OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Crystal Triangle

Having one of the longest OVA runtimes to first get produced for the Japanese market was an action adventure that looks like someone wanted to do an Indiana Jones story in modern day. Coming out in 1987, the anime takes place in the year "198X" which didn't leave much room for ambiguity since the decade would end anyway in two years. Studio Live took up the reigns of this original project which does contain impressive animation, especially in the combat scenes that highlight the military otaku attention to technical detail that was prevalent at in the 80's.

Koichiro Kamishiro is a professor of archeology from Japan who has teamed up with a sexy blonde American claiming to be an archeologist but is really a CIA agent who is tasked with securing the Message of God which acts as the MacGuffin of our story. The Message was lost centuries ago and all of the world's political powers are moving to secure it for themselves, including the KGB, a Japanese shadow cabinet that send out their own yakuza swordsman, and a cabal of evil aliens taking on the form of monks. Kamishiro gets help in his quest from two of his students, one of which totally has a crush on him, as well as Miyabi who is the daughter of a professional colleague. Their quest takes them all over the world to ruins in the Middle East to a final encounter at a site in Hokkaido where the Message is really a spaceship that is supposed to be a time capsule to help mankind prepare for a rogue planet called Nemesis that will arrive in 1999 and destroy all life on the planet. The monstrous aliens hiding as monks are in league with Nemesis that want use Miyabi as a sacrificial priestess intended to be the only one worthy enough to interpret God's Message, but she decides to relay the Message to Kamishiro who refuses to give it to any of the world's armies who all somehow entered into Japanese territory complete with tanks, army choppers, and fighter jets. Supposedly, Kamishiro is planning on revealing the divine information for the upcoming apocalypse that Nemesis has in mind within the next decade, otherwise the professor's tight-lipped nature would doom humanity just because he couldn't trust the government to prepare for an extinction level event.

Crystal Triangle is free of having any consistent pace with flashes of intrigue, battle sequences, psychic powers, and an international treasure hunt which doesn't completely fail to deliver a satisfying overall plot. It's not exactly up there with action/adventure films like National Treasures, even though it is entertaining. The only fault lies in finding a copy of this OVA as it was only released on subtitled VHS and LD, meaning that the license for making it available on streaming is long since gone.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Project A-ko Vs.

Also labeled as Project A-ko: Uncivil Wars, this 2-episode OVA series was a spinoff of the previous Project A-ko releases but significant it's the first time a remake of an anime is officially taking place in an alternate reality. Project A-ko Vs. takes the main characters and reintroduces them in a parallel universe where it's like an extended Dirty Pair space adventure. Original movie director Katsuhiko Nishijima returns to work on the OVA which is one of the earliest franchises that explores the concept of a multiverse. This came out less than a year after the Final chapter of the previous series.

Set in a parallel universe, A-ko and B-ko are a pair of scavengers on a desert planet where the kidnapped C-ko literally drops into their lives. C-ko is the daughter of an intergalactic conglomerate that was snatched by space pirates who plan to use her as the vessel for an ancient sorceress named Xena. Led by the powerful psychic Gail, the bad guys need Xena to conjure up a giant dragon which is a dead ringer for King Ghidora. The combined power of the resurrected Xena and the dragon are supposed to bring about the end of the universe as well as every other universe so that Gail and his followers can create their own reality from scratch. A-ko and B-ko spend the majority of the anime either fighting with Gail's flunkies or bickering with each other like an old married couple where all of their shenanigans lead to entire planets getting destroyed. Even with help from the minute space patrol officer Maruten, the chaotic female wrecking duo manage to save the day, but with nothing to gain from the experience.

Project A-ko Vs. shows how the era of the 80's had truly come to an end with its madcap nonsensical humor was seriously running dry. You wouldn't see comedy this brainless until the turn of the millennium where anime got all meta with its commentary bringing up tropes and cliches that thrill the occasional fan. The storyline keeps shifting tones where this character is fighting another one, while some complex exposition is going on in the background. This didn't have to be a 2-part OVA series as it could have been wrapped up into a single feature with a tighter script. It brings about a feeling of sentimentality for 80s anime for those who were suffering from withdrawal of the previous decade. There is also an American comic book adaption available for it titled Project A-ko Vs. The Universe that you might want to brush up on.

R.I.P., Kenpachiro Satsuma

ANI-MOVIES, *X

Wrapping up an era of anime and manga that tried the troika of psychics, cyberpunk, and armageddon, X was based on CLAMP's hit X/1999 manga series which took place in the year of 1999. The manga itself started out in 1992 and went through several delays, largely due to CLAMP's huge backlog of other titles they were working on including Magic Knight Rayearth, plus some real-life disasters, namely some earthquakes that hit Japan in the late 90's. The manga carried on well past the year it happens in and ran until 2003, despite the fact that to this day there has been no solid finale to the original source material. X was highly anticipated by fans at the time in a way not seen since the Akira movie came out. Rintaro acted as director who had already worked on the similar anime movie Harmagedon, plus the addition of pop group X-Japan handling the film's soundtrack made fans crave its release even more. The 1996 movie had to draw its own conclusion as the manga was still running, which also turned out to be a problem for the X anime TV series that came out in 2001. It also took a while for the English release of the film which finally saw daylight in 2000, one year after the canonical events of the story. Manga Entertainment had the featured dubbed in England with some of the same actors who were cast in Project A-Ko. This was released as one of Manga's first American releases instead of through their first distributor of U.S. Manga Corps. X/1999 is connected to other CLAMP titles, including Tokyo Babylon which acted as a prelude to X and received its own OVA series as well as a live-action movie. The X film adaptation is gothic moody battle of super-powered characters that probably went on to influence anime titles such as Fate and Record Of Ragnarok. Visually the movie has some of the best animation that was done for its period, although the film sadly falls flat with too much exposition and a hasty need to leap to its own conclusion.

Young teenager Kamui returns to Tokyo after years spent training with his recently deceased mother honing his psychic powers. Kamui visits the house of his childhood friends, Kotori and her older brother Fuma. What none of them know is that they are smack in the middle of a war between two supernatural forces battling for the fate of the world, The Dragons of Earth are seven espers planning to wipe the planet free of humans by destroying seven magical places throughout Tokyo, while the seven Dragons of Heaven are fighting back hoping to peacefully save humanity. The Dragons of Earth kidnap Kotori to persuade Kamui to join their ranks, even though what neither side knows is that Fuma will take on the role of Kamui's opposite in the fights. Each of the psychics have epic Dragonball Z bouts with the other psychics in their mission to bring about or prevent the apocalypse.

X is a high-powered watch with powerful imagery. The downside to all this is that it gets brought down with an unending treadmill of flashbacks, flash-forwards, predictions, and prophecies, making a good portion of the movie just a series of dream sequences with X-Men level action. The Dragons of Heaven and Earth all get sent through the meat grinder, most of which are killed by the possessed Fuma, with Kamui and his Anti-Kamui having a final battle at Tokyo Tower, which was oddly the center of various other 90's anime that involved the fate of the world. There is little regard given to the extended characters as they serve only as cannon fodder like they were in a slasher movie, and the relationship with the main characters gets tortuous with large implications of incest. X suffers largely from having to fabricate their own ending that here is like a scene out of Highlander of which the actual anime movie of did a better job of. CLAMP's work is a hallmark of the mid-90's anime, but the movie should have been pushed back to capture the majority of the manga's saga, again forgiving the fact that the manga was never completed.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Dark Cat

Dark Cat is simply one of the worst possible anime titles ever made. This one-shot OVA from 1991 is an original production not based on any existing material. It was released in America through Media Blasters on DVD that has a dub so bad, it makes hentai dubs sound good. This sound quality is almost non-existent as they completely leave out the sound effects, and the acting is like it was performed by a mediocre drama class. This high school horror gives High School Of The Dead a justifiable reason for its gratuitous fan service as there is no redeeming quality to it, or even any forethought given into where the story was going.

