About.com Rating
Elite combatants at a school for genetically-engineered warriors duke it out to see which one will take the top slot, while their male warrior counterparts bid to be paired up with them as their fighting partners.
This by-the-numbers fanservice show delivers all the expected ingredients: scantily-clad women, battle action, and perplexed young men trying to serve as the emotional center for it all. Just don't expect anything more than that.
Pros
- Violent and spectacular super-powered combat sequences.
- No real invention or innovation, just a serving-up of the usual fanservice ingredients
- Director: Takashi Watanabe
- Animation Studio: A.C.G.T.
- Released By: Media Factory
- Released Domestically By: FUNimation Entertainment
- Audio: English / Japanese w/English subtitles
- Age Rating: TV-MA (violence, nudity and sexuality, blood, language, thematic material)
- List Price: $69.98 (DVD/BD combo)
Anime Genres:
- Science Fiction
- Action
- Fanservice
- Ecchi
Related Titles:
Girl vs. girl
Freezing is another entry in what is by now a dependable anime niche, the Battling Babes subgenre. A whole bevy of amply-endowed young women all duke it out with any of a number of thinnest possible excuses for doing so, usually with some slack-jawed young man looking on from the sidelines (or getting drawn into the action). Most of the novelty in any such show revolves around the mechanics of the situation—how the powers work, and to what end—or the venue the girls clash in, or the diversity of the cast.
At best, such shows are mindless fun; at worst, they’re just plain mindless.
Freezing, which is pleasantly mindless enough for this sort of show, is set in “West Genetics Academy,” where specially-created women known as Pandoras use their powers to battle alien forces known as the Nova. Pandoras work in conjunction with male partners called Limiters, who sport the power of “freezing” (hence the show’s name): they hold an enemy immobile, while their Pandoras finish them off. The romantic, not to say sexual, implications of the students pairing up this way should be obvious.
The new kid always gets caught in the middle
In comes a new student, Kazuya Aoi, a young man whose elder sister—now deceased—was herself a Pandora. Right as he sets foot on campus grounds, he’s smitten for the school’s “Untouchable Queen”, the Pandora named Satellizer el Bridget. “Untouchable” is an apt term for her, as she can’t stand being touched and would just as soon snap the neck of any boy with the temerity to lay a finger on her. But there’s something strangely, well, calming about Kazuya—and Kazuya himself is drawn to her because of Satellizer’s odd resemblance to his sister. (We later find out where Satellizer’s reluctance at being touched stems from, and it’s the kind of material that deserves a better show to deliver the explanation.)
It takes them a while to warm up to each other, with no end of trouble along the way—not least of which is the enmity of her fellow female students, all jostling for the chance to displace her as the strongest Pandora. The academy’s rules about fighting between students are freely thrown out the window or shrugged off: this is one of those schools where the toughest students rule the roost when everyone else’s backs are turned. Faced with such torment, Satellizer all but obliterates one of her persecutors, but again Kazuya steps in to prevent the worst from happening.
Clearly, they deserve each other. Too bad Satellizer has some very direct competition in the form of Rana Linchen, a new student from Tibet whose perky personality and cheerful attitude conceal a predatory interest in Kazuya. She’s gotten it into her head that this man is her Limiter—doubly so since Satellizer hasn’t choked down enough of her reticence to say a formal yes to Kazuya. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader whether or not they’re able to put aside their differences long enough to band together and fight off a common menace.
Fans serviced? Mission accomplished
No one with more than a cursory exposure to anime is going to think Freezing intends to shoot very high. Its primary job is to give us a diverse cast of female characters in various stages of undress (with Satellizer in the lead), and have them beat up each other for various reasons. It delivers all of this, along with some additional spice in the form of some canned three-way relationship tension between Kazuya, Satellizer, and Rana.
Freezing is no worse than most of the other titles I’ve looked at in this category (Queen’s Blade, Sekirei, Rosario + Vampire, Heaven’s Lost Property), but not much better either. It has just enough emotional material to keep an audience’s interest when it’s not ripping off the cast’s clothes, although it only develops those things as required by the dictates of the plot and no further. Go in not expecting much, and you’ll get everything you expect.
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.
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