DeathBecomesDavid

Absolutely sick production wasted on lame sex comedy, but it’s nice to see sex scenes in an anime that are both explicit and consensual.

Beauty and the Beast meets The Beast Within…for incels. Hell, I’m being kind ‘cause that climax neared school shooter territory. Fantastic monsters and a welcome bounty of sex aside, this is just too juvenile in its fantasy. I attribute the badass biker chick, who belongs in a different/better OVA, to the oversexed writers stumping themselves with the easiest conceit that should’ve been a home run. Although they did have the conviction to tell a complete story in just 28 minutes.

Luffy may have some depth in the series but even he isn’t immune to the reductive power of OVA scripting. That aside this is a great little offering. Wish the show looked this good, Oda’s idiosyncratic character designs are wasted there and I have no problem skimming the sorted movies and OVAs if I want more. Be real, you’re not going to watch all of a 1000 episode series. I’m an big proponent of dropping media once you’ve had your fill and that length (combined with generally ugly animation and juvenile humor) puts me off. Ganzack is the short & sweet good stuff.

I don’t know why this was so captivating even as it exited my mind after finishing this more than a week ago. I mean, 50 episodes and nothing has seared my mind more than the pinups that bookend the commercial break with a screeching guitar rift. On paper this is a basic martial arts cultivation story even if in practice there’s no sense of progression or tension. After a major fight about 20 episodes in, it becomes clear the real markers of Kenichi’s development are not the arts themselves, but the friends he makes along the way… Given that episode count & the genre the... See full review

A 45 minute version of the Taarna segment from Heavy Metal shouldn’t be this dull, but some how is in addition to being deathly self serious. I don’t expect every pulpy sci-fi/fantasy anime to be as confident as Space Adventure Cobra or Dirty Pair, but you gotta give me more than a self loathing shut-in panderfest. The level of detail on Lemnear’s body in peril versus the disinterest when she’s kicking ass would be at home in hentai. That its all so beautifully made only makes it a greater waste.  There's ... See full review

An Alien knockoff that refreshingly focuses on the corporate horror of for profit space exploration instead of just the monster action. Love these character designs (barring the awkward looking black guy), especially the “sailors”. Their tired eyes and near absence of fear tell us everything we need to know. Meanwhile the company folks are all naivety and short tempers, never really understanding the gravity of their situation until its too late. All of this delivered in a crisp, beautiful production I wish I could see on the big screen.  While the film is derivative of many live action... See full review

Blow Out’s cheesy OVA little brother. Most 40-50 minute one-offs struggle to tell a full story relying instead on spectacle. This is no a fault of the form, as the economy of good thriller storytelling can attest too with the smooth jazz example of Urban Square. Masterful pacing carries the deliberately rote MacGuffin plot of movie nerd wish fulfillment. There is romance, an assassination attempt with a Bruce Lee lookalike, and recurring scenes of the hero spilling drinks or tipping over himself because the script demands it. This is straight, wafer thin entertainment complete with a suiting up... See full review

Stoic OVA heroes always bring things down, but thankfully (surprisingly) the script’s split between boring Ryu and his three detective(?) friends basically staring in their own adventure. The 2 times these threads cross feels like an after thought. A villain even comments on how these guys can handle themselves which if I were a NG diehard would be up in arms over; there’s as much gunfire as swordplay! 

Who cares! It’s all very slick looking, bar a few odd moments in the editing, and while it’s no Ninja Scroll this one you could show to just about anyone. Closest it comes... See full review

This OVA’s reputation promises if anything cute girls and slick, sakuga action. Fluid animation meets clumsy editing in set pieces that hinge on contrivance while shying away from gun violence until the very last minute of the last episode. Not since Taxi (1998) have I seen so much gunfire and so little consequence. The series sends itself off with a reactionary plot twist that admittedly felt American as hell. The famous car chase from episode 2 is a mix of incredible, clean movement with jittery editing and a weird gimmick that barely follows. This is no Riding Bean.  Lastly, the two leads... See full review

A teen institutionalized drama that mets out nearly everything you’d want from the premise. The threat of space is always present and the technobable combined with some real sounding science keeps the tension legible. Throw in some class division amongst the kids and the terror of being ejected from a social circle and you got a damn fine (brief!) movie. 

I was less in love with Tada having a familial connection to the ship as it flies in the face of having the self-importance the nobles at all. Worse, poor Frol getting a send off that feels out of the 1940s. Had the entire cast been male... See full review

1980s OVA shojo horror lacking the mean spirited nature of its era. Looking at the comments on the upload I'd wager you found this through Hazels video on OVAs. Having now watched that I can say the latter is a better use of your time. Makaryuudo is beautifully storyboarded with killer monster designs that bracket a rolodex worth of high school caricatures. Those 30 minutes, however, really test the limits of anime melodrama with wall to wall introductions and table setting. Even the title character has to literally fight the expository demons to make her voice heard. This is effectively a demo for a full... See full review

The brevity alone makes this better than Alien knockoffs, Creature or The Terror Within. You’ve seen uglier anime and that ending is pitch perfect. It’s like a bad B horror movie booster shot. 