A pair of grim reapers who are also brothers, Hyoi and Ryoi, and these two normally either take on the appearances of teenage boys or common alley cats who refer to themselves as Dark Cats. The supernatural siblings are investigating a series of disappearances of students from the local high school. The missing kids are the result of a rogue Dark Cat named Jukokubo who looks like a rip-off of Clown from Spawn and the Cheshire Cat. Hyoi and Ryoi fail to stop the evil spirit from killing off nearly everyone into the whole school by transforming them into Lovecraftian abominations that merge into one giant meatloaf monster. There is also a subplot involving a total loser and the childhood friend who obviously loves him that takes up half the length of the feature which the most forgettable romance you'll see outside of a Hallmark movie.

Dark Cat plays like it was created by the most misanthropic people that ever crawled out of the sewer. The original Japanese animation is bad enough, but Media Blasters' localization exposes how little they cared about whether it made any money. Even for a Bad Movie Night, this one is best left steaming in the dumpster.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Ninja Resurrection

To clear one thing up right away, this is not a sequel to Ninja Scroll! The English release had a similar font used for the titles, and both the main characters were named Jubei, but Ninja Scroll's Jubei was a mostly original character where the one from Ninja Resurrection is based on the actual swordsman Yagyu Jubei. The original idea came from a fantasy novel titled Makai Tensho by Futaro Yamada about a rebellious warrior raising an army of historical dead figures to overthrow the shogun empire. The book had already been adapted into a manga twice, as well as a live-action movie branded Samurai Reincarnation starring Sonny Chiba. Phoenix Entertainment produced this OVA series that was originally planned for four episodes but only lasted two. A sequel anime TV series was reported to finish up where the OVA left off, this however also failed to gain any traction. ADV Films got the rights to its American release and seriously ticked off a bunch of western otaku after they learned it was connected at all to the previous hit anime ninja movie. Ninja Resurrection nonetheless does stand out on its own satisfying the ravenous appetites of adrenaline junkies.

Set in Japan during the mid-1600's, the Christian faction was facing prosecution by the Tokugawa government. The Shimabara Rebellion was formed by these rebels lead by their profit Amakusa Shiro who deals in what the shogun call "Christian magic". During a last stand at the Christian uprising at Sekigahara, the Tokugawa launch a major assault on their castle. Yagui Jubei is a one-eyed samurai who was exiled from his family's estate but volunteered to lead a special strike team to infiltrate the castle and assassinate Shiro. Shiro's mentor Mori Soiken had been plotting to betray him by faking the death of two innocent children which causes Shiro to renounce Christianity and take up allegiance with Hell. Shiro summons up a giant dragon made of rocks that Jubei and his crew have to ultimately destroy in order to stop the now insane profit. The Tokugawa forces eventually defeat the Christians with Jubei leaving Shiro for dead, although Soiken uses this opportunity to have what's left of the dying man to mate with his daughter. In the next episode, Soiken performs a ritual which uses his daughter's demon seed to open a doorway to Hell where Shiro is reborn along with a trio of other undead killers. Soiken's forces begin an assault on the city of Edo with their supernatural powers, thus ending the anime on a colossal cliffhanger.

Ninja Resurrection leaves you with sheer blue balls wondering what direction they were planning on taking this epic slaughterhouse of an anime. This alternate history is confusing enough with robot suits and rocket launchers in feudal Japan, but treating Christianity as if it was a form of dark sorcery is a serious leap in logic. No one watching this would get caught up in the story as it suffers from tonal shift where the first episode is a blood-soaked battle with the second being a character study on Jubei's past and what the forces of Hell are plotting. Don't go into this expecting a satisfying finale of any kind. Upon looking back, you would think that the anime should have ended with the first episode since there is a type of conclusion to it. Better off being a one-shot than an action saga that got cut short.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Black Lion

Go Nagai created this manga series in 1978 titled Kuro no Shishi which was turned into a 1992 OVA one-shot that was rebranded in English as Black Lion. This is one of Nagai's few historical fiction pieces as it fuses Terminator with Ninja Scroll. The creator of Getter Robo would later go on to make such bombastic titles such as Devilman and Violence Jack with similar vibe of hyper violence and bloody gore.

In 1580 Japan, the samurai lord Nobunaga Oda plans to take over the countryside, and he recruits the burly Ginnai Doma to be part of his campaign. This version of Nobunaga isn't what you've seen in several other anime, because here he appears to be an alien taking on the human form of the feudal lord that has transformed Ginnai into an immortal cyborg who takes everything the rival ninja clans can throw at him. From being stabbed, set on fire, blown up, and having his head lobbed off, Ginnai is invulnerable to all conventional attacks of the time. The key element to this is time itself as the aliens are time travelers who are trying to change history against a force of temporal protectors, better referred to here as the Black Lion. The Iga and Koga clans put aside their differences to combine forces to finally destroy Ginnai, but the vengeance crazed Shishimaru care only for avenging the death of his fellow ninja. The united clans go on a harrowing suicide mission to terminate this Terminator once and for all with no knowledge of Ginnai's high tech backers.

Black Lion is a bare-bones grindhouse anime in the most extreme way possible. There's a paper-thin plot leaving entire deserts full of contradictions. The major fault is not having the original source material handy as the manga has never been put out in English. ADV Films released it on dubbed/subtitled VHS and DVD, but it is not available on streaming or Blu-ray, making this a rare find by modern methods. It's not the greatest example of Go Nagai's works but should entertain you for a night spent with your drinking buddies.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Domain Of Murder

Based on the 1980's manga weirdly titled Hello, Hedgehog, Domain Of Murder is a one-shot OVA based on Kenshi Hirokane's mystery series. It's one of the few anime that is just a crime story anime with no giant robots, ninjas, or aliens. Central Park Media just spun the wheel on releasing this in English with no real idea if it would do well, aside from the fact that bigwig dub actors like Dan Green and Sean Schemmel in the cast, which only got put out on VHS and DVD.

Private detective Goro Nanase is hired to look for a man named Toyama who left his wife three years ago after losing their daughter in an auto accident. The missing man's wife suspects that a yakuza thug was shot by him in a bar located in a nearby city. Nanase gets help from Toyama's former mistress and old school chum to help track him down as the deranged drifter plans to take the life of his surviving toddler son to make amends with the spirit of his daughter. The OVA tries for a Hitchcock-themed ending, but the cheap animation drags it down to a homicidal humdrum.

Domain Of Murder is an unexceptional anime which tries to make a mediocre murder mystery with no real mystery in the story last for 50 minutes. The animation quality is below average with mediocre performances by the original Japanese actors. This is a routine D-List OVA that isn't worth your time.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Judge

Fujihiko Hosono penned the short-lived manga Judge around the same time he worked on other works like Bio-Hunter after illustrating the Crusher Joe comic book adaptation. This horror/drama got a one-shot OVA produced by Hiroshi Negishi who went on to help create Tekkaman Blade, and animated by J.C. Staff which had already done the gory anime adaptation of Curse Of The Yoma. The American release didn't gain much success through Central Park Media on dubbed and subtitled VHS plus DVD.

Hoichiro Oma seems like a mild-mannered office worker who is secretly the Judge of Darkness, a supernatural figure that claims sentence over the guilty who escape the notice of human law. He is the latest in a long line of descendants whose family business uses a tome made of human flesh. One of the people in Oma's office is guilty of embezzlement and causing the apparent suicide of a co-worker, so the Judge speeds him off to the afterlife. Turns out the embezzler was benefitting from Kawamata, a strange fellow with huge eyeballs that is suspected by the Judge for sending his business partner to be killed off by mercs on a business trip. Kawamata gets represented by an otherworldly defense lawyer who sounds like Mr. Peabody for a court hearing by the Lords of Hell. Kawamata seems like he might be able to get off, but he accidently stumbles across a magic mirror which shows a person's truth, and his guilty reflection appears to strangle him to death. The fact that Hell has an artifact that reveals someone's sins in the first place really makes the point of having a trial completely pointless.

