Kiddy Grade

Anime Review:

Kiddy GradeGenre Adventure, Mystery, Science Fiction

Story

The story takes place in a future where the human race has expanded and inhabits a multitude of planets in the universe with fantastic technology. Unsurprisingly, crime has grown alongside technology, and thus the GOTT, Galactic Organization of Trade and Tariffs, is formed as a sort of universal police force. Within this organization, there is a special (and secret) branch known as the ES Force (ES standing for "Encounter of Shadow-work"), consisting of twelve young people that possess amazing superpowers. Each ES member operates with another as a team, and the series' focus is a team of two low-level members, Éclair and Lumière. As the series progresses, they start to see the darker side of GOTT and its secrets.

Main characters

Éclair

is the main protagonist of the anime series Kiddy Grade.

Éclair works for the Galactic Organization of Trade and Tariffs, or GOTT for short. While her primary job is to be a receptionist her job also incorporates being sent on missions as an ES member of the so-called "Shadow Unit" in order to ensure normal economic operation on the various planets around the Galaxy. She does this with the assistance of her younger partner and fellow receptionist Lumière, her Guard robot Donnerschlag and the space-ship La Muse. She is 165cm tall, her three sizes (in cm) are 90-54-85, her favourite foods are celery and carrots and her favourite phrase is "Que será, será".

Known for her childish nature, she often dresses up in either a skimpy or amusing, but loosely related to the situation, costume. For instance when she was sent to take a letter of attorney to the Faunusian government, she dressed up in a pizza delivery outfit, and placed the letter in a pizza box. She also has a tendency to shout "Ta-da!" (じゃっじゃ～ん！) whenever she arrives on the scene to arrest someone or instances when she surprises or saves Lumière. Her rash nature also often makes her overreact to situations, for instance, in one instance she could not get official arrest authorization and jumped off and pursued to destroy many robots. This lack of composure often makes Lumière say "A Lady should be more elegant," also later Mrs. Padushka also states "You're so rash, how will you ever find a husband?" Despite this she is naturally honest and direct, and tries to remain cheerful even when on assignment. Although she is hot-headed and immature, Éclair is also very sweet, caring, willing to help others, and loves children whether it be friend or stranger. This gentle tendency has got her and Lumière pursued by GOTT because she defied her orders by helping the civilians when on an enforcement mission to support the dictator.

Éclair possesses great physical strength which borders on the ridiculous, and also uses her lipstick whip often in battle. Her lipstick deserves note, if she draws with it on a surface, the drawn lipstick is actually so tough and rubbery that she can lift it of the surface and use it as a whip, or in one instance to make two ropes to stop of mob of people opposing the Nouvlesse. Her lipstick serves another purpose, as she uses self-hypnotic suggestion so that she can only really use her immense strength when she wears lipstick. In at least one extreme circumstance, she substituted some of her own blood from an injury for the lipstick to achieve the same effect. Éclair is at first believed to be part cyborg, her enhancements letting her move so fast as to appear to teleport from place to place. The nature of these enhancements are not explained at first and are typically attributed to her ES ability: "Power". "Power" also enables her to heal rapidly from most types of wounds, so she's sometimes known as "The ES Agent who cannot die". Later in the series, she reveals the true extent of her "Power", which are actually G-Class, which allow her to hover, and create spheres or waves of concussive forces, as well as shielding. Her favoured weapon is a custom .45 caliber model Walther P99.

Later in the series it is realized that in fact Éclair is roughly 250 years old and has been "reborn" several times. This is revealed when she gets so close to the Dardanos mind control center that she has flash-backs to her past lives, in all of them she worked for the GOTT, and is also the adopted mother of the head of the Galactic Union (who would not be older than her, if she was not reborn) Chevalier D'Autriche. The burden of the acts she has performed in the service of various powers at times has become too much for her to bear and she has had her memories erased. When in possession of all her memories her true G-Class powers are unlocked (as well as the self-hypnotic limitation, allowing her to use her abilities at will).

Lumière

is the secondary protagonist of the 2002 anime series Kiddy Grade.

Lumière is a GOTT receptionist and ES member like her partner Éclair. Lumière has little to no physical abilities. She instead makes up for this with her adept, controlled mind, her wit and her ability to control any computer unit. Even though she is physically younger than Éclair she is far more mature, from the way she dresses, from her politeness, to her tastes (she likes the opera and fine wine). She is always trying to convince Éclair to be more lady-like through her catch-phrase "A Lady should really be more elegant." Lumiere also possesses a friendship with the AI unit of the La Muse, Wirbelwind, which she created. Her computer abilities do not manifest in the typing sense, as long as she touch an electric circuit she can bring it under control just using her mind. She doesn't even need to touch an object to interact with it, as her "Puppet" ability allows her to manipulate "strings" of nanites towards the object, allowing her to link with it from a distance. She also manifests herself into the digital space and can also spawn Mini-Lumière's to assist her in data collection tasks and the such. Her skills are so impressive that she can break through 3,786 firewalls in less than ten minutes, or can even bring a planet's environment terraforming system under her control. While on the run with Éclair, she was even able to defeat the D-Command (an electronic warfare program designed to incapacitate rougue ES agents) by hacking her own nanites so as to develop an immunity.

Lumière is often the person who sits at the side during missions, she spends a lot more bonding time with Armbrust than Éclair. She is also far more intelligent than Éclair (at least with Éclair's mental blocks in place) and on numerous occasions, things that are obvious to Lumière and the audience are not obvious to Éclair, but she has more than one experiences when her life was in major danger because she has no physical ability. Her weapon of choice is a COP 357 Derringer.

Lumière has also been the subject of numerous rebirths over the last 200 years, but unlike Éclair, has never had her memories erased, explaining her maturity and experience. It is not described if they are reborn at the same time or separately, but in one flashback, Lumière is shown showing Éclair the ropes around the GOTT after Éclair had her memories erased. Lumière takes this fact far better than Éclair, who has been shown to have had fits over this. Her true power, the G Class ability "Particle" enables her to control matter at the subatomic level. At one point she uses it to reconstruct her own body after it is atomized in a power supply unit. When she reorganizes her own particles, she takes on the form of a much taller, adult version of herself so as to allow her body to have capacity to use her power again after having lost the use of it. This is quite taxing however, as she was only able to sustain it for a short time.

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