OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Devilman

Go Nagai's original horror/action manga Devilman ran for only a single year in 1972, and that garnered in getting its own single-season anime TV series. In that, the title character was about a young man who bonded with a demon and could turn into giant to fight the monster of the week. There wouldn't be another anime take on this until 1987 with its first OVA series that only went on for two episodes acting as hardcore remake to the previous removing all the tokusatsu elements and transformed it into a Lovecraftian nightmare. The OVA got a notorious release through Manga Entertainment first available on VHS and DVD with a British dub peppered with compulsory cursing. This was later released on DVD and Blu-ray through Discotek Media to reach a modern audience. The OVA has a requisite for amping up the violence and bloodshed while at the same time trying to deliver an environmental message about the polar ice caps melting. The director Tsutomu Iida went on to do further horror/action anime like Hellsing. Go Nagai's misanthropic approach to this might be less sensationalized than the 70's kaiju show, even though this original series went on to influence such groundbreaking titles as Evangelion.

Lonely Akira Fudo is living with his friend Miki after his parents were killed in an expedition to the South Pole and gets a visit by his old friend Ryo who tells him his own father killed himself after his own expedition into the jungle. Ryo's father left him the remains of a demon's head that allows its wearer to see the way the world original was ages ago when it was filled with demons until mankind eventually replaced them as the dominate lifeform. Ryo believes the door has been opened for the demons to come out of their suspended animation to challenge humanity and the only way to stop them was to merge demonic spirits with a human host. This proves true after Akira bonds with the demon Amon to become Devilman, a muscular monster masher that can do everything from body slams, sprouting wings, and shooting lasers from antenna on his head. Akira fights an entire night club full of demons that Ryo arranged to summon the demons who also bonded with pathetic partygoers, and then goes on a revenge quest to destroy the turtle demon that absorbed his parent living souls into his shell. Following this is a long battle between Devilman and the topless harpy Sirene who herself merges with another demon to transform into centaur abomination.

The Devilman OVA was intended to introduce the title to a new generation which concludes just as the saga was just beginning. The anime slightly continued in an OVA one-shot titled Devilman Apocalypse that never got an English release, although it does have a few contradictions to the prior series. For a complete rundown of the intended mythos, it is best to check out the Devilman Crybaby anime on Netflix. The 80's OVA series left a notch amidst 90's American otaku as to how brutal anime could be and that it wasn't just a bunch of Hello Kitty stuff, even though this equally takes some away from it as there is far too much savagery. An OVA allows for less limitations on sex and violence, but even the average level of content concerning that market gets taken to its pressure point with Devilman.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Final Fantasy: Legend Of The Crystals

Final Fantasy has been an enduring video game franchise for decades. The first time the series was transferred to another media was a 4-episode OVA production by Madhouse that came out 1994. Legend Of The Crystals was a continuation of Final Fantasy V, the game of which hadn't been released in America until years later. Tezuka prodigy Rintaro was the director for this short saga that took Yoshitaka Amano's original designs and rewrote them as a raypunk fantasy. The OVA series got released in America just after the original FF7 got put out for PS1, which many of its buyers thought the anime tied into Cloud Strife and his mates, so this turned off most of any potential otaku among the thirsty gamers. The English version of the OVA was one of the first titles put out by Urban Vision which helped put them on the map as far as anime distributors go, even though they met demise from financing their own sequels to other hit anime by other sellers like Vampire Hunter D and Ninja Scroll. Urban Vision only released this on dubbed and subtitled VHS that never got sold on DVD out here, which is the reason most post-90's viewers have never even heard of it.

Two centuries after FFV on the Planet R, the magic crystals that protect it are being scooped up from alien invaders from their Black Moon lead by the cybernetic nightmare Ra Devil who wants the crystals' power to ascend to another level that he named Deathgyunos, so basically it like going from Shredder to Super Shredder. Linaly is a descendant of one of party of heroes that first helped saved the world in the previous crystal crisis, even though she is only a moderate spiritualist with a minor talent for summoning bald Chocobos. The prodigy heroine goes on a quest to secure the last remaining crystal, the Wind Crystal, along with her childhood friend Prettz, an adventurous biker with a samurai sword. They are eventually joined by the military commander Valkus with forces from kingdom of Tycoon, as well as the treasure-hungry air pirate Rouge and her crew of chunky henchwomen whose uniforms know no shame. The Wind Crystal gets absorbed into Linaly's body which leads to several shots of this pre-teen's rear end magically glowing. Ra Devil captures Linaly, forcing her friends and colleagues use a puny dragon to fly to the Black Moon for a boss battle to save Planet R.