Judge is a confusing train wreck of perspectives and what leads to a character's final judgement. You would think that the ethereal forces of the underworld would know instinctively who is guilty of the laws of man, so the idea of a line of spiritual judges that dispatch these sinners wouldn't even need to exist, least of all if they have a magic mirror that could just straight up tell you if they had broken the law. The animation isn't bad, although Kawamata's eyes that look right out of The Simpsons is just jarring compared to the other character designs. At a short 50-minutes long, this OVA doesn't offer much in the way of scares or anything dynamic. It's largely boring and makes the watcher ask why they bothered wasting their time on it.

Jem-Zilla!

 

ANI-MOVIES, *Encanto

Getting the Best Animated Feature Oscar, Encanto is a modern fairy tale with a more diversified cast and focuses on an entire family that is totally against formula considering this is a Disney movie. They made a point of making this production a musical which is something Disney usually only gives various segments of their movies to, which Lin-Manuel Miranda and Germaine Franco did an amazing job on. Byron Howard and Jared Bush directed this CGI animated flick that was not backed up by Pixar, and fully committed to making the surroundings itself as a genuine character on its own.

Taking place in Columbia, an unseen group of soldiers infiltrate a small village and chase the surviving couple Pedro and Alma with their newborn triplets. Pedro sacrifices himself to let the rest of his family get away, although Alma is fortunate enough to have a magic candle that conjures up a living house named Casita which can usually repair itself and tends to provide its inhabitants with whatever they provisionally need at the time. The house takes in other castaways and seals them off in a separate realm in the mountains called Encanto. Decades later, the town has flourished with each of the Alma's children and grandchildren getting their own unique super power like strength, enhanced hearing, making flowers grow, shapeshifting, or baking goods that heal people. Even her youngest grandson gains the ability to talk to animals, and each of the family's rooms have their own separate dimension where its bigger on the inside. The only one in the family who doesn't seem to have gotten a magical talent was Mirabel, even though she seems to be more attuned to the Castia's attempts to communicate, although the house has a serious problem clueing anyone in on its latest dilemma as the magic appears to be fading. Mirabel tries to inform her grandmother about the impending doom, but she stubbornly refuses to listen, an attitude that drove off her clairvoyant son Bruno who it turns out has been living inside Castia's cracks with a posse of rats. Mirabel finds out some of her family is not satisfied with the roles their powers have tied them to mostly using them to help out the citizens of the town, so the understanding teen attempts to get her uncle Bruno to do another vision of the house's fate. All signs point to Mirabel making peace with her bratty older sister who has chlorokinesis, even though this act caused the house to crumble faster after Alma disapproves of Mirabel's efforts. The house eventually crumbles and the family all lose their super powers. It all gets salvaged when Bruno reappears from his self-imposed exile and the villagers help rebuild Casita which restores everyone's powers. It might have been a bit more interesting if in the finale the house didn't regain its magic and just stood as a regular home with a normal family trying to adjust to their lives as regular people.

Encanto works as primarily as a musical, as the plot suffers from shifting from one member of the family to another leaving some of them completely out of the story with no real character depth. The magical elements leave an entire textbook's worth of lore left unexplained, like if Casita is alive and knows it's in trouble why it doesn't just tell Mirabel or anyone else of what the problem is. There have been spurious attempts by viewers to determine whether or not Mirabel actually had a magical gift of her own, like displaying comprehension as its own special attribute, but no clear answer has given. There's letting the concept of an enchanted world operate under its own laws of nature, however having the physics of a magical backdrop a complete mystery is for an uncertain way of how it's supposed to be interpreted. This would work well as a stage musical, but the movie's consistency at adding yet another plot complication doesn't make for a clear picture.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *The Humanoid

Yet another sci-fi one-shot from the 80's, The Humanoid was a joint effort between studios Kaname Production and Nishiko Pro in 1986 to make a fresh title that stood out on its own and not be tied to any existing media. The story seems like an extension of the Star Trek universe, even though the opening text crawl is strait out of Star Wars The title character appears to be a mix of Maria from the original live-action Metropolis film and one of the Silverhawks. A good portion of this OVA is taken up with showing off its pop music soundtrack which the creators really hoped to be a karaoke hit, and considering the feature is only 45-minutes long makes it even more pathetic. Central Park Media released this in English on VHS, DVD, and a very rare LD, even though it had an exceptional dub from the Ocean Group who most Americans would recognize handling the first few dubs of Dragonball.

Way off in the future, Earth has inhabited the lush planet of Lazeria also inhabited by the alien human Megalosians whose princess is being held there in security until she is old enough to assume her world's throne. The Megalosian in charge of this is the obviously evil Governor Proud who wants to utilize an ancient spaceship called the Iczeon that crashed there centuries ago. On this planet is the Earthling scientist Dr. Watson who has created one of the galaxy's first sentient androids named Antoinette while his daughter is waiting for space trucker Eric to finally arrive hauling his latest cargo. There is an excruciatingly overdone joke with Eric's partner Alan and his obsession with coffee that loses any humor the writers had in mind when they bring it up for the sixth time. Eric's ship crashes with him and Eric making it out on an escape capsule only to get shot down by Megalosian aircraft. They make their way to Watson's home where Antoinette seems to grow attached to Eric. Proud wants the two keys to the Iczeon ship, one of which is in the android's body. Antoinette rescues her friends at the cost of surrendering the key, but she sacrifices herself to stop the Iczeon which had already killed off most of the evil Megalosians.

The Humanoid is difficult to recollect after seeing it. The OVA's only real claim to fame is that the title character was designed by Hajime Sorayama who made a career of pinup of sexy metallic robot women. Aside from the cliche of a robot learning about human emotions that had already been done to death at that point, there isn't anything holding the viewer's attention aside from some decent aerial chases. This is more like a sample of what anime is to newbies in the late 20th Century.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Cybernetics Guardian

Before he got started on gore fests like M.D. Geist, Koichi Ohata directed this OVA from 1989 that acts as a semi-prelude to his future cyberpunk saga, Genocyber. The special one-shot was written by Guyver author Riku Sanjo who had already worked with Ohata on the first M.D. Geist. Cybernetics Guardian came out in 1989 by AIC who was already dominating the OVA market with Bubblegum Crisis, in fact they did a production very similar to this earlier with Metal Skin Panic MADOX-1 which was about someone getting stuck inside a battle mecha. For this one, you can see a little of influence from monster movies like Frankenstein and King Kong playing a major influence in it while sticking to the recent success of Robocop.

In the city of Cyberwood in an alternate 2019 where mankind has learned to harness psychic energy, the Central Guard Company has created a new weapon for urban pacification, specifically intended to deal with a crime infested section simply referred to as Cancer. The mecha pilot aptly named John Stalker has his hardware infected by an evil spirit conjured up by the even weirdly cult named Doldo. The Doldo disciples capture John to summon up their dark messiah Saldo which is a part-beast/part-machine hybrid that starts wrecking up the city. The slimy government agent Adler wants to destroy this robot nightmare, partially so he can get in bed with John's girlfriend Raia who helped create the machine, but also to stop any plans for clearing out the city slums for a big political affair. John in the Saldo armor is being chased by the police as it continues to destroy most of the city's defenses in a particularly bloody sequence. John kills off the majority of the Doldo cultists just as Adler shows up in his own mecha suit called the "Genocyber", which really makes you wonder of this was supposed to be directly connected to AIC's future anime series. John and Aldo have a bot battle with John ending up on top as he takes control of the demonic cyborg suit that he plans to use for good along with Raia.

