#1 Parasyte, but cute
Birdy is an alien girl who acts as a sort-of peacekeeper that prevents other aliens who secretly live on our planet from causing trouble for the unknowing humans. When one such alien decides to take a hostage, she accidentally ends up killing the teenage boy Tsutomu Senkawa while her actual target runs off. Her superiors don’t take kindly to this and intervene. By merging their bodies and consciences, Tsutomu is restored back to life just like that. However, he and Birdy now share his body and their minds and senses are linked together.
Forcing a peacekeeping action girl and a hapless, Japanese teenager to cooperate is not a recipe for success, leading to the two competing for control and getting into tiring arguments over what they should be doing. As unlikely a duo as they may be, they have to figure out how to work together in order to stop an extraterrestrial conspiracy.
Birdy the Mighty has all the appeals of a buddy-cop movie. Two opposites forced to work together to stop criminal activity, but with the supernatural twist that they literally share a body and shapeshift between the teenage boy and alien girl forms. One to maintain an illusion of normalcy and one to kick alien butt with.
#2 Birdy is a fantastic heroine
Tsutomu has his own arc to go through and I ended up liking him well enough, but the immediate selling point of the OVA is Birdy herself. She is the kind of badass action girl that I’d like to see in anime more often. Her design is sexy and I dig the red-white hairstyle, but the cover art also shows that she is a strong and intimidating character.
Birdy had a similar appeal to me as Honey Kisaragi. Both are confident, beautiful heroines that know how to get a job done and can fight off henchmen with ease. Both are also cheerful characters with mischievious sides and, in Birdy’s case, I was especially fond of how she aids Tsutomu in cute little ways, such as when she helps him pursue a romantic interest. On the flipside, her careless actions do cause a lot of problems and there is the ongoing issue of Tsutomu’s family not actually knowing that their son was recently murdered and immediately revived. In fact, there are a lot of little secrets his parents and sister aren’t aware of right now.
Already in the first episode, I kind of regretted not getting the remake (2008’s Birdy the Might: Decode) as well, as I would have really liked to see more of Birdy.
#3 Beating up alien uglies
This is very much an action show and, as such, Birdy and Tsutomu will frequently come face-to-face with alien invaders with strange powers. Relentless androids, shapeshifting reptiles, even cosmic horrors, they’re all roaming the earth looking to cause trouble.
Watching Birdy fight them with gadgets, tact, and her own strength and agility is kick-ass stuff and the stakes are frequently high enough to make each episode exciting. The alien designs are also quite good and, despite its short length, the OVA does manage to hype up its bad guys sufficiently before our two heroes come face-to-face with them.
