DNA 2: Metamorphosis
(1994)
review by Big McLarghuge

Anime comes in hundreds of shapes, sizes, and genre’s. Until today I’d never experienced a science fiction/erotic comedy. DNA2 follows the adventures of Karen, a DNA agent from the future sent back in time to monkey with the DNA of “special” people who’s genes have negatively impacted the future.

But that’s only part of it...

The rest of the series deals with the people whom Karen is charged with hunting. The first episode introduces a 16 year old kid named Juntao Momanari(I am guessing at the spelling) who has the strange distinction of being allergic to women.

Juntao is in love with the high-school beauty Tomoko (again, guessing at the spelling) who is dating another guy, Riuji, incidentally, a jerk who cheats on her constantly. Tomoko is a tremendous trollop and uses Juntao to get back at her cock swain of a boyfriend.

This, of course, doesn’t make life easy for Juntao since contact with women makes him vomit.

Well, it turns out that Juntao sires 100 sons who in turn sire 100 sons. In the future he is known as the Mega-Playboy. Since future Earth is tremendously overpopulated and anyone with who fathers more than two children is put to death (sheesh!!!), Karen’s job is to go back and stop the problem before it begins by injecting Juntao with special DNA medicine that corrupts his special Mega-Playboy DNA and makes him normal thus avoiding the plague of babies in the future.

However, a mistake actually TURNS Juntao into the Mega-Playboy. Now Karen must undo the damage to restore future history. Now Juntao becomes a super-casanova when he comes into contact with a woman, in this case Tomoko, who falls instantly in love with him provoking jealous rage from Ruiji.

There’s a lot of mistaken identity humor too, which never fails to provoke a laugh.

That’s pretty much the premise. The show pulls off this goofy idea pretty well. Effective voice casting, and great figure drawing help the viewer suspend disbelief enough to enjoy the humor.

And there is lots of humor. Much of it is broad almost slapstick humor as Juntao barfs and makes goofy faces, while also deep roots in old-style Hollywood screwball comedy fill in the gaps. For example, when Karen realizes that Juntao is the Mega-Playboy she decides to confront him personally. Karen, for what it’s worth, is dressed in body hugging armor and a cape and looks completely out of place in the small coffee shop where she takes Juntao “for a drink” at gunpoint.

It sounds less funny than it is, but trust me, you’ll laugh.

Karen is funny too, she alternates between tough and competent and completely hysterical, which makes all of her scenes really silly and very watchable. Funnier still is she is not immune to the draw of the Mega-Playboy.

As for animation, the show is standard television anime, that is better than American Saturday morning TV but not as good as the feature length stuff like Akira or Ghost in the Shell. Still, the art is such that your eyes will have few reasons to stray from the screen.

If you can buy into the silliness as I did, then DNA2 makes for some ample fun viewing.

Now, before you run out and pick this one up with a clutch of Pokemon DVDs let me state that this is in no way a kids movie. Implied sex, “almost nudity”, and one long sexual assault, that seems out of place, in the second episode mean that DNA2 is for those over 18 only.