YMMV / Sukeban Deka

• And You Thought It Would Fail: When the 2006 film Yo-Yo Girl Cop was announced, few people believed it could be other than the lumbering of a Franchise Zombie, as the lead actress was seen as a bad casting choice, the premise was thought to be outdated, and it was believed that too many years had passed since the last time Sukeban Deka had hit the big screen. However, the movie broke all expectations in box office and turned out successful enough to get distributed abroad for the first time ever. Fans were also happy that the film revealed after so many years the fate of Saki in the first TV series.
• Awesome Music:
  • The first opening of the TV series, Shiroi hono, by Yuki Saito.
  • There's in general a pretty good soundtrack for such a narmy franchise.
• Bizarro Episode: Season 2, episode 22 shows Saki not fighting crime. Instead, she organizes a cheerleading team.
• Complete Monster:
  • Manga: Remi Mizuchi and her family orchestrate the deaths of over sixty of the sisters' classmates to make room for the kids of possible financial benefactors for the father, Gozo's, political career. Remi is quite good at putting on the façade of being the White Sheep, which she uses this to her advantage when she decides to brainwash her students for her personal army. She then gives Ayumi a rigged shotgun, steals all her money, has one of her brainwashed lackeys kill Emi and Gozo, and then laughs about "her poor sisters." During her rooftop battle with Saki, Remi drops the princess facade and reveals her true Ax-Crazy tendencies as she savages Saki with a whip while screaming at her about her supposedly insane mother.
  • 2006 live-action film: Romeo, real name Jiro Kimura, is the head of the website Enola Gay. Using the website, Jiro reaches out to bullied teenagers to manipulate them into suicide bombing while creating collateral damage. Attempting to manipulate a rally of troubled teens gathering together, Jiro intends to bomb the gathering to kill everyone there and create enough chaos to rob a bank while attention is elsewhere. Gleeful about destruction and chaos, Jiro also tries to gain an advantage against the heroine Saki Asamiya by strapping bombs to her friend to force her to decide between saving them or defeating Jiro himself.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Okyo and Yukino from the second TV series. Also Yoko herself, as she was not the original Saki after all and not many expected her to become so popular.
• Even Better Sequel: Sukeban Deka II, the sequel to the first TV series adaptation. Despite having butchered the manga's plot to acommodate a whole new protagonist and her allies, it not only reached the level of popularity of the previous series, but actually surpassed it, and even the manga's author himself loved it. The series raised the franchise to an entirely new level, gave green light to a third series and a movie, and caused eternal debates about who was the best incarnation of Saki Asamiya. Sadly, Sukeban Deka III then proceeded to make the franchise plummet down (see Franchise Killer and Sequelitis below).
• Gateway Series: With the animated OVA being mostly a curiosity, Yo-Yo Girl Cop is the reason why many fans abroad know of this manga series. Inverted in Latin America, since the OVA came first there.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The second part of the manga has an arc where Saki reunites with Kyoko Himura, her best friend from middle school while investigating Kyoko's involvement in the death of her classmate Etsuko. Kyoko's implied to be of Indian ascent because of the bindi mark on her forehead, treated like a servant by most of the girls in school, smacked around a lot, and even called a witch. Then it turns out the usually demure Kyoko is Not So Harmless and secretly did kill Etsuko. Taking into account how the higher ranking students at this school are called "Rose People" along with the fairy tale motif, one can only assume this arc was a subconscious inspiration for Revolutionary Girl Utena. Kyoko even calls the pink-haired Saki a prince.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Sukeban Deka The Movie, focusing both on Yoko Godai from II and Yui Kazama from III, was released during the emission of the latter, and was much better received than said season had been up to that point and would be afterwards. Why did it fail at heighten the franchise, then? Because people watched it only wanting to see Yoko and her friends, not Yui. To be fair, the producers probably knew this and only wanted to grab a quick load for III with the film, as Yui's role is so reduced that you could write her out of the script and the movie would be the same.
  • Fans of Revolutionary Girl Utena have taken a shine to this series starting off with the resemblance Utena Tenjou shares with Saki. Members of the Utena forum Empty Movement brought more attention to Sukeban Deka when they discovered the eerie similarities between Utena and the Cinderella's Counterattack story arc. After already finding similarities between Utena and Saki, the Utena fandom quickly started comparing Anthy Himemiya with Kyoko Himura to the point it's largely hypothesized that Sukeban Deka helped inspire Revolutionary Girl Utena.
• Les Yay:
  • Between Saki and Junko. Saki and Remi in the manga, and at some point the two sleep together.
  • From the 2006 film, Tae and Kotomi, who even used the nicknames Romeo and Juliet for chatting. Many reviewers of the movie actually thought they were openly meant to be a lesbian couple (which they might have written as... only not openly).
• Narm Charm: Everything in the franchise, particularly its essential premise and usual shenanigans, break the counter in the Camp-meter. Still, that's why it is so awesome.
• The Scrappy: Yui Kazama, the third Saki. Reasons are many: she was the star of a reviled season, her personality was The Ditz instead of a tough girl, and her Saki Asamiya codename was rarely uttered onscreen in favor of her real name.
• Sequelitis: Sukeban Deka III, in no small part because the production team decided to use Star Wars and Sho Kosugi's Ninja films as the making mould of their storylines. The third Saki Asamiya (who, uncharacteristically enough for the franchise, was rarely referred by this name) ended up being involved with ninjutsu, psychic powers and painfully unsubtle references to both film sagas. This series became a Franchise Killer.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel:
  • Only a year after III's cancellation it was released its feature film, Counter-Attack from the Kazama Sisters, which dropped the supernatural elements and got back to the serious urban crime drama that was the spirit of Sukeban Deka. It was much better received than the season itself, to the point is widely believed the franchise could have been saved had the producers taken this road earlier.
  • The 2006 film. Against all odds, it did very well in box office and was critically given the thumbs up. It had the effect of introducing the franchise to a new generation of fans and making it to be exported abroad. Part of the success is attributed to Yuki Saito's cameo as the original Saki Asamiya, who turned out to be alive after the events of the first TV series.
• Win Back the Crowd: The 2006 film didn't bring the franchise back, but it proved it still had a lot of gas in the tank.

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