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.