There are many of these niche multimedia projects in the “anime sphere”, and sometimes they do get fairly big and well known even if they are still dedicated to relatively fringe, very specific audiences, like Girls Und Panzer, but most often than not these are fanservice heavy, borderline soft porn-adjacent… and while some of you might have thought of Valkyrie Drive (we’ll get to that, eventually), yes, i can see why, but this is NOT that Marvelous project.
This is the one with the jetskis anime girls, again a Marvelous co-produced multimedia affair, and unsurprisingly Senran Kagura’s producer (well, ex-Senran Kagura producer, nowadays) Kenichiro Taniguchi, is involved with Kandagawa Jet Girls too, there are anime boobs involved, after all.
I planned to review both the anime series (with its OVA) and the PC & console videogame, but due to schedule woes, we’ll have to tackle the game at later date, maybe next year.
So what IS Kandagawa Jet Girls about?
Jet racing, as in jet ski racing, waterbikes, but not the ol boring kind: the kind where it’s basically mixed with Splatoon (or to keep the comparisons going, with Senran Kagura: Beach Peach Splash), as in, each team is made of 2 people, one driving the jet ski, one shooting water guns at the rivals.
I guess they couldn’t cram a wet t-shirt contest in, but basically its ecchi Wave Race, because of course the partecipants (called “Jetters”) are all female anime archetypes, with the protagonist, Rin Namiki, being the country bumpkin now in a modern city, as she aspires to be a legendary Jetter like her mother was. Arriving in Asakusa to partecipate, she meets Misa Aoi and the two decide to join the competition, getting to know each other better race after race, which entails meeting the other teams of anime stereotypes you’re gonna see in a wetsuit or a bikini or in the buff.
We have the chinese twins, the gyarus, the foreign weaboos (“degozaru!”), the shrine maidens, and of course the “ojousamas”, one coming in the “drill hair/drilltits” variety with big tits chubby maid in tow.
If it was any longer i wonder if a team of anime nuns would partecipate, as in, a pornier version of the ones in A Certail Magical Index, but i guess there was no time and it would have been a bit too much….maybe.
There’s not much to the plot or the worldbuilding, as one could immediatly guess from the plot synapsis, i mean, it’s pretty typical of these niches series, actually more grounded than stuff like Umamusume, these are full human girls….
Wait, of course they also moonlight as pop singers with idol numbers. Should have seen that coming. Well, the chinese twins do, just them.
As a sport series is no Umasume, which might sound weird to say, but it’s clear the main focus here is just the fanservice made possible by the set up, and they at least know what they’re doing and to keep throwing some new bullshit (like the fabled river monster allegedly living in the Kandagawa river and depicted as a “larva stage kaiju” but with tits on its back, like it’s straight off of Big Man Japan) to keep things interesting, and it’s entertaining.
Though they at least know to pace things out decently, i would have expected this series to keep doing these “jet races” every episode and in doing so completely devaluating them, but instead they happen but not that often to the point they just blend in with the other stuff, so it uses some episodes to build some actual characterization, stock and predictable as it is, but it’s something, heck, they even manage to squeak out some emotional moment amidst the constant fanservice and yuribaiting.
I do like how abundant that is that the show itself at one point kinda feels tired too of the usual “queerbaiting” between the team members made exclusively by girls, with one of the mikos tells her pleas to Rin and Misa, in a sexual and romantic, but when the main duo faces the mikos in a jet race, they sound kinda disappointed when they realized it was just a misunderstanding and that the bipolar miko was describing a bad experience she had in a race before.
Even so, aside the expectedly stereotyped but functional and inoffensive main gals, there is space for some of the minor characters to do something, at least for the jet gearhead girl that loves to tinker and improve the jet, Kiriko, which i think it’s actually pretty cute and has some actual relevance since they need to improve the machine old parts to face the championship and win.
Still, it should have had a bit more of the actual jet races, you’d think they are saving those for the actual tournament at the end, but even most of that is skipped over so the 6 main teams can compete in the final race that decides the champion. Maybe if they spent less time with the commentary girls resuming the rules and various mechanics involving (those do real feel videogamey in themselves, even if you didn’t know they planned both the anime series and the Marvelous videogame in tandem) the jet having weak points that basically kill the engine when hit, the boosts, etc.
The OVA is curiously kinda meta, as in, it was originally meant as a PV included in the collector’s edition of the game to promote the anime, but the OVA itself it’s about “Oujuosama drilltits” calling together the other “main characters”… to concoct a proper promotional video that the Jet Racing association will approve.
What this means is them doing the various pornish things that they couldn’t fit in the series, like the wet t-shirt exploit (it’s not a contest), the bikini “jetwash”, the sentai spoof and why not, let’s fit a Godzilla VS Mothra reference in for kicks. Of course nothing of that goes anywhere, as the Kanto Jet Association cooks up something more appropriate as their actual PV.
And i will say Kangadawa Jet Girls it’s actually not bad, it’s ecchi trash by design and desire, but it is entertaining and delivers on having the more “sus” angles to look at bums, tits, with more crotch shots or transitions than the average Xavier Renegade Angel episode, and of course so many pantyshots that are so nonchalantly used, clearly the director is far more into thighs (and yes, this is the kind of anime when they focus on a character breasts first before cutting or panning to their face), and it’s not that bad in terms of a sports series, despite its priorities jiggling about everywhere, the animation by TNK (High School DXD, School Days, Ikkitousen, Hand Maid May, Redo Of Healer, Vtuber Legend) is decent, even if they resort to using a good amount of CG for the jet racing segment, but it’s not bad, it could be cheaper and worse to look at.
It’s a bit more restrained – while still as silly – than the Senran Kagura anime (also handled by TNK for both of its seasons), or other project by Taniguchi, for better or worse.
The UK Blu-Ray 2 discs release by MVM contains the Sentai dubbed and subbed versions of the episodes, fully uncensored (so you see them nipples, as the designer intended them), the already discussed OVA and some decent extras, with clean versions of the opening and ending, Japanese promos for the anime series, a highlight reel episode (dubbed episode 4.5), disc credits and promo trailers for other Sentai anime releases like Ascension Of A Bookworm.
Pretty decent and handy menu interface too.
The series should also be streaming on Crunchyroll, Roku and Amazon Prime Video.
If it was made a decade ago it would have likely have a trailer for the companion/sister product that is the Kandagawa Jet Girls game, but nowadays you’d just fire up a trailer on Youtube if you wanted to know more, so it make sense. We’ll get to the game.. next summer!
More likely than seeing a global release for Dolphin Wave (of course i know about it), anyway.
Wise Cafe (International) 