OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Otaku No Video

In an early experiment in self-parody, Gainax's Otaku No Video was a 2-episode OVA from 1991 that takes a satirical look at the studio's history. The OVA also is a mockumentary of the lifestyles of anime fans in Japan. Vandread director Takeshi Mori helmed this multi-media project that was written by Gunbuster author Toshio Okada. The anime itself has been available in several formats through Animeigo with to date no English dub, even though that might be for the better considering the niche market this fits into.

The first episode takes place in 1982 where young man Ken has a prosperous life with a nice girlfriend as well as being a decent tennis player. This all seems to go down a very different path when he reunites with his old school chum Tanaka who makes him part of his anime fan club that covers a variety of geek connoisseurs. Ken begins to struggle finding a job and loses his girlfriend, so he and Tanaka decide to dedicate themselves fully to being captains in the anime industry as "Otakings". The final episode jumps to 1986 where our team of devoted otaku open a model kit company that branches into other merchandise and its own media empire, including the creation of a mature magical girl mascot. They eventually create their own amusement park at the turn of the century. Years later, there was some sort of apocalypse and they all managed to survive and return to the park to launch their space battleship homage to Yamato. All this is occasionally interrupted by live-action segments doing fictional interviews with various anime fans and who being an otaku can consume a person's lifestyle.

Otaku No Video was groundbreaking as it set the stage for future anime titles that reflected on the fandom such as Lucky Star and Genshiken. Gainax put their all into this with the stunning character designs of Kenichi Sonoda of Gunsmith Cats fame. Despite its short runtime, the OVA excellently demonstrates the life of an otaku in the 80s and how they had trouble fitting into mundane society. Its abrupt take on fan culture might be uncomfortable for some viewers, but you owe it to yourself to give this piece of history a look.

ANI-MOVIES, *Red Hawk

Being one of the first full-length Korean animated movies to get an English release, Red Hawk does like several cartoons from Korea and borrows heavily from anime. Whether it is Johnny Destiny: Space Ninja or Defenders Of Space, quite a number of them are just strait up rip-offs of Japanese properties. Red Hawk is more inspired by Chinese folklore while spilling in elements from anime such as Dragonball. Red Hawk came out of South Korea in 1995 and was given a release by Manga Entertainment in 2002 starring most of the regular 90s English voice actors like Steve Blum, Wendee Lee, and Bridget Hoffman. As far as information that was given, Red Hawk was an original idea, but still appropriates from several sources, including some American pulp fiction and comics with a masked hero.

Set in Chungwon, an evil organization known as Camellian Blossom plans to take over the country with counterfeit coins. Jan Chung teams up with the green-haired warrior woman Lunyung to solve the murder of a friend's father, all while a mysterious stranger in bird-themed outfit called Red Hawk is causing problems for the counterfeiters. Jan Chung fails to conceal his identity as the superhero as he attacks the bad guys' fortress and encounters his missing brother who has been possessed by demonic spirits. Red Hawk defeats all those who stand in his way, all while his hair keeps changing color and shape similar to a certain Super-Saiyan. It all turns out to be for naught as this was just one branch of an even larger shadow conspiracy that only lost one of its ten toes.

Red Hawk does contain some decent chop-socky fights, most of which are directly copying the Street Fighter II anime movie. The film tries to befuddle the watcher with insane amounts of pointless details bringing up lore that doesn't apply to the story at all, as if you were forming your own wiki page for it. It's largely a string of trite anime cliches with the occasional bland attempts at comedy where the title hero tries to cover up his obvious double-identity. You aren't missing out on anything by giving this a miss, especially since it's been out of print for over a decade.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Leda: The Fantastic Adventure Of Yohko

Possibly being the first isekai OVA ever made, Leda came out in 1985. It features character designs by Mutsomi Inomata who eventually did the same for the Birth, so you will notice an abundance of shifting models as far as how the cast appears. Kunihiko Yuyama directed this anime just after his work on Minky Mono, so he was a good enough authority on the magical girl genre. However, this time the magical girl goes from Earth to an enchanted world instead of the other way around. This was an original idea as it wasn't based on any existing material, even though the novelization of the anime was written by Hideyuki Kikuchi who also created Vampire Hunter D, and you will notice some familiar designs from each title in the final layout of the OVA. It's rumored that Leda was based on the Valis video game series starring similar character. The dub for this was made in England featuring most of the same actors from the cast of Macross: Do You Remember Love movie, and it was the first original dub released in America by Right Stuf International.

Yoko (as she is called in the dub) is a lovestruck teenager who composes a song for the boy she's hot over, but she can't summon up enough courage to play for demo tape she made for him. Yoko listens to her song on her tape player which somehow opens a portal to the other world of Ashanti. She runs across a talking dog called Ringamu and a young girl named Yoki when she is eaten by a giant plant which transforms her into a sword-wielding warrior princess in a metal bikini. Yoko is given the power of that world's former heroine Leda which involves fighting skills and access to a giant robot. Ashanti's evil wizard warlord Zell knows that Yoko's song is the key to opening the portal to Earth which he plans to take over, even though he is probably overwhelmingly outmatched with just the Japanese military. Yoko battles Zell and his forces, afterwards she makes her way back home with newfound courage to confess her love.

