Star Trek Anime References Revealed Decades Ago
Star Trek is usually the last franchise audiences would associate with anime. Not only is Gene Roddenberry’s franchise mostly associated with live-action, but its forays into animation (like with Lower Decks and Prodigy) have clearly been more inspired by the West than the East. Nonetheless, two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (“A Matter of Honor” and “Peak Performance”) managed to sneak in references to Dirty Pair, one of the most influential anime series of the ‘80s.
Star Trek And Dirty Pair
If you’re already pulling up Star Trek: The Next Generation so you can pinpoint these moments with the pause button, be warned: your fingers are going to have to be faster than Data’s to freeze the frame at the right spot. 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 the visiting Benzite officer Mendon notices a dangerous bacteria on the Klingon ship, his science monitor features the terms OP KEI and OP YURI hidden among all the scientific info.
What do these blink-and-you’ll-miss-them names on a Star Trek background monitor have to do with anime, though? In both the 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 massive amounts of damage. Like Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man, these gals’ reputation precedes them, and “Dirty Pair” is the derogative nickname they are given for their tendency to cause massive property damage whenever they save the day.
It’s not clear which Star Trek set designer was a huge anime fan, but they took their Dirty Pair references to the next level in the season 2 episode “Peak Performance.” This is the episode where the Enterprise crew conducted some war games, with Picard pitting the Federation flagship against an 8-year-old Starfleet ship captained by Riker. Data also struggles to beat a visiting alien in Strategema, but it looks to be game over for everyone once some angry Ferengi show up.
In this Star Trek episode, the first anime reference is hidden on a monitor showing Data’s systems. Thanks to the show’s amazing 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 falling in love with the idea that Noonien Soong was a huge vintage anime nerd and programmed centuries-old animation knowledge into his greatest creation.
Interestingly, this Star Trek episode hides its nerdiest anime reference in plain sight. Look closely and you will see an Okudagram display that names the war games that Picard and Riker are participating in as “Operation Lovely Angel.” In Dirty Pair, “Lovely Angels” is the code name for Kei and Yuri’s team, though their harshest critics prefer to just refer to them as the Dirty Pair.
Considering that Paramount is at something of a crossroads with Star Trek, the powers that be should seriously consider creating an anime series. Not only is it something fans would love, but as this Dirty Pair story goes to show, the franchise has been created by enthusiastic fans of Japanese animation for decades. Throw in the fact that cartoons are more budget-friendly than live-action shows and we might have ourselves a Star Trek anime in just two shakes of a targ’s tail.
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