Cybernetics Guardian has a confusing story with a near infinite number of plot holes for a running time of only 45 minutes in a one-time production. It was released in America through Central Park Media on VHS and DVD featuring a pathetic dub, as well as frequently bundled together with their release of Genocyber. Aside from some grindhouse level brutalities, there isn't anything all that remarkable about it.

ANI-MOVIES, *Ron's Gone Wrong

As the next 20th Century Animation theatrical release since The Book Of Life, former Aardman animator Sarah Smith directed this first Fox cartoon movie after being bought out by Disney. Ron's Gone Wrong takes the premise of "a boy and his blank" but for the current generation addicted to social media. The film stars Jack Dylan Grazer as the boy in this story who also performed in Pixar's Luca that came out in the same year, along with Zach Galifianakis as the titular robot who is trying but failing to do his best impression of Baymax from Big Hero 6. It's an original story not based on any existing material, but a commentary on how people rely on the internet to make friends instead of in real life.

The huge Bubble corporation releases their latest product, a 2-ft. robotic capsule branded as a B-Bot. Everyone in the neighboring small mountain town of Nonsuch goes crazy for one as all the kids in school get their own. The only one left out is Barney who is usually an outcast as his previous friends were scared off years before at his birthday by his former-Russian grandmother and his clueless father who has the sad career of selling novelty toys online. For his current birthday, Barney gets a broken B-Bot his father got that literally fell off a delivery truck. The malfunctioning robot has a faulty startup, thus getting everything that he learns about Barney mixed up. The entire opening relationship between boy and bot becomes a running but endearing Who's On First routine, even though Barney grows to like his companion's quirky programming. The glitchy robot causes a scene with some bullies that gets him taken back to the Bubble store where he is sentenced to be crushed. Barney saves him and calls him Ron, keeping it a secret from his family, even though Ron follows him to school the next day and entices a riot unlocking all the other B-bot's safety protocols. Barney doesn't want to lose Ron, so he runs away from home with him into the woods. The duo has some real fun on their own, but Ron realizes that Barney can't survive away from civilization, especially with asthma, so he brings him back home. Luckily, Ron is saved from being destroyed by the B-bot's creator Marc, even though Ron's real algorithm is locked in Bubble's cloud network which Marc doesn't have access to as his corrupt partner Andrew has outed him as CEO. Along with his family and newfound friends, Barney leads a heist on the Bubble headquarters to find Ron's lost marbles. The ending is something similar to the finale of The Iron Giant, even though the world is left a little better because of Ron's actions.

Ron's Gon Wrong is features Dreamwork's level of animation and character designs, not exactly up to modern Disney CGI theatrical movies standards or anything Pixar is puting out. The story is welcome to all ages with nothing really to shame kids with, while at the same time not having to rely on fart jokes or outdated references to pop culture junkies. I'd recommend this feature to any audience as a healthy reminder of knowing people IRL is more important that getting likes online.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Twin Signal

Sachi Oshimizu created this manga in 1992 that got a 3-episode OVA adaptation in 1996. The best way to describe it is similar to Mega Man or Astro Boy where robots are part of everyday life. Twin Signal is an action-comedy that only got a limited release in America on DVD through Media Blasters which only features a mildly decent dub.

Nobuhiko is a young boy who is living with his grandfather, the genius scientist Professor Otoi. To protect his grandson, Prof creates a special android named Signal to protect him who looks like a long-haired bishounen most of the time, but every time Nobuhiko sneezes, the superhero robot turns into a baby chibi version of himself. Signal has to fend off his evil prototype Pulse who has been sent by Otoi's rival scientist making for the occasional bot battle.

Twin Signal caters to the otaku of the time that were into similar 90's anime like Ranma 1/2 or Nuku Nuku with wacky characters forced into slapstick situations. Director Takashi Sogabe worked on everything from Saint Seiya to Samurai Pizza Cats, but this was one of the productions he oversaw. The animation quality is charming, but nothing particularly memorable, with a mostly bland dub.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Parasite Dolls

One of the last anime entries in the Bubblegum Crisis franchise was this 3-episode OVA series sold as a single featured titled Parasite Dolls. The problem is that there are conflicting resources as to which series this fits into, the original 80s OVA, or the TV series remake. If this is connected to the original OVA then it would be a sequel taking place after Bubblegum Crash, but if it's really connected to Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 then it would be a prequel similar to the A.D. Police TV series. AIC was the studio behind this police drama which gives no mention at all to the Knight Sabers who were the major draw of Bubblegum Crisis, i.e.: the female quartet of armored vigilantes who fight out of control robots. Parasites Dolls focuses in on a special portion of police who deal in crimes involving the mechanical Boomers. Each segment of the series takes place at a certain time of this sci-fi action feature.

Starting in 2034, a secret faction of the A.D. Police labeled as the Branch deals primarily in cases with Boomers, lifelike androids that helped build the metropolis of Genom City, which might have been another name for Megatokyo from the original anime. The first case has detective Buzz leading up an investigation where Boomers are hacked by thrill seekers that send the robots on suicide runs to share the same experience in virtual reality. The second segment happens a year later with a Boomer hooker going around and killing of her high-profile clients. The finale takes place in 2040 where the corrupt Minister of Justice sets up Buzz and the rest of the Branch to take the fall on a plan he has for destroying Boomers all over the city based on a scenario Buss wrote for his college thesis. The surviving Branch members manage to clear their name while ending the villain's scheme, but still leaving most of Genom City destroyed.

Parasite Dolls took the gritty action that the A.D. Police Files OVA series had and that the A.D Police TV series lacked. Bubblegum Crisis is thought of as being a comic book superhero saga, where the A.D. Police material dealt with the steamy underground in its futuristic setting. Parasite Dolls doesn't focus on the division between man and machine, or the fear of artificial intelligence taking over that most cyberpunk stories are soaked in. This OVA instead shows the real implications of having a potentially destructive technology affecting the general population. The largest downside is that it doesn't have the killer soundtrack of the original 80s series.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Dragoon

Based on a trilogy of JRPGs that never saw an American release, Dragoon got a 3-episode OVA series adaptation that only covered the beginning of the story. Anime studio Magic Bus produced this ramshackle anime about role-playing tropes that gets blended with gratuitous nudity scenes. If they had left out the fan service material, it might have made for a decent enough family anime as there is little action in it and more just the cast of characters meandering from one plot point to another.

A young swordsman named Sedon who finds a naked girl lying out in the snowy forest. She later wakes up and says she is May, but with no memory of her life up until that day. A team of armored hunters from a feuding empire are looking for her, and Sedon's father fights them off. There's a whole backstory involving Sedon's pop being a captain of the guard who fought off an invasion from the evil empire years ago, and vindictive soldier who wants revenge against him for cutting his eye, but all this only really gets mentioned to pad the anime out to three episodes. May, Sedon, along with his annoying healer sister Millie add some more to their party including an outcasted prince and a gambling sexy sorceress as they make way to the same empire who wants to capture May in the first place.

There is almost nothing appealing about this OVA with a total absence of interesting characters. The animation is mediocre by Magic Bus which is one of the last in a line of OVAs they created before going full time into working on movies and TV anime. ADV Films only released this on VHS after the turn of the century with an underwhelming dub. It's hard to say if even fans of the original video games cared about this limp vegetable of a production.

MISC. MANGA, *Basil And Oregano

Melissa Capriglione created the webcomic Falconhyrste, but her latest credit is Basil And Oregano, a family-friendly LGBT manga-styled graphic novel set in a fantasy world. This is essentially Harry Potter mashed up with a cooking show. There is no overarching dark magic villain to vanquish, but more of a look into the characters and their relationships.

