I searched far and wide to watch this anime and finally found two sources on YouTube. One was Raw while the other was with Russian and Japanese subtitles. I had to use Google Translate to take care of that it provided manageable results. Now moving on to the review.
Burning Blood is a dark tale of crime and vengeance and enemies motivating each other to take the path of righteousness and settle differences with integrity. It also has grim takes on vengefulness from a few of the side characters and that is pretty much the extent of this OVA series.
The tale features Takagi Ryou, a high school teen turned local legend when he takes on three American soldiers stationed in Japan and wins. He is so powerful that he can practically defeat entire gangs single-handedly and when one such occasion arises when he must do so to protect his friends, he does exactly that. However, the humiliation of defeat often calls for retribution and while Takagi was debuting as an excellent trumpet player, the gang decides to beat up his friend and kidnap and rape his friend's girlfriend. Upon learning about what happened, Takagi storms their stronghold to find Moriyama Jin, their leader who had no idea about the activities of his gang, and for the first time in his life, Takagi experiences defeat. Jin, with good intentions, helps the poor girl and reprimands his gang for their actions. However, feeling Takagi's bloodlust pushes him to take up boxing once more and when Takagi comes back to seek revenge, he is told to clean up his act and face Moriyama in the ring instead. And that is how they both motivate each other by giving the other a clear goal to follow in life. A pretty wholesome enmity.
As far as the art and animation are concerned, it is quite old and they aren't exactly top class considering modern standards, or even the time when this OVA came out. The animation is quite choppy from time to time while the art is pretty busy and unclear, especially considering the fact that this originally came out in 360p, potato quality by modern standards. If you're looking for high-flying action or even action of any sort from this anime, you won't exactly be disappointed, but you won't be terribly impressed either. There are boxing phases to this anime where the action does get quite tactical and interesting, but that's about it. The action is entirely smooth and I wouldn't compare the quality to something like Hajime no Ippo.
The sound, at least in my copy and I'm quite certain that it'd be similar for most copies, is nothing to brag about. In fact, the sound is quite horrible, with only a Mono channel and not a lot of content or depth to it. It can be tolerable considering the overall quality of the anime, but if the anime itself was any better, the sound would mostly be a pretty horrible failure. Then again, I'm not going to expect much from a low budget OVA like this.
Coming over to the characters, they're pretty standard. Nothing too special and nothing too bad either. Quite unremarkable, in fact. However, in defence of the OVA, you can't exactly show much character depth or development for that matter in just three episodes. The only character development shown can be seen in Takagi himself as he cleans up his act and finds an example to follow as well as in Moriyama when Takagi motivates him and decides to quit his life of gang violence. There's a little bit of character development to Wakabayashi, Takagi's trumpet teacher as well, but he is more of a side character as far as this OVA is concerned anyway, so I wouldn't really count it as something too significant.
It has a nice mix of mystery, boxing, action, interpersonal relationships and personal motivations. But all that being said, the tale of this OVA is quite short and inconclusive. It mostly features most of the participants turning towards the correct path in life and it barely touches the actual rivalry. There's a lot more to this story that hasn't been turned into an anime and I personally want a better quality reboot and continuation of this tale. This mostly sets up a prologue of sorts and leaves the story at that I honestly want more out of it. Much more.
