Mars of Destruction Review

story 7/10

After pieces of the wreckage of the Mars Exploration Vessel fell to Earth, strange things started to happen. Creatures that look an awful lot like human-sized specific Angels from Eva are going around tearing people apart. Of course, in typical anime-fashion, a team of young ladies is dispatched to kill the creatures and protect the citizenry. To throw in another anime cliché, a high school student has been forced by his father to wear a suit of armor that makes him powerful enough to fight the Ancients head-on. Throw in a secret mission, and you have the plot of Mars of Destruction.

It’s fairly easy to tell, even with no background, that Mars of Destruction is based on a game. The short length and open-ended conclusion are big giveaways, for one. Even so, I found it a little silly that the opening was as cinematic as it was, complete with fading credits and an (albeit gorgeous) opera ballad. When I first started watching Mars and saw that opening, I thought to myself "Wow, this must be a full length movie!" Alas, a quick look at the overall time reported that in fact, this OVA was only fifteen minutes in length. Keeping in mind the opening and ending credits last a few minutes each, this makes for a short viewing.

In general, although the story does seem to borrow elements from plenty of other RPGs/anime out there, it was still interesting enough to pique my interest. The "best" part of the story occurs in the last few minutes and would be a spoiler (note: don’t read the description on AniDB currently, if you don’t want it spoiled) to discuss, but in general, makes the idea of the Ancients FAR FAR more interesting than you’d originally think. I’m a sucker for sci fi stories, so this idea really appealed to me. Quite frankly, it makes me want to play the game now. Admittedly, if you aren’t as into sci fi as I am, you might find this to be a fairly worthless and quick watch. If anything, the ~12 minutes shows you some action, cool monsters, and a tiny bit of background on the characters. Enough to interest me, maybe not enough to interest you; see for yourself.

animation 7.5/10

While there is nothing inherently bad about Mars’ animation, there also is nothing inherently spectacular either. The characters look like they could have been pulled out of any dating sim, albeit with a sci fi flare. There’s the girl with glasses and pigtails, the nerdy-looking guy, and other generic looking women. A few things did make the animation stand out in my mind: the Ancients, whose glowing red eyes reminded me strongly of elements of a few other series, and the glowing Tron-like armor of Takeru. In addition, I was a big fan of people getting pulled apart and mangled, instead of just being shot down in a boring fashion. For example, one of the first things we see is a girl’s head exploding when an Ancient’s beam hits it. The opening scene, as well, is very cinematic with a space background, and a nice explosion. As far as I could tell there was no CGI interspersed with the regular animation, but I could be wrong. Colors were very dark and almost muddled at times, but worked well. While it’s no Karas, the animation of Mars of Destruction still was pleasant.

sound 6/10

The audio for Mars of Destruction is almost entirely well known opera classics. There were a few non-opera orchestral tracks as well, which were also very well known. Now, I’m not one to complain about good opera, and for all I know these were the same songs that were used in the game. Regardless, I always feel it’s a little tacky to not have original music in an anime. Sure, a recognizable track is ok once in awhile, but can’t the creators of the anime at least come up with one or two completely unique, new songs to use? A 6 for the good, yet unoriginal tunes.

characters 5/10

It’s always very hard to judge this section for very short OVAs and such. In the case of Mars of Destruction, the characters all seemed incredibly generic and flat, so it’s hard to rate this section anything over a 5. Takeru is literally the only character that seems to have a back story, but it falls under the same category as Evangelion or a number of other series out there: young person is forced to fight because they have the ability, end up being bitter and angst-filled, etc. Literally the only other character development we get a hint of is that one of the female characters is interested in Takeru. Sometimes I’ll rate a characters section highly even if the anime is short, because the characters are either entertaining or seem to have depth. The characters in Mars don’t really have either, and are simply generic. Hence the average score.

overall 5.8/10

I know what you are thinking: how could I rate this OVA a 5.8 if the majority of the sections are rated over a 6.5? I admit I did like the twist of the story, and the decent animation. I liked the common yet good music. But nothing else about Mars of Destruction stood out enough to warrant a very high score. The short length will probably turn a lot of people off to seeing this anyways, unless you plan on playing the games. In general, watch this if you want a quick piece of sci fi action, or are priming for the games. Otherwise, probably not worth your time.