Porta Bella Magiculinary Academy is a boarding school for talented up and coming cooks where the students use magic. Basil Eyres is a new student who is teamed up with Arabella Oregano, part of an illustrious family of sorcerer cooks. The two are bonded to their new animal familiar, a lovable dog they name Tomato, but they also start having feelings for each other. This gets complicated when Basil learns that Arabella doesn't have any magic talent at all, but it comes solely from an enchanted spoon her mother had. Basil's place in the academy gets endangered too when her scholarship won't kick in if she's not in the top of her class, thus providing trust issues between the two friends, along with a bully discovering Arabella's secret. During their final test, Arabella manages to charm a rampaging dragon, thus earning her in the class with a new scholarship program being set up to accommodate everyone's finances. The story concludes with the two friends solidifying their romantic relationship looking forward to their future together.

Basil And Oregano is a charming yuri fairy tale that doesn't need to push the concept of social acceptance down the reader's throat in order to get the message. The single-volume trade paperback confines the story into a slice of life genre that just happens to be set in a fantasy world. It is a little more light-hearted than you would expect from a plot involving teenagers discovering their magic potential, even if it is simply for culinary arts. This young adult novel makes for a decent read and reminiscent to otaku of past shoujo-ai manga.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *801 T.T.S. Airbats

Shimizu Toshimitsu created a limited manga series in 1991 about military and fan service that was turned into an OVA series in 1994. 801 T.T.S. Airbats was put together by Studio Fantasia that fits into their catalog of other OVA staples of the 90's like Sailor Victory and Project A-Ko. The 7-episode series got a U.S. release from ADV Films first on dubbed and subtitled VHS, then on DVD, although its currently not on streaming or available on Blu-ray. It caters to fans of anime love triangles and characters with insane personality quirks.

Isurugi is a mechanic for the Japanese air force that gets assigned to the training squadron labeled "Airbats", which is later revealed to be an aerobatics team made entirely of female pilots. The two main pilots are the even-tempered Haneda and the feisty Mitaka who are constantly trying to outdo the other, both of which become romantically attached to Isurugi. The rest of the team includes the buff Captain Konishi who never takes his sunglasses off, the gambling second officer Sakura, and the flaky pink-haired Yoko who is their bumbling backup pilot whose main job is to whine and hold onto the team's standard anime mascot, a small daytime bat called Chi-Chan. The first story arc has Isurigu trying to keep the team working together long enough to pass their latest inspection so they can remain as an active squadron, then the rest of the episodes are a series of standard one-shot stories where the crew either goes to a haunted resort, get involved in an eating contest, or an entire episode flashbacking to Konishi and Sakura's unresolved relationship.

Airbats is a conventional 90's anime with characters getting riled up at the drop of a hat, and trying to make a simplistic plot which gets dragged out into aimless installments. You would think this would be entertaining for the rare niche of military otaku, but most of the focus is on the regular anime cliches you would see in other OVAs of the time like Nuku Nuku or Aika. If this title gets a rescue from somewhere like Discotek, you might want to give a quick watch, but it isn't worth the hundreds of bucks it would cost for a used DVD on Amazon.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Idol Project

Having nothing to do with Love Live, this 4-part OVA series was an original creation premiered during the mid-90's by Studio Ox. Idol Project wasn't the first anime to highlight the concept of Japanese idols, but it was one that specialized in them, not only on idol singers, but actresses, dancers, and musicians. Instead of it seeming like an anime version of a talent show, the OVA is a madcap sci-fi fantasy done in the spirit of the 90's anything goes genre where Japan would just go with whatever they thought might stick to the wall. This mainly worked well in Japan with the impressive list of voice actors they had working in it, the downside to which is that didn't really translate well to the American market. Media Blasters first released it on a pair of separate DVDS, and then later on a single collected DVD which is what it should have done in the first place as American's just weren't up to buying an anime with only half of a mini-series on it.

Set sometime in the future, Earth is now a utopia when the hit idol Yuri united the world through her charisma and talent, all the way to becoming president of the planet. While she's now in office, she set up a new generation called the Excellent Idols to fill in the different aspects of her message of peace. An audition for a new member of the Idols is being held, and the ambitious teenager Mimu wants her shot as the stars. This would be fine, except Mimu and the other six idols all get captured by aliens from another universe to take part in a survival course of idol tryouts featuring other idols from all over the cosmos. The story gets even weirder when after the competition, the idols each have to get new jobs to earn enough bread to make the trip back to Earth, which is made even more bizarre as a black hole to a different dimension opens swallowing up most of the other idol-bearing planets. The OVA carries on with this by just going into numerous insane scenarios.

Idol Project is not intended for American otaku, even ones hardcore into Japanese voice actresses. You would think that an anime focusing on idols would have more musical sequences in it, but the wannabe Mimu only gets to perform in the last few minutes of the series finale. The whole anime is primarily a sequence of brainless vignettes with no real direction or meaning to it. It mostly just goes from one weird character to another as they try to adapt to their constantly shifting alien environments. The idols are barely even characters instead more being like character stereotypes: the tough girl, the cute girl, the uptight girl, etc. You might find some of its spastic comedy attractive, but this is just a device used to stretch this 4-episode series that could have been at least only two episodes long.

ANI-MOVIES, *Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.11, Thrice Upon A Time

After nearly a decade, the final(?)chapter of the Rebuild Of Evangelion took its last step in 2021. Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.11, Thrice Upon A Time is the fourth of this tetralogy of films. The first two installments were a retread of the majority of the original Neon Genesis: Evangelion anime TV series, but with some new characters and plot points added, like Shinji causing the Near Third Impact. The third chapter picked up 14 years in the aftermath with most of the world decimated from this act catching Shinji in the middle of a power struggle between Nerv and its ex-members that formed the resistance team Wille. Thrice Upon A Time happens right after that conclusion with Shinji heading off into the wilderness with Asuka and a Rei clone after their failure to stop Nerv's plot to bring about the Fourth Impact. The film goes way over the normal running time at 155-minutes long trying to tie up all the loose threads. The first three parts were released in America through Funimation featuring most of the original ADV Films dub actors, but the fourth was licensed entirely by GKids which also redubbed the original three movies for its streaming distribution on Hulu, so whether or not all four movies will be available in a collected physical copy is questionable. There is plenty of debate with fans clashing between the original dub cast the one produced for Netflix which includes the TV series, plus both Evangelion: Death/Rebirth and End Of Evangelion movies which was the canon conclusion to the first anime. This finale had a humongous task of filling in the gap that its long-delayed premiere left fans dangling in the air.

The movie starts out with Wille using newcomer Eva pilot Mari helping them restore Paris to its status prior to the Near Third Impact. Our trio of survivors from the previous film find safe haven in a village near Tokyo-3 where their old schoolmates are now grown up and helping maintain the village which is shielded from the rest of the world that is now filled with headless wandering Eva units. Rei is slowly discovering her identity among the villagers while Shinji is still reeling from having witnessed Kaworu's death at the end of the last movie. Asuka kicks Shinji out of it, even though Rei has been reduced to liquid since she's been out of LCL for so long. Wille arrives in their main ship Wunder to pick up Asuka and Shinji in their mission to stop Nerv who are going to activate Eva Unit-13 to create a Fourth Impact. Mari and Asuka help the assault in their own Evas, but Asuka is taken as the key for jump-starting Unit-13 which begins the Instrumentality Project. Gendo takes Unit-13 into what is called Minus Space, and Shinji recovers Unit-01 to confront his father. Misato helps make a new spear to stop the next Impact that Mari pilots into pocket universe. Shinji uses the spear after having a heart-to-heart with Gendo, and sets him free along with the spirits of Asuka, Rei, and Kaworu who will return to their own particular selected realities. Now having control of reality, Shinji wishes for a world without Evangelions that Mari is now part of where they have achieved adulthood physically and spiritually.

