Avenger is an experimental 13 episode Space Opera Series from studio Bee Train Productions Inc., with Bandai Visual. Taking place in the distant future on a deteriorating space colony on Mars, the majority of humans live in a bunch of small city-states. Those who live on the outside are called Barbaroi. Resources are scarce, and supplies are divided out between cities based on the outcome of gladiatorial battles between representative fighters from each. Adding to the problems of the colonists, no children have been born on Mars for a decade. The cause of the infertility is unknown, but people have turned to robots called dolls as a substitute for the presence of children in their lives. And a red moon, Earth's moon, hangs over Mars, drawn towards the red planet after the destruction of Earth and ravaging it with lunar storms caused by gravitational fluctuations between Mars and its unwelcome satellite.
Enter a young woman by the name of Layla Ashley, a top notch Gladiator with a Dark and Troubled Past who travels about the decaying planet, seeking revenge on Lord Volk, the man who rules Mars and is responsible for her past. Her companions are Nei, a strange and unique doll with some unknown ties to Layla, and Speedy, who is a doll breeder. The founders of Mars, naturally, see the trio as a threat to their world, and each time they attack Layla and Nei, a bit more of their mysterious past and future is revealed. The series remains mostly forgotten today, spare the fans.
It is the second collaboration between Koichi Mashimo and the musical duo Ali Project since Noir. This time, they did the entire soundtrack.
This series provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Layla Ashley is a Gladiator.
- Anti-Villain: Lord Volk is willing to sacrifice anyone, and kill hundreds of people, to conserve resources for the good of Mars and its people. He doesn’t particularly enjoy his role, but he feels that I Did What I Had to Do.
- Big Bad: Lord Volk is the effective ruler of Mars who controls it as a tyrant. He runs the gladiatorial matches, sends out various minions to capture Layla and Nei, and is responsible for the former’s Dark and Troubled Past wherein he destroyed the Space Colony containing her parents, which she seeks revenge for. He does this all in the name of protecting his people, conserving resources so as to prepare for the moon’s arrival.
- Catchphrase: Layla Ashley has "Try, just try and kill me." and "Kill me if you can."
- Colony Drop: The Earth's moon is on a slow collision course with Mars. It hangs in the sky ominously, huge and tainted red by the planet's glow.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Layla Ashley seeks revenge against Volk because he killed Layla's parents while their shuttle was inbound.
- Days of Future Past: Except for the technology level, Mars's society is awfully reminiscent of the city-states of ancient Greece.
- Duality Motif: Nei has heterochromia (different colored eyes) to indicate that s/he is neither male nor female but has the ability to become one or the other. Her eyes (and her hair) both turn pink after she becomes fully female.
- Hermaphrodite: Nei is revealed to be this, as s/he can become male or female. However, she identifies as female.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Volk’s feelings towards the mass-murder he partakes in; he doesn’t like it, but he feels that he has to do it to protect his people.
- One-Word Title: The show's title, Avenger.
- Only Sane Woman: Both Layla Ashley, The Heroine of the show, and Westa, one of the rulers of Mars, are depicted as morally superior to Westa's male partner Lord Volk, who, while well intentioned, is the Big Bad willing to kill innocent people and rule as a tyrant to conserve resources, in contrast to Westa's pacifistic methods that make her much more popular with the people than he is.
- Pink Means Feminine: Later in the series, Nei turns her eyes and hair pink upon deciding to become fully female.
- Population Control: Volk employs many means to keep the population sustainable, including holding gladiatorial matches and killing the loser, and he destroys a shuttle full of incoming colony immigrants to prevent them from using up Mars’ resources. It is later implied that he hid the ability of humans to still have children, which was thought to have been lost, and made them adopt robot dolls to compensate, to prevent a population boom.
- Sic 'Em: Androids are in hot pursuit of Layla and company.
- Replacement Goldfish: Dolls were created when children stopped being born on Mars.
- Robot Kid: Dolls, which are the replacement for normal human children that cannot be born for some reason.
- Robotic Reveal: Inverted; Nei, who passed herself off as a doll, turns out to be a human child.
- Tired of Running: Layla decides to face Volk after he calls for a showdown with her.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Volk is willing to do anything for the people of Mars, and institutes various forms of Population Control that are meant to conserve resources to prepare them for the arrival of the moon. However, he intentionally kills a lot of people through these methods, including holding gladiator games in which the loser is killed, ordering any illegal dolls to be scrapped, and blowing up an innocent Space Colony to prevent them from immigrating into Mars.