Final Fantasy: Legend Of The Crystals was truly an experiment in adapting a JRPG into an anime which doesn't totally succeed in its execution. Rintaro helps provide some great visuals that he would later use for the Metropolis anime, although it is brought down by substandard cartoon cliches. 21st Century fans might feel an irresistible urge to try and seek out this white whale of an anime, even though they would quickly realize that it was futile quest for sentimentalism.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *The Ultimate Teacher

Having no relation to the similarly titled The Ultimate Otaku Teacher anime TV series, this specific 1988 OVA one-shot was based on Atsuji Yamamoto 2-volume manga series and was directed by former Yamato animator Toyoo Ashida who was influenced by American cartoonists. The anime produced by J.C. Staff in 1989 was one of U.S. Manga Corps' earliest English dubs featuring a number of Canadian voice actors from Ranma 1/2 and Dragonball, even though it got a limited release on VHS and LD with no DVD at all before its license expired. The Ultimate Teacher is a farcical satire mainly poking fun of teen delinquent genre that Cromartie High School would mine to death later on, except this OVA relies mostly on erratic comedy and bizarre background characters.

The battle worn campus of Emperor School which has a gravesite for all its now brutally murdered faculty gets a new teacher, the even stranger Ganpachi who has a kink about clinging to the side of walls. He plans major discipline for the rowdy students, but the main leader of all the school's punks, the evidently mild-mannered Hinako. Ganpachi is shocked and delighted that Hinako gets a major portion of her unnatural strength from wearing child bloomers, and our unusual newbie plots to take her down using either defeated enemies of attacking at a convenience store or psyching her out by himself and his goons also wearing kids shorts, of which Ganpachi has an unlimited supply of that takes up a whole hill of panties. The new teacher is really an escaped prisoner that was experimented on and given the DNA of a cockroach making him nearly indestructible. To fight Ganpachi, one of the scientists that worked on him had his genes spliced with a spider so now he can shoot webs out of backside as he teams up with Hinako in a dragged-out climax.

A single OVA was a limited field to try and cram this entire manga story into a production under an hour running time. The story streaks along leaving little chance to catch your breath when you're trying to mentally pull together everything you just saw, like the school's hallways filled with corpses after the students leave a trap of infinite kettles to fall on the hapless principal. There are boundless gags taking up most of the actual plot which is slipshod with no direction to it. The dub is impressive with future Barbie actress Kelly Sheridan as Hinako, and Scott McNeil using his Wolverine voice as Kenpachi. With the American copyright being long run out, you're going to be in for a serious scavenger hunt trying to get a physical copy of The Ultimate Teacher(the original one).

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *M.D. Geist

What is considered one of the best/worst anime ever made, M.D. Geist was created by Riku Sanjo in his first anime writing credit in 1986 after doing the Dragon Quest manga series. The original OVA was a single episode project when it came out, but John O'Donnell from U.S. Manga Corps loved the anime so much with the did the English release in the early 90's that he made the title character the company's official "spokesmecha", even though it wasn't a robot but a guy in Warhammer armor. O'Donnell went on to fund what was also one of the first independently produced anime for the American and Japanese market in an extended Director's Cut with all new footage added to the then decade old anime, as well as an official sequel anime, M.D. Geist II: Death Force. Not only that, but the crazy O'Donnell had a special prequel manga mini-series created leading up to the events of the first OVA. The original story is a standard 80's grindhouse anime by Koichi Ohata who also directed the equally gory Genocyber. The anime took the idea of Mad Max and threw some alien mecha suits into the fray.

Way in the future, humans had colonized the planet Jerra which had erupted into civil war leaving the world largely decimated. One of the last remaining members of a batch of super fighters known as Most Dangerous Soldiers going by the name Geist is let out of suspended animation after a few decades. Geist wrangles a local gang of scavengers into helping him bail out one of the two warring factions from a different group of raiders. Geist gets his new crew and the army to stop a giant doomsday machine called the Death Force from unleashing an army of man-eating robots on Jerra's remaining populace. The most dangerous soldier launches this joint operation only to make sure that the ultimate weapon launches its payload because Geist is a homicidal maniac. The sequel episode takes place sometime later with Geist having reveled in it, although he sees his fun being ruined by another MDS named Krauser running the collected resistance. Geist leads the Death Force to Krauser's fortress for a final battle between the opposing forces where the two super soldiers wreck each other in roided out robot suits.

M.D. Geist was a bugbear upon its initial release, and its modified American funded re-release along with its sequel didn't gain much more respect from either side of the world. Otaku have a habit of rejecting some titles outright, and U.S. Manga Corps' attempt to bring fresh life into it failed in its undertaking. The original and sequel anime were released on dubbed and subtitled VHS and DVD, including the DVD release containing the Director's Cut. The physical copies have been out of print for a while, and only have sporadic appearances on streaming services.

ANI-MOVIES, *Delta Space Mission

What is reportedly Hungary's first full-length animated feature, Delta Space Mission is a sci-fi epic from 1984 with wiggy imagery that makes you think Yellow Submarine had been spliced the original Star Trek. Directors Calin Cazan and Mircea Toia pioneered this space opera which previously was a series of short films, and they later took this view of the universe to a different film in 1988 titled The Son Of The Stars. The film is a just a little over an hour starting out very bold, although the second act drags on a little with most of the characters getting marooned on a swamp planet. You see hints of art from European comics like Heavy Metal with action scenes that appear to be right out of an 80's video game.

