Time To Make Those Pride Month Profits!

Get ready for Towel Day.

 

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Dragon Century

Manga creator Ryukihei made a short series titled Dragon Breeder that was shown in an anthology label in 1987 which was in the right place at the right time to get its own 2-episode OVA a year later by AIC. Ultraman writer Sho Aikawa adapted the screenplay which is oddly enough split into two separate story arcs, one for each episode. The series had a brief release in America on VHS by U.S. Renditions but with several misspelled subtitles, also only a DVD release in Japan, so this OVA swept under the radar of most English-speaking otaku, even though it might be considered the predecessor to sleeper hit Reign Of Fire.

The first episode is set in a slightly futuristic 1990 where dragons start appearing throughout Japan while being hunted down by a special task force of dragon-busters. The egg of one slain dragon is rescued by the severely anti-social teenage girl Riko who raises the orphaned dragon and names him Carmine. Riko hopes Carmine will shortly be big enough to live out her fantasy of tearing down civilization, and she gets her wish even though it turns out the dragons are here to prevent the world from being destroyed by demons escaping from a hellmouth. The demons swiftly kill off most of the city's population when Riko realizes she wants to renounce her destructive desire and helps Carmine take down the main demon, but at the cost of her life leaving Carmine behind to deal with any upcoming demonic threats. The second episode then shoots ahead some three centuries later after at least one demon attack reduced the remaining portion of humanity into an alliance with the surviving dragons. When they are waiting for the next demon attack, humans can gain control of a dragon by cutting off one of its horns and engaging them in dragon-sized cockfights. Carmine is now an elderly loner living in an isolated tower and allies himself with the bikini-clad wasteland warrior named Rulichia along with her pet dragon fitted with a jetpack. The young dragon fighter wants Carmine to help her find the man who killed her father in a match, which is convenient as the dark stranger is revealed to be an infiltrator for the demons along with his ally disguised as a dragon. Carmine defeats the demonic terminator concluding the series leading into an assault of dragons against the hellish forces that are about to strike one of the few remaining cities.

The OVA ends on a major cliffhanger despite how fast paced the plot is. The anime would have benefitted if each chapter were divided into their own two-part episodes giving enough time to expand the story. Given the chance to make an unrated anime benefitted Dragon Century by allowing it to employ an ample amount of violent imagery, mostly during the scenes where the demons are rampaging through people's bodies imploding them in a bloody mess. The way the OVA shows what is essentially the first and final chapters of a story while leaving out the bridging middle chapters does make for an intriguing viewing, although it makes you wish they had more material to cover if you found any enjoyment from it.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Golgo 13: Queen Bee

While he's had a manga that has been running on and off since 1968 making it the longest running Japanese comic in the world, the actual character of Golgo 13 has had few outlets aside from a live-action 70's film, a full-length anime movie, and a limited TV anime. Golgo 13: Queen Bee was the original John Wick's only OVA releases that was directed by Mighty Orbots' Osamu Dezaki. The license to have more graphic violence and gratuitous sex gave the wholesome house of Tezuka Productions a reason to crank up the flesh and blood. Released in 1998, the anime received its American premiere through Urban Vision as one of their cash grab titles like Final Fantasy, featuring none other than John DiMaggio as the title character, even though he only has about a dozen lines in the whole thing, plus veteran voice actor Dwight Schultz doing some of the supporting cast.

Duke Togo(aka: "Golgo 13") is one of the best assassins in the business who is given the assignment of killing the sultry spy Sonja, also known as the freedom fighter, Queen Bee. Her highness has spun a tangled web involving an upcoming presidential candidate, a Central American warlord, and a sinister criminal organization who are pulling their own strings from all sides. Duke hunts down Sonja either to kill her or getting utterly bewildered into bed with her in several scenes in this less than an hour long OVA.

Given the limited run time, Golgo 13 is a supporting character in his own title, even though that is a standard in most of his manga adventures where the assassin is the vehicle used to highlight the despicable targets he takes on in this ongoing crime anthology. Given its release on the home video market allowed it to have the world Duke lives in get as savage as possible where characters are either trying to snuff each other in one scene with a rapid shift tone of them having a sex scene that looks like it is being done in hyperspace. Urban Vision first released this on VHS and DVD, even though there is currently no known edition of it on American streaming services. The original Golgo 13: The Professional movie was a better example of Duke's adventures, but if you thought it wasn't sleezy enough then you might want to give the OVA a spin.

OBSCURE O.V.A., *Fight! Iczer One

As one of the first big hits to enter the emerging OVA market of the mid-80's, Fight! Iczer One was based on a story from an adult manga anthology. The plot was tweaked into being less mature but still maintaining plenty of gore and sexual innuendo. Macross and Megazone 23 animator Toshiki Hirano premiered as a director in this 3-episode series which was successful enough to not only two OVA sequels as well as an incomplete manga prequel, all of which were all given their own English release, although through separate distributors. Fight! Iczer One got initially thrown on to the American market through the early defunct U.S. Renditions on VHS with a dub specifically created for American audiences, which was later put on DVD by Media Blasters. Hirano's work on this series would later influence anime like Magic Knight Rayearth, as well as audio dramas based on the manga, one of which was a crossover with his other OVA project of Dangaioh. The original OVA would create its own legacy of super-powered characters like Dragonball Z, horror titles that were inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft such as Vampire Hunter D, and bio-mecha giant robots that later evolved into anime similar to Evangelion. Fight! Iczer One was also the first anime to focus on yuri but still set in the horror and mecha genres.

