship has evolved, and proceeds to launch her explosive cards which add some minor damage. Casa then uses her fist to knock the wall in.  As the Coco and Casa enter, a black knight appears, smashing into the white knight.

Artistically rendered, the ultimate chess match!

In the aftermath of the collision, the masked man we saw previously approaches Jo and the two begin to fight/dance/flirt...some combination of those things. Again, this is apparently a man Jo has a history with.  He is revealed to be the Joker and his goal is to watch the chess pieces duke it out. As such he wants to prevent the Crown Knights and the merchant duo from interfering. 

"My job is to watch things.  Chess matches, you in the shower, etc."

Casa and Coco make their way deep inside the white knight.  Coco is able to tell the machine has a consciouness located near the top, and the two try to make their way there.  Their path is blocked by the shogi themed ninjas again, this time led by the evil woman merchant who is apparently their commander.  During the battle Casa gets hit by a paralytic poison and the two knights make a hasty retreat before it can take full effect.  Coco booby traps their route, electrifying most of the ninjas while Casa takes a dangerous amount of pills in an attempt to unpoison herself.  Her strategy of taking random medications seems to work, since when the largest ninja and evil woman break through she is able to take the big guy out with a punch to the groin.

In her defense, he has no "belt" to hit below

Joker and Jo, meanwhile, are in a footrace outside.  Mystery man is trying to convince her to just let the pieces fight, an idea our lady of diamonds rejects since her friends were dumb enough to get inside the fighting colossus.  Sunday alerts her troops that the pieces are set to warp at the same time and destroy each other.  Coco manages to prevent this by communicating with the white knight and asking it not to warp.  Instead she redirects it toward a small, uninhabited island.  Casa keeps fighting the evil woman who manages to use mirages/clones to confuse the her.

Probably a more effective technique against male enemies

Coco is able to communicate with the man controlling the white chess piece.  He explains that his monument was built for destroying the black enemy, because that is what his culture has always done.  Casa finally uses her super senses to determine that the holographs are coming from a robotic dog, which she smashes, revealing a small chess piece.  At this moment the black knight also explodes, sending out a deadly, fireball in all directions.  Jo has to outrun this, and she gets a bit of help from the merchant ship and its launching drill gun.  Joker avoids the blast and picks a black chess piece out of the wreckage, similar to the one Casa found in the dog.  No idea what these are for.

Jo can be useful if you light a fire under her ass

The sole white piece transforms yet again into a king.  Coco asks the mastermind why he is still in attack mode, after all the black has been defeated.  He apparently has mistaken the white castle for an enemy chess piece, and is aiming to destroy it.  Nothing will convince him otherwise.  Coco plants a bomb in the control center but is whisked outside before she can detonate it.  Jo is forced to run inside and set the thing off.  This breaks the king but it is still over the castle, a plummeting ball of fiery death.  Sunday gets on the roof and uses her trump card known as the "Kiss of Fire."  this attack focuses all the fire power of the kingdom, and her own energy blast on the king.  It also destroys her clothes for no real reason. Oh, and Jo apparently dies.  We see her floating in a void discussing what she wants to be reincarnated as.  She is given the choice to choose a black or red hole to pass through.  Apparently she chooses correctly as her almost-corpse starts to twitch and slowly gets up.  The End.

Saving the world with nudity!

Why watch?
1. Interesting theme - The idea of people fighting in a world where games are of dire importance and can control your destiny has potential.  I suppose you could compare it to some of the early ideas in Yugioh, but even still the setting feels original enough.

In this world the chess nerds are kings!

 Why not to watch?
1. Everything else - The whole show is full of character types and cliches that have been done to death.  Apart from the setting, this title offers nothing novel, fresh, or even tweaked slightly.  This is one of those titles that is so generic it hurts.

A mysterious, masked, love interest for the lead.  That's new right? Right?

Should you be watching?
Nope.  Don't waste your precious time on this title even if it is only 50 minutes.  There may have been an original idea here at one point, but the lack of creativity buried any promise the creators may have initially had.  Steer clear of this title and wait for next week when I'll have something you might actually enjoy.