Kaname Productions cut their teeth on Leda just as the OVA market got started with the success of Dallos from the year prior, even though Kaname closed their doors in 1988. The anime has only been released in America on dubbed and subtitled VHS back in the 90s, so it hasn't gotten much traction since then, despite the fact that the OVA was recently given a 4K re-release in Japan which became a bestseller at the height of this new era of isekai. The animation is above expectations for its time, and substantial detail is displayed for what is revealed to be another fantasy world. The creatures and mecha designs are matched to those of early Ghibli productions even though more emphasis is given to the emerging video games that were currently on the rise. Leda is more than just an excuse to have a cute anime girl in a Frazetta outfit going all Red Sonja on a high fantasy realm. There is serious depth to the mark it made on 80s otaku culture, in spite of this, Leda is a remarkable feat of animation that set the standard for several role-playing games.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge

Named after the second installment of Capcom's fighting video game franchise, Night Warriors was given this name as opposed to the regular Darkstalkers to separate it from the American animated series which was geared more towards Saturday Morning cartoon viewing. The OVA series was strewn through a quartet of 40-minute episodes. Ronin Warriors director Masashi Ikeda was in charge of this Madhouse production. The anime came out at the same time of Darkstalkers 3, so none of the characters that premiered in that game have showed up in any anime adaptations since then, even though Night Warriors goes out of its way to highlight the characters original to the second game which few people cared for.

The entire anime has several conflicting segments that sometimes coincide with each other, but most of them are unrelated throughout the course of the series. There's a feud going on between vampire lord Demitri and succubus Morrigan as the bloodsucking count was booted from the demon world long ago and the sexy bat-lady stands in his way. While this is happening, Felicia is a catwoman trying to put on a circus for kids to have them not be afraid of her kind referred to as The Dark. Bulky priest Donovan is a dhampir with an agenda to hunt down all of The Dark and its related monster spawn, one of which is a cursed set of living samurai armor, and along his journey he becomes the caretaker of another half-breed, the psychic orphan Anita. The Chinese vampire sisters of Hsien-Ko and Mei-Ling are also on their own crusade, but it seems closer to the focal point of the whole OVA, a demonic alien named Pyron who invades Earth in order to duel its most powerful fighters. Most of these other characters are only briefly shown in some of the opening titles like Sasquatch, so they never get a real part in the overall story. Lord Raptor does get a decent team-up with Felicia as he was voiced by Scott McNeil who was the only returning voice actor from the American Darkstalkers cartoon as both shows were dubbed by the same studio.

Night Warriors is a passable adaptation of the video games, but it usually fails to have the level of fun that the games had which is what made the underrated American animated series tolerable. The spurious fighting scenes appear like they are right out of the game, however the entire plot is drawn out over four episodes which should have been at best 30 minutes long each. Night Warriors takes itself too seriously to be enjoyable regardless of the fact it's from a game where popular movie monsters are beating each other up.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Guyver: Bio-Booster Armor

From 1989-1992, Visual 80 and Studio Kikan did this second anime adaptation of the manga series a few years after the Guyver: Out Of Control one-shot. The 12-episode OVA series got further infamy. than the original anime mostly because U.S. Renditions provided a dub for the series that was later picked up by Manga Entertainment. This was probably the version of the anime that you saw in video rental stores instead of the prior one, as well as being the anime that more inspired the American live-action movie franchise. Being split into two distinct parts between two separate studios, Guyver: Bio-Booster Armor had three different directors and adapted the first five volumes of the manga. Manga Entertainment really knew how to milk this series by releasing only one episode per VHS, making for a dozen rentals if you wanted to see the entire series. It was of course later bundled on DVD, but has been long out of print, even though it is currently available through streaming.

Sho Fukamachi comes across the Guyver unit stolen from the Chronos Organization to become the armored warrior called Guyver I. Chronos sends numerous Zoanoid monsters out to take retrieve the unit, including sending their agent in the Guyver II suit. Sho gets help from his comrade Tetsuro, as well as the occasional team-up from the reclusive Guyver III. The OVA does have various edits and tweaks between the VHS and DVD releases, so your experience watching it may vary.

Being one of the first anime titles to get be made public after the cultural impact that Akira made on American fans, this Guyver anime got much exposure, and recruited many into the tokusatsu genre since it featured superheroes battling monsters. The animation is peculiar but effective, and the designs for the inhuman characters are engrossing, if not just plain gross. The dub has some noteworthy actors getting their premiere in the English dub, including Steve Blum as Guyver III. The majority of this OVA's appeal comes from its violence ante getting upped over other anime titles of the time.