Taking place in a slightly futuristic Japan, Nagisa is an average blue-haired girl who gets scouted by pointy-eared bio-android Iczer One who needs to use her unrequited love to help power her giant robot, Iczer-Robo. A mecha powered by yuri love might seem unusual, but since Iczer One is a synthetic lifeform just learning about her own emotions, and somehow synchronizes this with Nagisa to stop the corrupted forces of her own people known as the Cthulhu(or as they call it in the dub, Cthulwulf), a race of artificially created alien females travelling through space. A disembodied supercomputer called Big Gold had earlier taken over the Cthulhu turning them into her own personal army, even though Iczer One managed to escape her grasp just before the evil AI picks Earth as its next target. Iczer-Robo manages to win against Cthulhu's first mecha assault which leads to Big Gold creating Iczer One's redheaded sister, Iczer Two, who now pilots her own robot, Iczer-Sigma, all this while the Cthulhu are slowly taking over the world by turning its inhabitants into mixed up Cronenberg monsters. Iczer Two captures Nagisa and brainwashes her to attack Iczer One leaving our title character with no other choice but to lethally defeat her while simultaneously giving her the inner strength to kill her wicked sister as well as Big Gold. With the Cthulhu now under Iczer One's management, she uses her new resources to remake the end of the first Superman movie by reversing time so that the Earth was never invaded in the first place with all the human having no memory of the dark invasion.

One of the standout features of Fight! Iczer One is that it shows influences from other Japanese titles like a battlecraft modeled after the infamous Atragon, plus other tokusatu and anime with characters like Tetsuo from Akira making an appearance, which is not too unsurprising as it was released at the same time as other reflective anime including Project A-Ko that was played largely for laughs. The mecha designs from Masami Obari are apparent with the pointy shoulderguards, even though Iczer-Robo probably has one of the junkiest paint jobs ever which does get pimped out better in the Iczer-3 sequel, plus having it inducted into the Super Robot Wars video games. Fight! Iczer One was one of the first dubs intended to grab the attention of adult audiences with an above average performance by Wendee Lee in one of her earliest roles. The yuri aspect isn't particularly deep when compared to future shoujo-ai titles, even though it was still groundbreaking in its delivery of the genre. If your curiosity is peaked for one of the original OVA hits, it's certainly earned its place as an otaku stepstone.

ANI-MOVIES, *Coco

Numerous naysayers probably confused Pixar's Coco with Fox's Book Of Life which came out just three years prior, with Disney still two years as yet to buy out Fox. Both movies were CGI animated dealing centered around Mexico and their country's beliefs surrounding the Day of the Dead, although Book Of Life was more of a romantic fantasy while Coco focused in on familial ties. Lee Unkrich directed this several years after doing his last movie, Cars 3, and the film was written by Adrian Molina as his first screenplay project, both creators helped make Coco on of Pixar's biggest sellers of all time.

Set in modern Mexico, Miguel is the great-grandson of a shoemaker shop, the now elderly Coco whose entire family has been raised with an intense phobia of music because Coco's father left her family to become a famous musician. Miguel wants to break free of his family's cycle of hatred and become a famous singer on his own. He tries to perform at the Day of the Dead festival, but can't find a guitar to play, so he makes off with the enshrined guitar of famed deceased star Ernesto which curses him into a living spirit able to interact with the ghosts from the other side that are in town to accept their loved ones offerings. Miguel gets help from his visiting dead relatives who take him to the underworld so Coco's mother can offer her blessing to him so he can return before dawn, otherwise he'll be stuck in the afterlife forever. Coco can go back but only under the condition that he never plays music again. The living ghost boy can't accept this deal and believes that Ernesto is really his genuine great-great-grandpa, so Miguel agrees to help the lonely Hector to get to his possible ancestor in exchange for taking his photo back to the land of the living otherwise Hector might fade away into limbo if no living person remembers them on the Day of the Dead. Miguel has enough problems navigating this new spirit world while being hunted by his dead relatives as well as the police that exist in his realm, while at the same time him trying to accept certain truths about his family's past as it becomes a race against the clock to undo the curse.

Coco could have focused a little more on the title characters despite her deep senility although that would give away the plot too early. Whether you are up to date on Mexican folklore enough to understand how the rules of the afterlife, it doesn't take away for the from the overall narrative as it is simple enough to comprehend. What separates Coco over Book Of Life is that it does feature richer vibrant animation, even though Book Of Life doesn't insist on throwing a new character in every couple of seconds. Coco is a winsome all-ages movie despite dealing heavily in the subject of death.