Way out in 3084, Earthlings are planning a new mobile space station called Delta to explore the unknown sectors of the galaxy. To see the launching of this new project is the sexy green alien girl Alma who is an off-world reporter that also part-times as an adventurer along with her "dog" Tin which is really a large frog with two legs. Delta's main computer develops a crush on Alma and breaks down after its installation is completed and launches the entire station into deep space to stalk Alma from far away. Delta then sends a probe to Earth that keeps making giant monsters like an automatic kaiju-maker that gets Alma's attention as she heads back to her world. The sentient space station sicks robot fighters out to get the reporter which causes her to crash on a savage world. She asks for help from her newfound Earthling comrades, even though Alma manages to get through most of her trials on her own with some assistance from her pet. After finally getting taken into Delta's computer core where she explains why Delta's feelings for her are in error, even though it's described as being genuine, while Tin eats away at the computer's main cables finally shutting it down.

Delta Space Mission would feel to anyone from the 80's as a sign of the times with disco-themed music and adventure that look they might have influenced Metroid. If you remember old Filmation space TV shows, then this is welcome bit of nostalgia even though it's more like something from a Moebius comic. The story can be inconsistent, and a large portion of the dialogue is spoken by an off-screen narrator, so the better selling point is the animation itself with noteworthy chase sequences.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Psychic Force

We've all seen our share of anime based on video games, and the ones based on fighting games can be particularly wretched. Psychic Force was a game for the original Playstation in the mid-90s by Taito Corp. who also famously created Space Invaders. The video game itself was another standard fighting scenario taking place in a 3D environment even though the playing engaged was in 2D with each character having their own specific ability. Most of these fighters had either psychic, mystical, or cybernetic powers, as well as sometimes a combination of them. Triangle Staff created a 2-episode OVA adaptation in 1998 that was localized into English as one of the few anime titles distributed exclusively by Image Entertainment.

Happening in a world similar to X-Men, psychics are people with powerful abilities, usually telepathy, but every psychic has their own significant trait like elemental powers. The majority of the first episode takes place in the far-off future of 2007 where a rogue young psychic named Keith who is on the run from shady agents when he runs across local farm boy Burn. The agents eventually capture Keith, and then the plot shifts ahead to 2010 where Burn is searching for Keith and finds he is now the head of a sealed off nation for psychics called Noah, even though Keith is secretly being coerced by the time-manipulating Wong. Noah has several psychic soldiers under its wing, including a bionic bimbo with huge shoulder pads and a bipolar psychopath armed with sharp claws. Burn makes his way to Keith who awakens his own pyrokinetic prowess which he immediately gains control over when trying to free Keith from his crusade against the world. Wong decides to take out all the other psychics in Noah's base so he can be the only powerful esper in the world, which interrupts Keith and Burn's duel despite them both making it out alive.

Psychic Force came out after the backwash of X/1999 movie hit the pavement, so it's another epser epic that just got lost in the shuffle of late 90's OVAs. The anime is excessively rushed with the first episode being a flashback and the second being slightly longer trying to catch up by tying together all the dangling plot threads while making time for all the other characters from the video game, some of which are barely featured in the anime. That's the problem with taking a fighting game and turning it into a limited animation project, even if the game itself didn't have much of a rich storyline to begin with. The animation itself isn't all that potent either with obvious budget cuts in the first episode. You're not missing much if you toss this in the bin with the Samurai Showdown or Art Of Fighting anime.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Roots Search

The beginning of the OVA era in the mid-80's was like a totally new frontier for anime production companies, that's why yet another rip-off of the original Alien movie might seem like a brilliant idea. Columbia and Studio Live were the studios that produced this one-shot highlighting substandard animation. While space horror was just starting to crawl out of the ground mostly thanks to Ridley Scott's initial vision, Roots Search was a 1986 release that did have some Lovecraft imagery to it, but you do see some hints of future projects like Dead Space or Event Horizon. Michiru Shimada wrote this and went on to lead a decent career as a scriptwriter, even though this example of her earlier work wasn't all that encouraging. Proof of this is shown in U.S. Manga Corps. 1993 release of it on subtitled VHS and Laser Disc with no dub or DVD release. Their boring cover of a woman surrounded by metal pipes demonstrates how little they cared about it gaining any renown.

The sci-fi setting is in deep space at an intergalactic research center for psychics. The crew consists of a single esper named Moira and three other officers who all get the worst guest possible, an alien monster which looks like a rejected Muppet that starts to prey on them with its mental powers. The only one not affected by it is Captain Buzz, the sole survivor of the monster referred to as "Alien X" from previously crashing his party. The other crew members get killed off from Alien X giving each of them a brain scrambler leaving Buzz and Moira to set try and kill it by blowing the space station's reactor. The two don't make it out before the explosion and end up walking through some long dark cave covered in organs and alien goo with them just resolving that they entered some kind of afterlife and head on to an unknown future.

Roots Search is a full-blown failure at trying to get the attention of anyone into the opening OVA market, not even those mildly curious about the emerging media. Bad animation, forgettable character designs, and a myopic plot that hits a literal dead end. If you want to see a better anime forgery of Alien, then just wait a year later for Lily C.A.T. which was a least a little eerie.