A giant monster is attacking your city... no wait, it's just Neo Ranga.

In the near future, a giant monster attacks Tokyo. It's name, Neo Ranga. The Shimabara sisters Ushio, Yuuhi and Mami, seem to have some connection to the giant beast, but that means little to the Japanese military.

The first few episodes consist mostly of the Japanese military wasting plenty of tax dollars on Neo Ranga. We're given an introduction to the Shimabara sisters Ushio, Yuuhi and Minami during all this; apparently they know of Neo Ranga, so they're going to do something about it (one hopes). Ranga, it seems, is just coming to pay homage to it's kings, the Shimabara sisters. As it happens, their brother Masaru had married into the south pacific island royalty on Barou island, a quaint little kingdom with it's own ancient god protector. Masaru suddenly died while at sea one day, followed soon after by his wife (most likely of convenientaceous plotdiseaseitis), leaving the entire island kingdom (and its god) to the sisters. This allows them to command Ranga to do their bidding.

The girls argue about what to do with him; Ushio wants him to be the neighborhood guardian, Yuuhi wants to use him to mete out her own kind of vigilante justice, and Minami wants as little to do with him as possible. Soon the neighbors begin to complain, the media won't let them rest and the government demands that Ranga be turned over to them. The girls comply reluctantly and Ranga is destroyed, or is he? Doubting that anything could destroy Ranga, they go to the site of his supposed destruction. Uncovering the hoax, Ranga is returned to an unusually enthusiastic neighborhood, they missed the big guy. Questions still remain; what is Ranga, what does the government want with him and why does Ranga's face keep changing into a pair of familiar eyes?

Looking at the cover, I thought Neo Ranga was about some cute anime girls with neat tattoos, but it seems I was mistaken. The girls are there, but not their tattoos, but there is a giant monster destroying Tokyo, so it's all good. ADV crams an impressive eight episodes onto the dvd, eight fifteen minute episodes. Some fans don't trust fifteen minute episodes (myself included), but to each their own.

Neo Ranga is more than a giant monster anime, but at the same time, it doesn't quite fit into any other genre very well, either. I thought something would be lost in a series made up of half episodes, but I was nicely surprised to find out that I didn't feel shorted. The up side of fifteen-minute episodes is that they discourage the use of standard anime budget saving techniques (they really stand out). As a result, Neo Ranga's animation is, for the most part, very smooth and clean, kudos to Studio Pierrot.

After watching volume one, I can safely say that I have no idea where the series is going. The conflicts in the series that cannot be instantly resolved by the fact that the three sisters have their own pet god seem contrived or just plain ridiculous. When you consider that Ranga sepnds most of his time as a giant lawn ornament at the Shimabara house, one would think that if the military or government was going to do anything else, they would have done it already. Nitpicks aside, I found Neo Ranga to be an entertaining ride that may be spending a little too much time getting to the point.