OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Blue Sonnet

Prior to his fanservice filled manga Sarai, Masahiro Shibata created a mid-80s series titled Blue Sonnet, a shoujo comic with severed body parts and mass destruction. This was high off the semi-successful run of manga featuring young people with psychic powers, partially a take on X-Men which frequently featuring Japanese teenagers. Ultraman anime director Takeyuki Kanda directed a 5-episode OVA created by studios Mushi and Tatsunoko beginning in 1989. It was released in English on VHS and LD by Central Park Media in Japanese with subtitles, but there was also a dubbed British VHS version which never got an American release.

Sonnet is a blue-haired esper who was modified into a cyborg by the Talon organization that claim to be working toward peaceful purposes although they are really scheming to find a power once used by ancient superhumans called the Red Fang to take over the world. Sonnet is ordered by Simon Bar Sinister lookalike Dr. Merekes to investigate a girl in Japan who might have inherited the Red Fang potential named Ran. The bionic psychic Sonnet slips into the role of a "platinum blonde" with blue hair at Ran's school and begins a series of accidents using her mind powers to test Ran's abilities, to which she is repeatedly foiled by former Talon psychic agent Bird seeking to protect Ran from their plans. Ran lives with her brother and uncle as she was in a helicopter accident as a baby and raised by wolves, the experience she blocked out of her memory while her new esper powers are beginning to emerge. We learn throughout the series that these powers don't just include mind-reading, but teleportation, telekinesis, and energy beams, so many of the fight sequences have levels of gore seen in something like Akira or Riki-Oh. Alliances are made as well as broken to the end of the anime including the final episode setting up what would have been a continuation of the OVA if it had gotten a second story arc.

Blue Sonnet never really received the kind of accolades that other anime did from the early days of OVAs, not even getting a DVD or English streaming release. You would have to seriously look around for the two VHS volumes that Central Park Media did, although if you can get a copy of the British release by Manga Entertainment then give it a spin because it one of those "so good it's bad" dubs.