By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Star Trek is generally the last franchise that audiences would associate with anime. Not only is Gene Roddenberry’s franchise primarily associated with live-action, but his forays into animation (as with Lower decks And Prodigy) were clearly more inspired by the West than by the East. However, two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (“A Matter of Honor” and “Peak Performance”) managed to insert references to Dirty pairone of the most influential animated series of the 80s.
Star Trek and dirty pair
If you’re already stopping Star Trek: The Next Generation For you to spot these moments with the pause button, be warned: your fingers will have to be faster than Data’s to freeze the image in the right place. The first reference to Dirty pair occurs in “A Matter of Honor”, the memorable Season 2 episode where Riker serves aboard a Klingon ship as part of an officer exchange program. When visiting Benzite Officer Mendon notices dangerous bacteria on the Klingon ship, his science monitor presents the terms OP KEI and OP YURI hidden among all the scientific information.
But what do those blink-and-you’ll-miss-them names on a Star Trek background screen have to do with the anime? In both cases Dirty pair manga and anime series, we follow the misadventures of Kei and Yuri, two trouble consultants who always catch the bad guys but cause enormous damage. Like Sylvester Stallone in Demolition manThese girls’ reputations precede them, and “Dirty Pair” is the derogatory nickname given to them for their tendency to cause massive property damage every time they save the day.
It’s not clear which Star Trek set designer was a big anime fan, but they made up their minds. Dirty pair next level references in the season 2 episode “Peak Performance”. This is the episode where the Enterprise crew played war games, with Picard pitting the Federation flagship against an 8-year-old Starfleet ship commanded by Riker. Data also struggles to beat an alien visiting Strategema, but it seems game over for everyone once some angry Ferengi show up.
In this episode of Star Trek, the first reference from the anime is hidden on a monitor showing Data’s systems. Thanks to the series’ incredible Blu-Ray transfer, we can see that one of the android’s systems is labeled “Kei/Yuri submodule.” Obviously this is just another Easter egg for fans, but we can’t help but fall in love with the idea that Noonien Soong was a huge vintage anime nerd and had programmed some old animation knowledge centuries into his greatest creation.
Interestingly, this episode of Star Trek hides its cheesiest animated reference in plain sight. Look closely and you’ll see an Okudagram exhibit that names the war games Picard and Riker are participating in as “Operation Lovely Angel.” In Dirty pair“Lovely Angels” is the code name for the team of Kei and Yuri, although their harshest critics prefer to simply call them Dirty Pair.
Considering Paramount is somewhat at a crossroads with Star Trek, the powers that be should seriously consider creating an animated series. Not only is this something fans would love, but like this Dirty pair As history shows, the franchise was created by enthusiastic fans of Japanese animation for decades. Add to that the fact that cartoons are more economical than live-action shows and we could have ourselves a Star Trek anime in just two wags of the tail.
