[Mesnick]

I watched the first two films in the Earth Defense Girl Iko-chan series. The first tells the story of middle school student Iko Kawai, who feeds a hungry alien and receives magical pink headphones that can grant any wish, as long as it's made with good intentions. This leads to a series of hilarious situations, including a clash with kaiju, after which Iko is recruited into LTDT, a local defense team with ridiculous technology and pink suits. Together with her useless teammates, who are mostly there to parody genre clich?s, she successfully repels an invasion of puppet Martians, establishing peace between the planets.
The film resembles a child's fantasy, unconstrained by anyone or anything. This film is fully aware of its absurdity and not only isn't embarrassed by it, but actually flaunts it. Just look at the Mirakuru (the local version of Ultraman) tripping over power lines and the combat robot defeated by unplugging. Due to the low cost, most of the special effects are very crude, but there are also some pretty good ones, like a living photograph or a fighter jet shot down by a horn, something you wouldn't see even in serious tokusatsu.
The second film is even crazier. Iko Kawai goes to Space Middle School. She passes on the headphones to her namesake, Iko Sakugawa. The new heroine joins the LTDT, which now boasts a wide variety of technology, as well as cute robot dogs, trash cyborgs, and a plethora of background freaks. At first, Iko gets along well with this motley, crazy crowd, but then Lunna Hakubo appears, successfully defeating kaiju on land, in the air, and underwater. Compared to her, Iko feels helpless and incompetent, unworthy of the role of heroine. But it turns out that Lunna is under the control of an evil alien, which leads to a completely insane battle, complete with shrinking, cross-dressing, and teleportation into a video game and anime. As far as I understand, the Iko-chan films (at least the original trilogy) are considered cult classics in Japan. They also defined the career of Minoru Kawasaki, who still makes crazy parodies of all Japanese action genres. And yet, although his films clearly have enough visuals and humor, none of them have won the same love as Iko-chan. Most likely, they simply lack the childlike spontaneity and adult responsibility that these projects possessed, which made one forgive the cheapness, the blunt script, and the overuse of improvisation. In any case, I recommend Iko-chan to anyone who wants something cute, funny, and crazy. And also not afraid of absurdity, cheapness, and musical numbers (there aren't many of them, but since these are short films, they occupy a significant percentage of the running time). Meanwhile, I'll get to watching the third installment.