A Brilliant Conflict

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Blistering performances.

It is certainly true that the creators of the "Freezing" series wanted to create something that was serious and sexy, and they did exactly that mixing it with some sci-fi technology. That sci-fi only provides mechanisms for a plot and drama, but the series itself is actually about the people, the beautiful and sexy young women - called Pandoras - who are genetically modified to become powerful fighters and warriors to fight humanity's extra-dimensional enemies, the Nova. What the Nova exactly are and why they've come to fight humans on Earth is nebulous, but an unimportant concept. We only have to know that they are there, they kill people, and they have to be fought for humanity's survival. The gorgeous and scantily clad female warriors are aided by their ultra-loyal, young male counterparts to form a fighting team; the males are Limiters, who are able to counteract the Nova's freezing paralysis, or, alternatively, cast their own freezing field; this enables the young women to fight the Nova, who are still deadly with their freezing ability held in check.Satellizer is one of the most powerful Pandora, and her partner, Kazuya, is a powerful Limiter, making them an effective team; it takes some difficulties for them to get there, but eventually they do. Much of the story is about Satellizer getting situated in the school with the other women. She is an astonishingly beautiful and sexy character who, despite that, becomes a sympathetic character that we want to see succeed in her life both as a Pandora and a person. Some of the high- powered females in the school give her a hard time, as you might imagine, with all that power and ego they possess which is necessary for them to put their lives on the line and fight some pretty scary and horrifying alien beasts. Satellizer has to grow up some more and come of age to be an effective Pandora fighter and develop into a normal, unaffected adult, which is difficult for her due to an abusive background, which we eventually get to see, and which has made her hateful of being touched by or intimate with anyone, giving her the moniker, "the untouchable queen."The art is quite beautiful and the battle scenes graphic and moving as these young people risk their lives to fight off the alien enemy. But the strength of the series is the portrayal of the inter-relationships between the young females and males as they interact, go through real and dangerous training battles with each other, and try to find a way through all that to have some kind of normal life with friends and mates that they care about. As a sci-fi author myself, who enjoys good anime - which this is - one can see that the creators worked hard to display this struggle between the characters, which is routine and difficult enough for normal teens, but is even more difficult for these modified, powerful teenagers who must sacrifice a lot to go to war against those deadly alien creatures, where they could easily die and in fact many have. The series is well-done, visually stunning, emotionally gripping at some points, and an adventure that should keep you glued to the story until the end. The sexiness and nudity of the females, where you would think it doesn't belong, is instead an integral part of the characters' persona, providing a positive developmental evolution for them in that environment; it is a necessity for these young, battling females, who must maintain their personal pride not only as warriors but as feminine females, always remaining youthful, attractive, and powerful, while it does give viewers an eyeful of feminine beauty they will not soon forget.

*** Adult Content *** (how else can you discuss this show?)Nearly nonsensical concept I find hard to grasp. More succinctly put, hard to accept. Ereinbar Set, Pandora mode, Stigmata, Limiters, Freezing Mode, Novas, what kind of Sugar Pops has these Japanese blokes had for breakfast? And how come she has such an outlandish name? Satellizer el Bridget? Ah, but despite what the DVD says, it's actually Satellizer L. Bridget. Pray tell, what does the L stand for?Okay, so I've just started watching ep. 05 and am hardly qualified to give an expert opinion. I got involved with this after scouting the Internet searching for a charming figurine to go with my DVD collection, but there wasn't anything from the likes of the shows I collect, while the mysterious Satellizer el Bridget popped up everywhere I looked. Unfortunately the prices are astronomical as I have to go through a third party, an importer, and one could buy a good-quality second-hand car for the price of one of these cute figurines.Instead, when researching this FREEZING anime, I got hooked on the show itself. I downloaded episodes, but could not get all, and they were heavily censored anyway. Decided that it would look spectacular on my big screen. The rest is history. I am now watching my first season on DVD with that plain UK set*, not the one with the Blu-Ray combo and booklet. *I was pleasantly surprised by the textless opening and closing themes. Great little junior music videos! Neat extras!The thing is dazzling, and I love the theme song, Color, by MARIA, and the end theme, hell, two difficult names that escape me now, but apparently it translates to To Protect You. (I googled the pretty 17-year-old singer this morning. Aika Kobayashi, that's it). The OVA, the fan service bits, are kinda weird, some could hardly ever fit in with the rest of the story, but I keep having this running gag in the back of my mind: Imagine if MELROSE PLACE had fan service!Satellizer was clearly molested as a child, and has developed acute aphephobia (along with a cute everything else), a fear of being touched. She is genetically enhanced by "stigmata" to enable her to combat Nova, and is trained at West Genetics, where she has been transferred after an incident that caused her to be suspended for a year at East Genetics - the permanent injury of her Limiter. Here at West Genetics she hospitalized another student for touching her, and earned herself the moniker "The Untouchable Queen". She has yet to find herself a new Limiter, i.e. male teammate assisting her in battle. This is where Kazuya Aoi comes in...Like I said, it's dazzling. While it fails to make proper sense, and is quite inanely embarrassing in places, like that stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid scene with Kazuya Aoi falling between Satellizer's breasts, once you just sit back and cast aside the sneering comments inside your head re schoolboy inanities, this is a jewel. Ooh, and I just love Caitlin Glass's voice! She gives Satellizer a depth of character. All those sighs, and the dropping of the tone of voice, speaking as if in lower case when the girl is unnerved... I switched to the Japanese soundtrack just to compare, and those guys do not know what they are missing out on. So cute! I am really here for the sweet little faces rather than anything else.It is particularly violent, and I do get the feeling that personal injury is used for entertainment. There is a plethora of mangled corpses, dismembered body parts and spattering blood. West Genetics really is a school for vainglorious psychos, and the student body slips into Killer Mode as often as there are pantie shots. Which, in turn, brings me to the frequent nudity. No complaints from me there, except (a) these girls must have had implants, they are gargantuan! and (b) the sad, sad little-boy reactions to this (although one must overlook the OVA bits which aren't intended to be part of the actual story). But the breasts flop about with a life of their own. Cascading hair even cause gale-force sound effects (I have to admit, that's cute!)I do worship female beauty, and I do go ga-ga myself, but these Orientals, wow, they really never grew up, and it's all one-handed drawing, not that I am going to criticize it too much...Just explain the stigmata thingie and the Ereinbar Set thingie to me again. How freaking outlandish can you get? Can't you just say that in Orgasm Mode they really get their freak on?Addendum, 31 August 2015. Currently watching penultimate episode. Am really hooked on Satellizer's emotions. She goes from down in the dumps to perking up at a spark of hope to going all dejected again. Wonderfully drawn with, if you look closely at it, minimal effort. My heartfelt thanks to Caitlin Glass, I must mention that again, the Japanese side of things lack the finer nuances (where I checked)... If this is ever filmed, who's going to be Satellizer? Who'd risk playing the showy part, and would she be able to hold a candle to her cartoon counterpart? I THINK NOT. DON'T EVEN TRY. And this from a devout fan of real live actresses. The Raven himself.Addendum, 8 Sept. 2015, Supersized Spoiler Alert! In the final episode, something truly nasty happens, so just know, do not think that your favorite characters are safe from harm. They might get killed off. In truly graphic horrendous ways. But I'll say this: In a heart-wrenching display that lifts the 'Lewd and Sadistic' series to a higher level. Okay, so it turns out to be a false alarm, but still... For a while there, it seemed Ganessa was done for.