ANI-MOVIES, *Short Peace

It's been a dog's age since the last authentic anime anthology motion picture. Sunrise helmed this scrumptious broth of talent featuring four different segments, each by its own director, including Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo. This literally animated omnibus picked up where other classic anthology films like Robot Carnival left off, even though there is no consistent theme to it. The movie opens with a fantastic sequence by Studio 4C founder Koji Morimoto where a little girl plays hide-and-seek with a mischievous rabbit that leads her into a Wonderland-like multiverse where her appearance changes like going through characters choices in a video game.

The first part is Possessions by Tokyo Ghoul director Shuhei Morita about a wandering craftsman who gets caught in a storm while journeying through the woods. He seeks refuge in a vacated shrine which happens to be overrun by tsukumogami that are a kind of yokai but of old objects. The spirits each put on a small show for the traveler, and he quickly starts to mend and repair each one including umbrellas and rows of silk. The remaining objects assemble into a huge jumbled dragon made of junk which the craftsman does a brief prayer for freeing them from the earthly realm. This entire short was CGI-animated similar to the some of the Baki anime, yet it does stand well enough on its own creative merit making you see it as a flowing puppet show.

Combustible is the second installment was done by Katsuhiro Otomo based on a manga he created in the mid-90s. It starts out with the pull out of a long woodcut of a city during the Edo period. A young girl named Okawa carries out a friendship with her neighbor Matsukichi who aspires to be a firefighter. As time goes on, Matsukichi gets tossed out by his family for getting tattoos while Okawa is raised to be married off to a rich lord. She accidently sets fire to her wedding gifts and spreads further that Matsukichi gets called in and tries to rescue her, even though she climbs to her supposed death up a burning tower which could be seen as a metaphor for social segregation.

Next is Gambo directed by Hiroaki Ando that seems more condensed that it should be. The altogether story has a red oni marauding through the mountains with samurai hunting for the lumbering monster. However, of all things a polar bear is apparently sent by the gods to finally end the oni's rampage. The last remaining girl of the nearby village befriends the bear who gets into an epic fight to the death with the oni. It ends on a slightly sad note, but you come to realize that this is how the story was destined to fold out.

The finale is A Farewell To Weapons directed by Gundam animator Hajime Katoki. Like Combustible, it was also based on an Otomo manga. Happening during a new world war where humans fight against machines, a special team of soldiers are in an apocalyptic Tokyo where an abandoned warhead lies for them to retrieve. The soldiers are systematically taken out by an all-terrain robot called a Gronk leaving only one remaining soldier who is left in nothing but his birthday suit when the machine leaves him a pamphlet on how futile mankind's efforts are in fighting back. The short ends with the surviving soldier running after the Gronk with the actual warhead making you wonder he managed to get some final revenge against the cold calculating machine.

Short Peace brings back nostalgic visions of other anthology anime films like Memories and Neo Tokyo that make you long for future endeavors to carry in this honored tradition. This was a multimedia project as well as a side-scrolling video game that was unrelated to any of the four chapters in the film, so it's almost like it could have just been its own entity with no connection to the movie at all. For non-anime fans, Short Peace is an enticing gateway drug for future otaku as the compressed status of segment makes them like an assortment of candies that you can't just eat one of.

OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Big Wars

Big Wars is yet another military space adventure in the spirt of Starship Troopers, even though this feature-length anime out before the American take on book. The OVA special came out in 1993 by Magic Bus and is inherently "Earth Vs. Flying Saucers". Yoshio Aramaki who also created the Kantai series wrote the novel this anime is based on. Aramaki specialized in alternative history, so it's not too hard to look at Big Wars as being in an alternate future.

After a whopping text crawl explaining how humans first colonized Mars, the story shifts ahead to the early 25th Century where an unseen race of aliens have appeared to claim the planet as their own and refer to themselves as The Gods. Whether these Gods are genuine divine beings isn't ever revealed in the story, but they attack with flying saucers and can brainwash humans into acting as agents for them. Captain Akuh leads an assault against the God's main mobile base known as Hell in his own submersible warcraft, the Aoba, which is similar to Space Battleship Yamato as it's an old military wreck that was rebuilt for a new generation. Akuh has to deal with a corrupted government and a mind-controlled girlfriend, but in the long run he leads a suicide mission inside the alien fortress in heavy gear armored suits to sabotage their engine. It's unknown whether this permanently stopped the Gods or if there was further fighting, even though it does culminate in a psychologically stressful event with the aliens using telepathy to nearly drive the Aoba's crew mad.

Big Wars has bold visuals and vigorous battle sequences, even if most of it is tanks shooting down fast flying saucers. The story is fairly bland and nothing you haven't probably seen before, but the characters are still better than anything you would see in a Michael Bay blockbuster. You won't miss anything by skipping over this, nonetheless it is an interesting view at 90s anime.