Sometimes I need to be reminded of why I watch anime so I dived into my retro collection and dug out an old police anime from the 90s, this review is Burn Up W.

First a history lesson, in the past the Burn Up franchise started as a one off OVA that rounded off the ultra violent era of anime perfectly, this then became the four episode ova were reviewing today followed by a 13 episode TV series and an alternate universe TV series also 13 episodes.
Burn Up W is about a specialist police task force called Warrior consisting of Busty Martial Arts Master Rio, Gun Crazed Lunatic Maya, Perverted Pilot Yuji, Perky Little Hacker Lilica and Genki Tech Scientist (who probably has several law suits from Studio Gainax) Nanval; all of whom are led by the deviously cruel Maki who is apparently the same Maki from the very first Burn Up which is odd because that Maki is blonde and looks suspiciously like Rio.
Anyway the first mission is a hostage situation but the four guys doing it are only after weird requests like demanding a Baseball Manager to publicly castrate himself or asking an Idol Singer to bungee jump naked, in the meantime the proper terrorists who setup the whole hostage situation attempt to try and market a so called Virtual Drug by testing it on certain hostages behind the scenes.
Team Warrior go into action and deliberately mess around with the terrorists demands with Rio pretending to be the naked Idol Singer to grab the Terrorists attention and take them out, that's just episode one.
Being honest episode two is the worst, the quality is dire, the story barely makes any sense and the sound quality in the dub is awful, and how a Virtual Idol is significant to the whole Virtual Drug thing is not explained and the attack android the enemies have, comes out of no where, not to mention Nanvel building a cheap knock off of EVA Unit 01 which explains the early joke on lawsuits.
The final two part episode takes things in a more serious approach as a traitor within the Police Ranks stages a terrorist attack in the Police Building killing Rio's best friend along with many other officers. Warrior are deployed to take out the terrorists and win but a curious epilogue left more questions as the villains use their influence over the President to disband everyone investigating the Virtual Drug and it kind of leaves it on that cliff hanger.
It's clear from the epilogue that this was meant to last longer than it did but thankfully Burn Up Excess manages to satisfy the fans hunger for this series which will be reviewed at a later date.
Burn Up W is just plain fun, the first episode alone is my favorite first episode of any anime, it knew it had to grab attention and grab attention it did, while episode two is horrible the final two episodes that round this off deliver an episode that perfectly balances drama, action and comedy and knows not to over do it on all ends.
With only one duff episode out of four, Burn Up W was onto something special which is why a new series was green lit with the same cast of characters. The dub is great, the art style really shows great detail at times and the overall run of the story is very entertaining to watch.
Final Verdict: Burn Up W is plain fun and is the diamond polished from the rock of it's older sister the original Burn Up. While the second episode is very much a miss and the epilogue adds more questions, the other episodes more than make up for it.