Not mind-blowingly incredible like Sekirei (which I currently consider at this point to be the epitome of a good ecchi/harem anime) or "blegh" like Rosario+Vampire, just "good".The premise of Pandora, which are sci-fied superpowered girls with varying abilities, and Limiters, their male counterparts who can "freeze" an area and render all in that area immobile, is somewhat original in that both are paired up by their own choice and not assigned to one another like a lot of other anime which turn into Japanese buddy-cop comedies. This anime does NOT devolve into a buddy-cop comedy in the midst of our hero and heroine's training to fight the ambiguous aliens that come from some other dimension.The characters are "good", as I said before, each one having a history that helps explain how and why they act the way they do. Our male lead is one Mr. Kazuya Aoi, a guy whose sister was a Pandora (no, I'm not spoiling anything for you, they reveal that tidbit in the very first episode and the top of the Wiki page) and has come to Japanese Hogwart's School of Pandora-craft and Limiter-ry to follow in her footsteps. Here he quickly gets himself into trouble when he mistakes Ms. Satellizer el Bridget for his sister and hugs her in a somewhat inappropriate manner, not realizing that she has a severe case of haphephobia (look it up). This leads to some tension between the two as Kazuya constantly tries to get in good terms with "The Untouchable Queen" and she has trouble letting ANYONE get close to her, literally or proverbially.Here's my main gripe with this anime: it has a lot of dark and downright unpleasant parts in it that make it hard for me to enjoy it as much as I did things like Sekirei. Satellizer's backstory is the apex of this, still leaving a somewhat uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach when I think on it. Even the ending doesn't redeem it, with Satellizer and Kazuya's relationship failing to reach a point that satisfied me (it might satisfy YOU, though).So don't expect this to be an over-the-top comedic ecchi show, because it's not. It is dead serious about everything it brings to the table, and while that might be a nice change of pace for some people, I prefer my ecchi to be fun and upbeat. Oh, and there's a second season that I haven't watched because it hasn't been dubbed yet. When it gets a dub, I'll come back and give you my thoughts. Until then, enjoy the first season.And what kind of parent names their daughter "Satellizer", anyway?

I think that this show is better than people say it is. If only it was still going, but it isn't. The focuses on two people with different stories who meet up and form a bond. Kazuya Aoi, who lost his sister comes to the school to become a limiter. Satellizer L. Bridget is a second year pandora who has a fear of being touched and after an incident with Aoi she is stripped of her rank and loses it to Ganessa Roland, a violent pandora who's desire it was to fight the untouchable queen and win, but after Aoi interfered with their fight, they wanted a rematch, but Satellizer ultimately won. In the heat of all of this, Kazuya ended up touching Satellizer a few times trying to apologize, but Satellizer feels that it isn't in a bad way so she decides to give Kazuya a chance eventually. I think that I can live with the high amount of female nudity, but I still wish the show hadn't stopped and kept up with the manga.