Ask John: How Much Burn-Up Anime Is There?

Question:
Which came first, Burn Up W OAV or the Burn Up Excess series? Second, is there any other anime that continues the story under a different title? Third, are there plans to produce a newer series?

Answer:
The original Burn-Up OAV was released in Japan on March 21, 1991. It was a 45 minute long action/comedy about a small team of female police officers that used one of their own as bait to capture a ring of white slavers that kidnapped cute girls from nightclubs and sold them as sex slaves. AD Vision released the OAV on subtitled VHS, then years later on dubbed VHS. Both American versions have been out of print for years.

Five years after the original stand alone OAV, the first of four Burn-Up W OAVs premiered in Japan on April 10, 1996. Although still produced by AIC Studios, the Burn-Up W OAV series featured a new character designer, a new cast, and an entirely new continuity. The only relation between the original OAV and the new Burn-Up W series was the fact that both series were racy action/adventure comedies about trigger happy female police officers.

The first episode of the Burn-Up X TV series aired on Japanese television on December 12, 1997. While Burn-Up X retained the staff and characters of the prior Burn-Up W OAV series, for the benefit of viewers that weren’t familiar with the year old OAV series, Burn-Up X was an entirely new, self-contained continuity that assumed the Burn-Up W series didn’t exist.

The latest installment in the Burn-Up franchise is yet again a new continuity that ignores all of the previous animation and introduces a new production staff and new characters. The only relation Burn-Up Scramble has to its predecessors is the theme of action comedy involving well endowed and heavily armed contemporary female police officers.

Finally, there is one existing volume of Burn-Up manga. In April 1998 Shonen Captain Comics published the “Burn-Up Excess & W manga” authored by Oh! Great, the artist better known as the creator of Himiko-den and Tenjo Tenge.