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.