I’m behind on G Witch, but in that time I marathoned this gruesome gem. I’m already a sucker for seinen body horror, monster-of-the-week trash like Speed Grapher and Witchblade, but Devil Lady had the audacity to be heart wrenching, gay melodrama. It was wonderful. Far more involving and mature than Crybaby with a fraction of the budget, this crude looking show with terrible action scenes is one of the great under seen shows of the 90s. So take my word when I say I fucking was on the edge of my seat over the relationship drama, the queasy social horror, and what the military villains were... See full review

When I think of cyberpunk OVAs I think gaudy style, sex, and violence matched with halfhearted exposition and nary a scene wasted on trivial things like character or theme. For these and other dull observations, most of this catalog is either forgettable (Metal Skin Panic, Appleseed) or entertaining in the flimsy ways Roger Corman films are (Goku: Midnight Eye, Black Magic M66). This is all to say, you go into these with measured expectations and, given the short length of the format, the confidence that you won’t waste too much time. Armitage III has an unusual reputation thanks to being re-edited... See full review

In the mid 2000s there was a deluge of edgelord horror-fantasy anime. High selling DVDs included Hellsing, Claymore, and Elfen Lied and the culture stunk of oneupmanship over who “found” the cruelest of the bunch first. It was ugly and while the occasional gem of schlock combined exploitation and juvenile whimsy to great effect like Gantz or Requiem from the Darkness this also buried the genuinely great works like Black Lagoon and Ergo Proxy for the crime of sharing the same tags. 

15 years later and this fella is very happy to find while High-Rise Invasion may not reach the... See full review

Being a 40 year old compilation film I can forgive the barely feature worthy story. Episodic and clumsy, you can’t come into this expecting to be converted into a Gundam super fan. Instead Gundam I is effectively an orientation that skillfully/correctly skips the history lessons in favor of wall to wall war melodrama, and that’s a compliment. 

Like most old school anime, the pleasure is in the analog animation & simple story perfect for a sleepy day or half-watched over folding laundry. You get the goods told with mad conviction while jerking your attention back to full with... See full review

Yasuke is the kind of project that feels obvious in conception, but bleakly novel in reality. If someone had told me five years ago that a big-budget anime based on the real-life black samurai of 16th century Japan was going to be made by a lead on The Boondocks & star the stoner guy from Atlanta I’d have thought, that sounds about right. Do it.  Well, here we are, drowning in all...six episodes of LeSean Thomas’s anime mini-series, and yet when you google “black anime characters” you still find mostly supporting roles and just a few leads. So, Yasuke presents us with... See full review

In a screeching reminder that Studio Trigger's bodacious animation covers for their utter lack of writing prowess, late in the film a victim of genocide is told that his anger is out of control. How about no.  (mild spoilers) This sub-B tier Dreamworks writing would be less grating if Trigger's writing department were on the level with themselves and told basic-bitch stories of good defeating evil. The big bad would better serve the domino line of climaxes that make up the runtime (the moments of downtime are precious and fleeting) if it were another amorphous "darkness" or... See full review

For baby’s first anti-capitalist saga you could do worse (Metropolis) and certainly better (Kaiji). What dulls viewers appreciation over 12 episodes is a reliance on stock characters and no risks taken on world building. Anime fans are used to info dumps and strained dialogue, but that shouldn’t stop us adults from recommending it to the youngsters. Laying out the injustices and indignities of life under capitalism are Deca-Dence’s strengths. The idea that no matter how hard you fight... See full review

My only school fight was over Pokemon cards. Middle school culture didn’t tolerate open displays of (at the time) niche interests. So, when two kids came over to harass my friend and me as we traded cards, two of us wound up wrestling on the ground. In elementary and middle schools I had dressed in large, billowy jackets and cargo pants and I knew what I was doing. Those heavy clothes, even in the hot California summers were a shield. A barrier between me and them. This was my Chunibyo phase (roughly translated to “eighth-grader syndrome”). In high school and college, I locked my geeky... See full review

This show sure is pretty.  That and melodramatic, sometimes cringe, often bittersweet, and occasionally deeply moving. I came to Toradora after finishing Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun, hungry for more high school comedy and romantic tension. Hell, I was giddy for something with more posturing and arch writing after the former’s gentility.  I did this to myself.  From the first two episodes I was struck by two things. Firstly was how relatable I found the co-protagonists. Tsundere (comedically violent or spitfire characters, often women) seeming Tiaga and domestically inclined Ryuji, as... See full review