OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Guyver: Out Of Control

Based on the Bio-Booster Armor Guyver manga, the first adaptation of it came out just a year later in an OVA that was branded Guyver: Out Of Control. Yoshi Takaya's manga concentrates on the armored superhero genre that anime like Tekkaman Blade got into, but with a Cronenberg body horror motif, and this one-shot anime got the ball rolling into what would be sleeper hit, oddly enough with a number of American horror hounds. The franchise would soon get a 12-episode OVA series, two live-action movies from the States, and an anime TV series. Out Of Control was handled largely by Toyoo Ashida just after got through with the Fist Of The North Star TV series. The OVA got a single release in America as one of our first Japanese-language anime titles, available only on VHS by Dark Image Entertainment which was part of U.S. Renditions.

A secret organization called Chronos has an operation in Japan using test subjects who are experimented on to create a hybrid lifeform named Zoanoids. A test subject escapes Chonos' control along with a trio of special weapons. One of these weapons finds its way to common schoolboy Sho who bonds with it in a way similar to Venom and becomes the super-powered Guyver. He can now rip apart the Zoanoid monsters with ease and is protected against all of Chronos' arsenal. The shadowy villains want their tech back, so their only sexy redheaded agent bonds with another Guyver unit, but only after her obligatory 80's anime shower scene. Sho finds out that Chronos is holding his girlfriend and assaults their headquarters while fighting the second Guyver subject who only ends up getting killed by her malfunctioning gear. A third Guyver soldier appears to help Sho at the end as the entire complex blows up leaving our hero to go on the lam avoiding the reach of Chronos.

For the first Guyver anime, Out Of Control is a habitual slice of 80's nostalgia with rudimentary animation, even though the characters are designed like cherubs more than rough shonen figures. For being less than an hour, it covers a decent amount of the manga's first story arc, despite the sacrifice of the cast having any deep attributes. The OVA sustains your interests, even though the OVA series does the manga better justice with a more complete story and higher enthusiasm.