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.