Review of “Photon: The Idiot Adventures” (1997)
A small boy with fantastic strength also has the unique ability to save his hot-headed childhood friend from her own unique ability, which is to create stasis fields that can get so large even she herself is trapped and frozen in time. The boy accidentally marries a rebel space pilot.
Science fiction comedy. One of the clones of the Tenchi Muyō (1992) franchise: both involve space opera and partly naked non-haram harems. Photon succeeds in spite of its farcical and sexist elements because of its free-wheeling scripts with sharp one-liners and gags like the Laman household musical. Likewise, Photon sports bold visual design work and sometimes impressive animation. As Clements and McCarthy write in the first Anime Encyclopedia (2001), “it looks as if a mad scientist has combined Dragon Half and Nausicaä in a secret laboratory.” The double-length finale succeeds above expectation in bringing the show to some eerie Dune-like places, but the ending leaves a bad taste.