Thrice Upon A Time does finish up the Rebuild saga while at the same time shows that it is part of a cycle which included the original TV series. It's uncertain if this circle has been broken at last, or if there is room for another continuation. There have been several spinoff and alternative universe manga titles where Shinji and the crew are redone as detectives or just regular students with no giant robots. The story that first started off in 1994 has hopefully been put to bed. Creator, Hideaki Anno, went on to do more remakes of live-action properties like Godzilla, Ultraman, and Kamen Rider, but finishing up the Evangelion saga was a herculean effort that is largely satisfying for long time Eva disciples.

MISC. MANGA, *Cereal

Having already done comedic revisions of stapled pieces of nostalgia such as The Flintstones and Snagglepuss, the creator of the Jesus/Superman crossover Second Coming did a series of short stories for Edgar Allen Poe comics published by Ahoy Comics. Cereal was an anthology of connenected stories set in the same world where old breakfast cereal mascots are constantly battling for power. It is like what Universal had in mind for their failed Dark Universe but actually pretty good with tongue in cheek satire. The macabre look by Starman artist adds to the dark humor.

In a land made of several strange characters like anthropomorphic animals and monsters, the Marquis de Cocoa got turned into a vampire by one of his subjects, and he tries to keep this secret from his neighboring allies who frequently come to his castle for a big cereal-filled breakfast. Meanwhile the Leprechaun King's enchanted Crown Of The Four Wisdoms has been stolen by a traitor to the throne who is trying to keep it away from the maniacal General Post, a warlord whose army of bizarre creatures is rampaging the countryside, including the reanimated body of the now pink-colored Franken Barrie. All this has the various leaders trying to monopolize on their own personal crusade of dominating breakfast which they believe is this most overwhelming force in the world. This concludes with a showdown of the surviving mascots at Post's Fortress Honeycomb.

The trade paperback collects all the original chapters from Edgar Allen Poe including three new installments that complete the story. There are some dark takes on classic cartoon characters like the Sugar Smacks frog being a gravedigger, the Rice Crispies elves as a crew trio of barflies, and Cap'n Crunch as a ruthless cutthroat. Cereal might seem like nothing more than a dark spoof of Saturday Morning commercials, but it is engaging take on familiar faces blended into a Game Of Thrones fantasy world.

ANI-MOVIES, *Harmagedon

Kazumasa Hirai created several manga mainstays such as 8-Man, Wolf Guy, and Spider-Man: The Manga, but his series of Gemna Wars from 1967 became a major groove in the history of anime and manga fandom. The original manga went on for only two volumes but was adapted into extra-sized full-length animated movie titled Harmagedon, and yes, that is how it is spelled. Harmagedon's plot follows the story of people with superpowers uniting to stop a demonic force from destroying the world, something that has been reflected in series like X/1999 and Dragonball. Madhouse and Kodokawa were the studios behind the film which premiered in 1983 and was directed by Rintaro who had already gained a huge success with his work in the Galaxy Express 999 duology. The huge draw to Harmagedon was that character designer was a young Katsuhiro Otomo, and the story of apocalyptic psychics played in a major influence in his later legendary manga, the iconic Akira. The anime movie became the bestselling animated film of that year, even with a genuine conclusion to it as the manga weirdly ended on a cliffhanger. The manga continued in several different other remakes involving an over overabundance of time travel which created an entire multiverse, one of which got its own television adaptation in the critically panned Genma Wars. Most Americans became aware of Harmagedon from the laserdisc video game Bega's Battle that was translated in English into Bega's Battle which was quickly phased out of arcades with the wild number of games being hammered out in those days, the game itself used footage from the anime movie. The film itself didn't get an English release until Central Park Media put it out on LD and VHS in 1992, and then later a number of DVDs some of which were special editions featuring commentary by director Rintaro. Despite all that history, the anime never really caught on with American otaku, not even a Blu-ray release.

The movie starts out in the early 80s with a Transylvanian princess named Luna having her flight to America getting destroyed by a extension of the evil cosmic force known as Genma whose sole purpose is wipe out all life everywhere. Luna is saved by the will of the universe that calls itself Froy who awakens the princess' psychic powers and teams her up with the last remaining members of a different alien race decimated by Genma, the retro-cyborg Vega who has spent the last few millennia in stasis waiting to be awakened. Vega and Luna then seek out other espers around the world to help form their own Avengers team so Genma won't kill all life on Earth. One of these espers is the main character Jo Azuma, a typical Japanese teenager with a big sister complex. His powers get activated after an encounter from one of Genma's agents who can possess other people. Jo then teams up with Luna and Vega to stop a Genma hunting another esper in New York which creates a psychic shoutout to the rest of Earth's espers. Genma's essence begins to create disasters all over the world like engulfing Tokyo in a sandstorm. Jo and the others psychic warriors converge for a final battle with Genma who has merged with Mt. Fuji to become a colossal multi-headed dragon made of lava.

Harmagedon did managed to have a somewhat satisfying conclusion as opposed to the original manga, although the 135-minute long movie stretched out scenes of minor characters one time too many. There is way more attention dedicated towards Jo's incestual feelings toward his sister than there should be, while a great number of the other psychic warriors barely get any screen time, like they were all the other X-Men that weren't Wolverine. The movie has a bad habit of dragging the story on to the point you start to wonder where exactly the plot is going, Harmagedon is a necessary watch for anime fans of any stripe just from the history that the movie left in its wake.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Capricorn

Johji Manabe has been active in the manga industry since the 1980's, but only a fraction of them have been given an anime adaptation. His space opera Outlanders got its own OVA one-shot, and Ginga Sengoku Gunyuden Rai was the basis for the Thunder Jet TV series. A good portion of his manga titles over the last few years has been regulated to adult material, but his earlier works such as Drakuun and Caravan Kidd were sci-fi comedies with a large helping of fan service. His limited series Capricorn from the late 80's was one of these more cheesecake fantasy titles that managed to get its own OVA special in 1991, even though it tried to fit in about 5 volumes worth of plot into a production that was less than an hour long. The manga itself never got an American printing, but the anime was distributed in English through ADV Films even though it was only on subtitled VHS. Seeing as this was one of the first isekai anime that U.S. otaku got a taste of you would think it might have gained a little more notice later down the line.

Taku is a generic high schooler who keeps getting knocked over by the female punks on campus. One day, an image appears of another planet which sweeps him up in it and he winds up on the alien world of Slaffleaze which is populated by anthropomorphic animals. This planet of furries is under the thumb of the corrupt leader Zolba who has utilized the power of a device called the Infinity Anchor which bridges their world with ours and is plotting in invasion of Earth with his airship navy and an army of dragon clones that were made from the remains of an extinct race known as the Yappi. The last of their kind is a dragon girl named Mona who appears mostly human aside from the wings, horns, tail, and her fire breath. She and Taku finally meet along with some other local animal people and plan a revolt against Zolba. It helps that Taku has now digivolved into a full-size dragon to prevent the invasion. They free the Yappi clones from Zolba's control and destroy the Infinty Anchor, only for Taku to decide to return to Earth even though he's still in his dragon form.

