OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Prefectural Earth Defense Force

Having no relation to the Monster Attack video game spinoff, or the live-action 50s movie(aka: The Mysterians), Prefectural Earth Defense Force was at first a limited gag manga from the 80s parodying tokusatsu shows like Ultraman. Kouichirou Yasunaga created the manga, and the doujinshi gained enough traction to get Studio Gallop to take it up as a one-shot special, even though the anime is formatted as a 3-episode series in a single production, which was groundbreaking for the dawn of OVAs. Titles like Project A-Ko helped boost the market for anime spoofs, but this OVA helped carry it along the genre for the otaku market on both hemispheres.

A prefecture in Japan has been targeted for being conquered by the evil criminal organization, The Telephone Pole Group, mostly because their plans for world domination are better off being localized to a single section of a nation to begin. To counter this, the governor hires the baseball club of the nearby high school, consisting of only three members. They are given a boost from a foreign student from India who just happened to be turned into a missile-launching cyborg after a doctor fell in love with the idea from watching The Six Million Dollar Man. The villains consist of a standard leader with a thing for crowns and capes, a free lunch hording floozie, and a near endless army of masked minions. Despite there being superhero hijinks abound, alot of the plots deal with the characters overreacting to each other's efforts, leading to massive explosions resulting in tons of property damage.

Most of the humor and subject matter are slightly dated since it's from the early days of anime fandom, but it does make this OVA something easier to watch as opposed to a spoof like Project A-Ko which makes fun of numerous Japanese and American pop culture icons. Prefectural Earth Defense Force was available only in America on DVD directly through ADV Films' online store, meaning it wasn't readily for sale at your local Best Buy or most anime con dealers. There are some surprisingly impressive animation sequences in the OVA, which make it worth a watch if you're curious enough about retro anime, although it is hard to come across an affordable copy.