Hey everybody! I'm on vacation! Four days in San Diego and three days in Las Vegas! VEGAS BABY! But never fear, I give you our second guest column to tide you over until I get back. 

I'm no expert on Japanese Animation but Paul is. My knowledge barely goes beyond Akira and Robotech. (Yeah, I know, the Macross saga.) I enjoy anime a great deal, The Venus Wars being a personal favorite. I was a regular viewer of Saturday Anime on the Sci-Fi channel (until it disappeared) but I have absolutely no luck when I try to rent one. 

The first one I rented wound up being a soft-core porn, about a coed who had superpowers when she wore a certain pair of panties. The second was a hard-core porn, with S&M overtones and an evil plant monster that liked to rape young co-eds. 

The third, believe it or not, was Riding Bean. (Yes, Paul. I'm as shocked as you are. I'd seen this already but didn't remember the title.) And I struck out for a third time.

Take it away, Paul.

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When one of the managers at our local Blockbuster (TM) store informed me that they had on their shelves the worst Japanese animation title (here after referred to as "anime") known to man, my first reaction was "Can anime really be that bad?" Well, friends, after reviewing Youmex’s Riding Bean, the answer is a resounding and revolting, YES!!!

I rented this expecting at least a game attempt at a plot, but ended up getting an amalgamation of the director’s cut of Smokey and the Bandit 2 and The Blues Brothers. (Now if only the music was that good…)

Our "hero," full name Bean Bandit, but better known to the world as Bean (not Rowan Atkinson, Bean) or Roadbuster, is a hard driving, two-timing con man. You know, the type you usually see in the left-hand lane of I-80. Bean makes his apparently comfy living playing get away driver for both the good and bad guys, just so long as his employers can afford him.

The movie opens with Bean escorting a pair of bandits away after a heist. After he and his car do various cool things to evade the police, Bean takes his payment from out two robbers, now unmasked as a father and his apparent daughter (or is she?).

Note: We already have signs that this will be a all-around stinkburger as not three minutes into the picture, we’ve already had multiple messy deaths (shotgun to the head) and one set of naked animated breasts make their way across the screen.

Exeunt Bean, but we find the father and daughter to be, in fact, our main antagonist and her pint-size accomplice (this relationship explained in detail later.) This, I assume, is the director’s not-so-subtle attempt at a plot twist.

Shift to Bean’s apartment as we are introduced to Bean’s female associate Rally (another all-purpose name in anime, i.e. Gunsmith Cats) in an all-too slow production of Rally dressing and preparing breakfast, in that order.

As if Bean’s life wasn’t complicated enough, now we meet Inspector Percy and his understudy (both of whose voice acting are worth about a beer each). While Buford T. Justice and Junior they ain’t, they nonetheless provide some quality, albeit pathetic, comedy relief. Some meaningless car talk ensues before the name of a kidnapping case comes up and bean is somehow the culprit. How you ask? Read on…

A conversation between Bean and our escapee is cut short by bursts of sub machine gun fire (points for creativity there), leaving Bean, Rally and the little girl unscathed but the other man dead (?).

Flash to the garage, as Bean and Rally decide to take the girl back to her home (plot point!), but only after another meaningless car exhibition. (Sensing a theme yet?)

After shuddering from both laughter and disgust, we see the main villain, Semmerling, enter and give the little seductress, afterwards identified as Carrie, a thorough smacking around (Yay! Child abuse and prostitution!) [Editor’s note. Paul, I hope that’s implied sarcasm! He assures me it is.] before informing everybody they’re leaving, this time via the ever-present 18-Wheeler.

Meanwhile, Bean and Rally get to the Grimwood estate, but run into the not-so-unexpected ambush. After finding out he’s been fingered for Chelsea’s kidnapping and enduring a brief round of gunfire, Bean remains nonplussed. But after one of the guards insults Bean’s car (You just made a fatal mistake, Mister.), our hero wigs out, flashes some more cool car toys and proceeds to make his escape, narrowly avoiding onrushing cop cars and one .50 caliber anti-tank gunner in the process.

Now the plot really begins to get holy (and I don’t mean like a hand grenade!). A "chance" meeting ensues between our heroes and villains at a truck stop of all places (what, no Choke-N-Puke?), with the bad guys still in their souped up Mac Truck.

After a light bulb goes off in Bean’s head (30-watt at best), yet another mad chase through the streets of Chicago ensues. (see: Blues Brothers, the original). The action is flying fast and furious now, as Semmerling’s associate and driver gets shot in the face, yet still somehow survives long enough to fling some anti-personnel fragmentation grenades out the window and fall for the "pick-my-bag-up-off-the-floor, get-shot-in-the-back of-the-head trick (You are the weakest link. Good bye.).

After narrowly avoiding flying off the edge of an unfinished freeway (more Blues Brothers), our chase continues with the CPD now involved. Note: This is a good time to pick up another beer, as none of the dialogue is that important or interesting.

Bean, now thoroughly raged, has his quest for vengeance halted when Semmerling puts a gun to Carrie’s head (Oops! There it goes again.), Bean surrenders his weapon, only to get ridiculed for his weakness and shot in the forehead for his trouble.

Semmerling, not content with Bean’s so-called death, hotwires a car and runs over our ex-hero a couple times (just in case). Just then, Bean, who apparently was either playing possum or had a bulletproof head, gets up, squat-lifts Semmeriling’s car ala Arnold Schwarzenegger in Twins and proceeds to live again.

Bean, Rally and Carrie all ride off into the sunset, leaving us with this valuable lesson: The family that cons together, stays together. (Warm fuzzies all around.)

Now then, this movie starts with a two-beer handicap for its English voice acting. Being the anime buff that I am, I’ve heard some pretty awful jobs of dubbing before, but this one is unparalleled. It even beats Samurai Showdown, which up until now held the "Worst Anime Feature" title. Samurai Showdown, by the way, will not make its 3B Theater debut, thanks in large part to the fact that fights scenes outnumber dialogue 3:1 (via the Steven Segal school of film making).

Questions? Comments? E-Mail Paul at paul-f@usa.net.