Capricorn could almost be seen as a prototype to Escaflowne which has very similar themes like anthropomorphics, dragons, and another world hidden away from the Earth, even an interspecies relationship between a human and a dragon person. The concept of isekai didn't really gain any attention in America until full-length series like El-Hazard or Magic Knight Rayearth found their bearings amoung English-speaking otaku. The OVA itself has the raw and bizarre look to an early 90's anime with much of it appearing to come right out of a Nintendo game. It's not the best representation of Johji Manabe's works outside of manga, but it does make for a great late night screening with old school fans.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S: *Battle Angel

Yukito Kishiro's original manga Gunnm ran for 9 volumes in the early 90's, followed by an even longer follow up titled Last Order, and now continuing in the Mars Chronicle manga, with some various prequels and spinoffs. The manga gained such international fame that it became the focus of James Cameron to do a live-action feature based on it, but since Cameron become more overwhelmed with hit Avatar saga, after a near two decades it was hand over to Robert Rodriguez to direct as the last official movie under the 20th Century Fox label. Prior to the American movie's inevitable release though, the manga first adapted into a 2-episode OVA in 1993 by Madhouse directed by animator Hiroshi Fukutomi which roughly covers the first two volumes of the series, which also acted as a blueprint to the American movie as it also recaps the same opening story arc. The OVA didn't go further than the two episodes because the original author wanted to focus more of his attention on his manga rather than an anime based on it.

Taking place in the future where a good portion of the Earth was decimated in world wars, one of the few remnants of civilization is the dystopian town of Scrap Iron City which lies directly below the floating utopia of Zalem that tosses their unwanted material down to the dingy city populated largely by cyborgs. An exiled Zalem citizen named Ido now works in the cityscape scrapyard as a cybernetics doctor who sometimes checks the huge piles of junk for salvageable robot parts. He happens to find the remains of an android girl that he takes back home and repairs to act as his surrogate daughter that he has named Gally. The young mechanical maiden later discovers that Ido is also a part time hunter-warrior which are volunteer bounty hunters that patrol the city for wanted fugitives. Gally decides to become a hunter-warrior too, partially to help her would-be boyfriend Yugo who secretly has been robbing innocent people of their spines so he can buy his way up to the Zalem. Gally has to confront the rowdy criminal Grewcica who was sent to kill her by Ido's former partner Chiren, a character original to the anime which was rewritten in the movie as being Ido's ex-wife. Gally learns that Yugo is now wanted for his crimes and watches as he is gutted down by a rival hunter-warrior, so our battle angel brings his remains to Ido who saves him by turning him into cyborg. The now mostly mechanized Yugo is later killed in an attempt to physically climb up to Zalem by a giant ring of spinning spikes. The OVA ends with Gally and Ido mourning what was left of Yugo in a small, ballooned basket.

Madhouse really delivered in this production with their detailed character designs and fighting sequences. There is also a mind-bending amount of violence in this for a 90's anime, that was mostly tempered down for the movie adaptation. Most Americans might have trouble accepting the fact that the translated version of the title character is Gally instead of Alita which was the name used in the original manga English release by Viz Manga. The American version of the OVA was available on dubbed VHS and DVD with a completely separate dub made for the European market by Manga Entertainment. Both of these releases were put on ice after James Cameron got the rights to the movie which also gave him authority on its anime adaptation, even though the OVA has been out of print for decades now with nothing available for streaming. It's unknown if the anime will finally get a re-release or even put on Blu-Ray, so you might need to hold your breath if you want to see a licensed edition of this cyberpunk classic.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *D.N.A. Sights 999.9

The late Leiji Matsumoto had several manga titles over his career, most of which were part of a shared continuity known as the Leijiverse. The manga Fire Force DNA Sights 999.9(having no relation to the Fire Force anime TV series)was later turned into an OVA one-shot in 1998 that was released in America under the now defunct Urban Vision only on dubbed and subtitled VHS. That limited engagement is enough proof that this particular anime didn't leave the same kind of mark that other Leijiverse sagas like Harlock or Emeraldas had made. Like other Matsumoto projects, there is the addition of a number to the title similar to Galaxy Express 999 and Interstella 5555 to distinguish them from other anime. DNA Sights 999.9 doesn't have any strong relations to the rest of the Leijiverse aside from some gratuitous cameos in its finale. It does have some impressive animation for the time though by Madhouse Studios.

Set in the far off future of 2024, a meteor had previously split up and caused mass destruction all over the Earth. The survivors of this apocalypse set up a new order secretly led by an alien agent known as Fouton who is trying to cover up the involvement of her people from the arrival of an investigating visitor. The girl reaches Earth in a fiery impact and goes by the name Mello appearing as a ghostly image. She is found by young scavenger Daiba who begins to notice that he has special mental abilities that allow him to figure out any kind of technology. He is later rescued by Yuki, a teenage girl with similar powers that just awakened in her. They find a cat who can communicate telepathically as all three of them have reached a higher level of evolution that gives them understanding of not only alien science but potential future tech. The two teenagers and their cat rendezvous with a more corporeal Mello and realize that they have to leave the planet in order to ready mankind for their next stage of evolution while the Earth spends the next thousand years recovering from the meteor attacks. Fouton is having none of that as she calls the remaining forces under her command to stop their launch into space. Our advanced heroes end up getting saved by Captain Harlock and his ship the Arcadia along with a supposedly automated Yamato from Star Blazers which seriously screws with the Leijiverse timeline as most of the events involving their respective realities haven't happened yet.

Exactly why the Leijiverse history is so wonky is explained slightly in the Harlock Saga OVA where Harlock goes to war with the Norse gods resulting in a new unstable timeline mixing in different titles into a single reality. DNA Sights 999.9 is a victim of this cosmic reshuffling which makes for an incoherent story that is like a chemistry experiment gone wrong. Trying to figure out where the plot is going is a decathlon of endurance with the only relief being that the running time is under an hour.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Mask Of Zeguy

Mask Of Zeguy might seem like a premise merges Fushigi Yuugi and Fate/Stay Night where two schoolgirls get sent to a parallel world that is inhabited by famous historical figures, but this was made in 1993 before either franchise got its own anime. The OVA was only two episodes long which wasn't based on any existing source material. The story is a hodgepodge of ideas and concepts that were poorly thought out and seriously hard to follow. Its mixing of time travel and parallel worlds only make it more confusing as director/writer Shigenori Kageyama made it out to be which only helps if you're fluent in Japanese history. Since this was before isekai became the instant hit it is nowadays, it is difficult to see what kind of plot they were going for, even with cyborgs and werewolves added to the fold.

Miki is a schoolgirl who has a fight with her friend Sayaka, and they both end up in a magical realm called the Cloud World. This place is a crossroads of several different points in time allowing people to travel from one point to another, but the only way to navigate it was the instincts of a common looking cat. Miki runs across a Shinsengumi samurai and an eccentric scientist who invented an airship with its own self-replicating organic engine whose droppings can be used as defensive mines. Her friend Sayaka has been captured by an evil queen that now possesses the titular Mask of Zeguy which allows its owner to gain access to the portal between both their world and ours. This villainess employs a time displaced Leonardo DaVinci who makes her instruments of destruction while at the same time operating a small puppet doppelganger that he keeps on his shoulder. Miki is recognized by some telepathic locals as being the reincarnation of their prophesied priestess who can use the power of the deity Zeguy to oppose the evil queen. Sayaka is thought to be the priestess and Miki has to rescue her from the queen's clutches. It might seem like they won't be able to conclude the series like several 90s OVAs, but the final battle with werewolves and cyborgs wraps up pretty quickly as the two schoolgirls get sent to their own time after defeating the newly powered queen.

This OVA staggers all over the place with misleading ideas and plot complications that seem to resolve themselves offscreen. There is unforgivable meandering throughout the 2-parter leaving the watcher bewildered as to what the heck is going on and where the resolution is coming from. You can pretty much just leave this one behind and spare the $100 asking price for the Central Park Media DVD.

