Soukou Kihei Votoms: Pailsen Files

After 1994's Shining Heresy more or less failed, the Votoms franchise went quiet for over a decade. It's return further explores the familiar grounds of Chirico Cuvie's past, and serves as somewhat of a sequel to Red shoulder document: Roots of ambition. If this sound a little inaccessible that's because it absolutely is made for fans familiar with both the original Armored Trooper Votoms and it's follow-up OVA's. To make matters worse, the mechs are now done with CGI, and mid-2000's CGI at that. Pailsen Files really is just for those interested in the franchise, but past that it's quite a good show that scratches ... an itch no other votoms show does.

Coming off the conclusion of Roots of ambition, the titular Yoran Pailsen is in deep trouble as the full force of a military tribunal comes down on him. Intelligence undersecretary Fedok Wokkam is determined to further his own agenda with whatever knowledge Pailsen holds, and the interactions between them form the smaller half of a split narrative that lasts through the series. On the other side, Chirico Cuvie and his new handpicked teammates are used as pawns in Wokkam's game, and repeatedly forced into dangerous situations the same way Pailsen once tested his Red Shoulders.

Chirico's team ultimately gets the most screentime, even if their actions have limited impact on the larger picture. As is usual for Votoms they all have pronounced characteristics, ranging from a phlegmatic squad leader to a coward engineer. Much like Chirico's Kummen squad they continually have small squabbles and other things going on, while at the same time ploughing through hordes of enemy AT's. It's hard to call most of them great characters, but they're all grounded soldiers with positive and negative traits, and they provide the noise to counteract Chirico's quiet demeanor as other supporting characters have done before.

What makes the show work is that unlike most of the other OVA's following the original Votoms, Pailsen files has a proper 12-episode run, twice as long as any other sequel or prequel. This allows time to firmly establish it's cast and give them some development, have a plot that steadily progresses without feeling rushed or cut short, and allows for several long setpiece battles that end up being more diverse and interesting than anything seen before in Votoms. This is also the only entry in the entire franchise where Chirico's past in the Gilgamesh military is truly explored, something I had personally found to be extremely lacking in earlier OVA's.


The CGI.
It's impossible to talk about the Pailsen Files without getting into this. While most of the presentation like sound and direction are extremely similar to Armored Trooper Votoms, the CGI AT's are not. And it's hard to make a real verdict on the quality on display when it has to be compared to a TV anime from the 80's. Votoms hasn't always had amazing animation, but the show did quite well by making sure it's action was usually quick-paced and involved a lot of explosions. The later OVA's did a decent job of improving the quality while maintaining the spirit, but there was little chance a franchise like votoms could avoid joining in on the CGI-era. Pailsen Files tries it's best, but it's hard not to be a little disappointed that some of the best action setpieces aged as badly as they did. Especially some of the early bullet effects are simply sub-par even for the time, and while the quality slightly improves as the show goes on, it's not enough. The one big plus of using CGI is that the show is more or less free to display as many AT's as it wants at any point in time, and as such manages to have even more of them on screen than was possible before.


Ultimately your enjoyment of Pailsen Files hinges entirely on how much the viewer cares about the details of Chirico's past and that of the Astragius galaxy and it's politics, as well as one's ability to look past the questionable CGI at the ideas behind it. Pailsen Files isn't the most necessary or the prettiest of the Votoms OVA's, but it's probably both the smartest one as well as the entry with the most creative battles, and that makes it more than worth checking out for fans of the original.

VOTOMS director Ryosuke Takahashi’s career is uncharacteristic in that, of the many series he has authored or directed, VOTOMS is the only one to ever receive sequels of any sort, and it was not until the release of Pailsen Files in the 2000s that it managed to receive a full 12-episode anime rather than sporadic OVA releases. Equally uncharacteristically for a sequel, Pailsen Files is a largely unique entity, one that displays an interest in taking the series and setting in a new direction, rather than furthering the same ideas that its original entry had already conceptualised.

