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.