ANI-MOVIES, *Missing Link

Laika Studios already had a winning streak with their stop-motion animated movies Coraline, Paranorman, and Boxtrolls, their latest endeavor was a little less epic than their previous entry of Kubo And The Two Strings. Their more humor-based entry was Missing Link calling back to the literally adventures of Henry Rider Haggard and Arthur Conan Doyle while creating a family-friendly comedy in the spirit of Disney's Emperor's New Groove. Animator Chris Butler is back as writer and director of this Victorian era globetrotting story.

In the late 19th Century, knighted explorer Lionel Frost hopes to eventually join a gentlemen's club made of big game hunters. Lionel fails on his latest attempt to get a picture of the Loch Ness monster, so his new plan is to find the cryptid known as Sasquatch after receiving a letter regarding the creature come from the Pacific Northwest. Once in America, Lionel finds a large hairy creature he names Mr. Link who informs him that he was the one who sent the letter. Link is the last known Sasquatch and he wants to find his distant Yeti cousins on the other side of the world. Lionel disguises Link as his new valet as they seek to acquire a map left behind by a deceased explorer which is now in the possession of his widowed wife Adelina, of whom Lionel had a previous fling with. Meanwhile the club's president Piggot-Dunceby wants to prevent Lionel's admission into their society and sends rival hunter Stenk to sabotage his efforts as the newfound threesome who have set out to find Link's Yeti brothers. They travel to the Himalayas and discover the Yeti sanctuary, but the white hairy cryptids are a society of snobs that see Mr. Link(now with the first name of Susan)as an unwanted country bumpkin. After being tossed into a pit, Lionel, Adelina, and Susan make their escape for a final battle between Piggot-Dunceby and Stank on an ice bridge over a deep chasm. Adelina leaves them to find her own adventure while Lionel takes on Susan as his partner as they plan for an expedition to Atlantis, despite the fact that Disney already beat them to it.

Missing Link is a fine middle of the road film meant to entertain audiences while simultaneously providing a sensational visual experience. The stop-motion animation by Laika is still up to the quality of their prior movies' standards, although not as captivating as their past releases. It's mostly clear that this was intended to be a pacifier for movie buffs, not being too deep but just a rollicking good time.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Iczelion

Titled Iczer Girl Iczelion in Japan, Iczelion is the third entry in the Iczer anime franchise, as well as the final one so far. Toshiki Hirano returns as the writer/director for this "supergirls from space" saga, even though it appears to take place in an alternate universe from the previous two Iczer anime titles. There was a trio of radio drama albums that is supposed to bridge Iczer Reborn to this new 2-episode OVA, none of these CDs were available in America. This was available on dubbed and subtitled VHS through ADV Films with so far no DVD release. Iczelion was one of the last in a line of anime titled like Bubblegum Crisis and Ronin Warriors where it's a team of heroes that use special armor to fight bad guys.

Sent in what is probably modern Earth, yet another girl named Nagisa gets pulled into a fight between good and evil aliens. This time, it's the remaining Iczer sisters from the previous two anime titles who have created a new form of AI called Iczels which take on the form of robotic suits that merge with the natives on other planets, sort of like being drafted into the Lensmen or Green Lanterns. The opposing aliens are the cybernetic overlord Chaos whose forces called the Gaes plan to take over the Earth as soon as they take out the four Iczel warriors assigned to it. This includes the Black, Silver, and Gold Iczelions, as Nagisa is now the White Iczelion who is constantly being hunted down by Chaos' sister Cross. Nagisa's hope to be a female wrestler might be an homage to Iczer-3's original voice actress herself being a real-life wrestler, but the whiny girl keeps running away from the deadly droids while her wouldbe teammates handle the bulk of the fighting.

Iczelion does feature decent animation for a 1995 release, even the plot seems to dive more into the superhero market like various sentai or magical girl shows at the time. The dub is tolerable, even though if you were familiar with ADV Films' track record its not too hard to notice the lack in quality. If you were looking for an all-girls take on Saint Seiya, then this is a good if not brief enough attempt at that formula.

ANI-MOVIES, *Son Of The White Mare

After 40 years, the lost animated fantasy epic is finally available in English. Originally titled Feherlofia, the translation of which is Son Of The White Mare is based on a Hungarian fairy tale that borrows elements from Norse mythology. The late Marcell Jankovics was the director of this full-length movie who already had created the first Hungarian animated movie, Johnny Comcob, and his style seems to reflect that of the Yellow Submarine film. Marcell Jankovics was later asked to be a consultant for Disney on their abandoned Empire Of The Sun project which eventually became The Emperor's New Groove, and you can see his work reflected by future animators like Genndy Tartakovsky in Samurai Jack and Primal. The film has been gloriously restored by American company Arbelos Films making it fresh and new for post-20th Century audiences.

A god king known as Forefather has his kingdom taken from him by a trio of multi-headed dragons which capture his son's wives causing the princes to be killed and have their own castle locked off in the Underworld. A single white mare manages to get away and she gives birth to three human sons, the last of which, Treeshaker, receives messages from Forefather's spirit to stay with his horse mother until he has finally come of age. Treeshaker leaves his deceased equine parent behind as he seeks out his other two brothers, the bumbling earth mover Stonecrumbler and the weapons forging Ironrubber. The brothers have to deal with a taunting long-bearded gnome who keeps ruining their dinner plans, only to have Treeshaker finally succeed in descending into the Underworld with a special sword his brother crafted for him. The youngest son takes on each dragon separately, freeing all of the princesses, but he gets trapped in the Underworld. Treeshaker gets help from a griffin after protecting its children who gives him a flight back upstairs. We learn that the brothers were reincarnations of Forefather's original sons, and they go on to be with their former wives each in their own kingdom.

Son Of The White Mare is a fantastic ride employing constantly shifting visuals both in the characters and backgrounds. You can see how stories like this one went on inspire future fantasy properties such as Masters Of The Universe and Marvel's Thor. The original Feherlofia tale is formatted like other creation myths, although there are elements of modern influence in the movie adaptation like some of the dragons appearing like machines of war. The legacy this film left behind made its mark first among 80s animation aficionados, and now has the chance for a totally fresh generation of viewers.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Yotoden: Wrath Of The Ninja

From 1987-1988, anime studio J.C. Staff released a popular 3-episode OVA series titled Yotoden that was popular enough for Japan's version of MTV to put together a compilation movie that was released out English under a new title, Wrath Of The Ninja. This was one of the first anime to stick its flag in the ground under the genre of historical fantasy, and even got a one-shot manga adaptation. Yotoden wasn't a samurai epic, but more of a supernatural martial arts series co-written by Ultraman author Sho Aikawa.

Set in an alternate version of 1580's Japan, the tyrannical Oda Nobunaga starts a campaign to take over the country by sending his armies of disposable ninja monsters lead by his cadre of generals with their own unique powers, like being able to summon up a giant triple-headed caterpillar out of nowhere or possessing an enemy's body like a parasite. Nobunaga's forces had already destroyed two villages that each had the last descendants in the line of a martial arts schools escaping with a special weapon. One of them was Ayame wielding a short sword, the other is the katana toting Hayate who meets Ayame after she encounters some random bandits. They both head to the village of Hagakure which is the last of three fighting schools where they are joined by Ryoma who owns an enchanted halberd. All three weapons are supposed to be the only thing that can defeat Nobunaga and his demonic forces. The trio goes through multiple campaigns and personal struggles before finally reaching their fight with the evil ninja lord, only to find that the whole war was a scheme cooked up by Nobunaga's right-hand man, Ranmaru. The creepy underling had manipulated all these characters to generate enough negative energy to open a door to the underworld. The three heroes of course stop Ranmaru thanks to Ryoma's sacrifice.

This was dubbed by Central Park Media, although numerous bootlegs were shoved on to the American market, some of which labeled under ADV Films but unauthorized. The mid-80s anime design and fighting sequences are above average for the time, but if you want the full version try to find The Complete Yotoden Saga edition.