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.