Welcome to the Anime Walk of Fame, a series of retrospectives on the many characters of the anime world. You'll see all your favorites along with a few that deserve more than their reputations give.

So sit back relax and enjoy the show.

The Dirty Pair Were Inspired by Wrestlers

An interesting bit of history from one of my favourite shows.

The story goes that creator Haruka Takachiho was with a special guest in science fiction writer A. Bertram Chandler; two studio Nue staffers, Yuri Tanaka and Keiko Otoguro hit upon the idea to bring them to the All-Japan Women's Pro Wrestling match, the match they watched featured a tag team duo known as the Beauty Pair.
While watching Chandler remarked with.
"the two women in the ring may be the Beauty Pair, but those two with you ought to be called 'the Dirty Pair'."
Inspiration hit and Haruka created the Dirty Pair, taking the wrestling named duo into a Sci-Fi setting of which he specializes in.
The Dirty Pair were appropriately named Kei and Yuri after the staffers. The characters in the anime refer to themselves as the Lovely Angels, another reference to Women's Wrestling.
Explains why the Dirty Pair are designed in such a way compared to other female characters of the era.

Minnie May is More Than Explosives

Proof that an explosives expert has more than just crazy.

Minnie May's background is quite sketchy as she spent her teens as a prostitute in China Town but learned enough street smarts and lessons from her mentor to make her a valuable asset to Rally Vincent.
Her experiences made her good at acting able to pull a wide array of emotions on command, her loli type body allows her to pass for 13 years old (She's 17-18 years old) allowing her to easily slip out of many situations as many criminals think they've involved a child in their crime, she can also flawlessly mimic different voices being able to fool police easily, combined with her penchant for making explosives allowed her to out flank former KGB Assassin Natasha Radinov not once but twice with well done booby traps, the first of which after being kidnapped, the second while injured and helping Rally who was also injured.
Between Rally the Bounty Hunter, Minnie the Explosives Expert, Becky the informant and Bean Bandit the Wheelman, you've got yourselves a perfect team.

Buff's Specs Are Insane

Never thought I'd talk about cars here but I never said the characters on this world had to be living.

The Buff is Bean Bandit's custom ride in which he does the most jobs in.
According to some sources, the car is a Porsche chassis with a Corvette Stingray Engine block with clear inspiration from the Ford RS200.
It's crazier specs include four Wheel drive, four wheel steering, 300kph speed, excess of 730hp, bulletproof glass, armoured battleship plating to make it pretty much indestructible, bladed braking system and ability to drive sideways, the only thing missing is nitro.
Kenichi Sonoda, Riding Bean's creator suggests that everything on Buff is capable in real life when the OVA was released with the exception of the bladed braking system, a testament to his attention to detail regarding guns and American cars.
In reality, it's quite a Frankenstein creation combining a Porsche 928, a 3rd generation Chevy Camaro and a MKIV Toyota Supra, also considering the weight of Battleship armour plating, it's fuel economy must make the Hummer look like an eco car in comparison, I'm also not buying that it can do 300kph.
So that's Bean Bandit's car, terrible car in real life but an absolute beast in the anime and manga.

Yohko is a Bobby Soxer?

To try and give lesser characters more exposure, I've got a few little articles talking about some interesting facts starting with Yohko.

One look at Yohko Asagiri gives off the vibe of a typical Japanese girl of the 80s, into nothing but Citypop and dressed like she's finished an aerobics class and is just chilling at an ice cream parlour.
While the anime is an early example of Isekai, her destiny as a warrior isn't what I'm focusing on.
In a lost media English Dub, likely the same group behind Dream Dimension Hunter Fandora, Yohko on more than one occasion refers to herself as a Bobby Soxer.
The term Bobby Soxer started in the 1940s for what was the new wave of youth culture emerging in the United States, defined by a love of pop music and usually a teenage girl with the actual Bobby Socks clothing on their feet.
The term sort of faded as the 1960s rolled by as fashions changed and newer music was coming in.
Flash forward to 1985 when this was made and the term is used for an 80s girl in a dub.
This is strange as an outdated name for American teenage girls in the 1940s and 50s doesn't fit a Japanese girl from the 1980s, while she does somewhat fit the description with her head always into music, her personality doesn't.
What makes it funnier is that this was likely dubbed in the 90s.
So a strange dub moment from a very overlooked 80s anime.

Matt is Anime's Most Pointless Character

We've done a useless character with Leena Toros, how about a pointless character.

Matt is Mello's friend, he likes computer games, is quite lazy and is the 3rd most intelligent out of Wammy's orphanage behind Mello and Near.
He begins by failing to keep track of Misa Amane, Mogi and Aizawa, then in a final scene he's shot dead during the kidnapping of Takada.
His entire manga presence is 12 panels while his anime screentime is 69 seconds, barely over a minute long.
His popularity in the fandom is odd, I suppose he's a good character to work off for a prequel but even then, his impact on the story is so low that you wouldn't miss him if he were cut, especially when you consider Mello is the type of character who wouldn't have friends with his horrific inferiority complex.
It's even suggested by the author that Matt was created just to give Mello a friend.
So that's Matt. Side characters in OVAs have more impact than he does.