One area in which this new approach is made ... evident is through the use of distinct locations, allowing it to portray a more convincing image of an entire galaxy. By moving regularly between different planets, each with their own distinct ecological temperament, and adding a greater emphasis on detail therein, this sense of place is accomplished two-fold. A legitimate effort was made to produce an entire system of logistics and interconnected systems belonging to a galaxy typified by its incessant war, a state which is also conveyed through its visual design. Courtrooms, barracks, hospitals and other areas all provide a degree of authenticity to the setting, something which is accentuated by the use of command centres in which the tactical implications of the local geography are made apparent, providing the story with multiple layers of purpose and payoff for its focus on its environment.

With this in mind, it is worth remembering that a new approach is not necessarily an improved one, something which is made apparent before the first episode even starts. Foregoing what had worked so well previously, Pailsen Files’ mechs are animated entirely in CGI, which was a new endeavour for its animators, as evidenced by its inconsistent quality. The worst animation is confined entirely to the OP, which for close to a third of its duration, utilises a particular transition that would have looked more appropriate in a homemade stop-motion Lego video than in something by a professional studio. Additionally, there are singular action scenes in which the framerate will drop considerably, which is the sort of issue that is able to completely ruin any sense of immersion close to instantaneously, even if this immersion is lost just for a moment. It is at least something that stops appearing roughly around the halfway point of the series, but the fact that it appears at all may very well be an indication that the technology wasn’t quite there yet, and they should have waited a year or two before creating an entire series that relied on its application. But at its worst, it is at least watchable, which is more than can be said for the 1983 Golgo 13.

While there are discrepancies with the animation, even if relatively limited, the writing has no such issue. For that matter, if there is one thing to say about the writing, it is remarkably consistent. Its most striking quality is its multi-layered recontextualisation, firstly by adding a stronger emphasis on the plot, and by establishing different units within the military whose goals are rarely uniform amongst each other, thereby creating a degree of believability for the events of the story, as well as a means of demonstrating its importance, by showing the wide-reaching effects of the protagonist’s actions. With that said, factionalism and political intrigue only constitute a small element, but an important element nonetheless, and one that allows the writing to operate on multiple levels.

Although it may not be explicitly evocative of a unique form of stylisation and auteurship, Pailsen Files is in fact representative of its creator’s directorial experience. Its CGI is far from picturesque, but underneath the surface is a Frankenheimerian utilisation and interconnection of story, character and action in a manner that is persistently engaging, dramatically suspenseful, and while it is far from the best work within the wider VOTOMS catalogue, it is an undeniably fine work that, as a soft reboot, performed its duty with distinction and honour, two concepts that are ironically enough entirely absent from any of its characters.

Pailsen Files is only worth watching if you've seen the original AT VOTOMS, alongside the Roots of Ambition / Treachery / Red Shoulder Document OVA. If you haven't seen those, don't bother...

The story is mediocre at best. It does have some decent twists, but it gets predictable and formulaic after a while. Plus, there's not much fear that anyone is going to bite it; until the very end! I won't spoil anything, but the concept Pailsen Files runs with -- the same concept Roots of Ambition runs with -- can easily remove tension. Despite having 12 episodes (plenty for an OVA) the writers missed opportunities ... to toy with that concept and introduce proper tension, instead waiting to roll that out at the very end.

The art is alright, and I'm happy it's cel animation, but the CGI makes the presentation always lackluster, though they did the best with the medium they could. When it comes to sound, the nostalgic music pulled from the original is good, but everything else feels cheap; especially gunfire, explosions, and the AT sounds themselves. It's a downgrade from the original.

The new characters are memorable, but their actual artistic design leaves much to be desired, at least in my opinion. They're all quite exaggerated and mostly flat.

I didn't dread watching it, as I did finish it in a few nights. But overall, it's, like most of AT VOTOMS' modern content, mediocre - it leaves much to be desired.