Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Top Ten Least Essential OVA Of The 80s



The internet is filled with sequentially numbered, attention-getting listsicles all claiming to be the authoritative judgment on the top fifteen party schools to visit after you master your five best workouts or the twenty-five movies you must not fail to see with the ten people you meet when you die. And here at Let’s Anime we’re just as lame, even though our focus is classic Japanese cartoons. So here’s an exhaustively researched, completely subjective and arbitrary list of the Top Ten Least Essential OVAs That Honestly, You Don’t Need To Watch.  You can safely go on about your life without ever having wasted your time watching these 1980s Japanese anime OVAs; other than filling the shelves of neighborhood video rental shops, they are inconsequential in every sense of the word.  Some of them are bad, some of them are boring, and others make no sense whatsoever, their only common denominator being their total uselessness. And remember, like every other stupid list you find on the internets, this is completely arbitrary, subject only to the reviewer’s whimsical notions, and may not reflect your personal taste or reality in any way whatsoever. 

Headbands are an essential part of your 1980s fashion
 Cosmos Pink Shock - 7-21-1986 This one’s a lightweight and knows it, but the great Toshiki “Iczer One” Hirano is here at the height of his powers, giving us the story of Michi, a space leotard girl who blasts across a goofy universe in her ship, the Pink Shock,  in pursuit of her boyfriend.  It’s got good AIC animation, some gags – not great gags, but gags nonetheless – and cultural references that we didn’t get in the 80s because our knowledge of Japan was limited to Robotech, ninja movies and metal robot toys. It’s the OVA equivalent of a 12” remix by Bananarama or the Mary Jane Girls – a perfect artifact of its time whose greatest virtue is being a perfect artifact of its time.
 
Dead Heat - 8-7-1987 In the future, auto racing is known as ‘FX’ and the drivers don’t drive cars, they drive car-robot hybrid vehicles, and they don’t just race, they grapple with each other as they go around the track. Seems like a lot of mechanical engineering simply to replicate roller derby, but who am I to argue with the future?  This Sunrise OVA is of interest mostly to people who for some reason are unable to watch either roller derby or auto racing, and who wonder if our hero Makoto will win the big race so he can take his surprisingly male-looking girlfriend to a love hotel. If you had a dedicated 3D compatible VHD player with 3D glasses,  you could watch Dead Heat in thrilling 3D, with the exciting bonus of witnessing an extra character who was only visible in 3D. Legend has it this character holds up a sign marked with the Japanese characters for “sucker”. 

Makoto and "girlfriend"



Elf 17 - 1-4-1987  Based on the manga by Atsuji Yamamoto, Elf 17 is a cutesy lightweight romp through the galaxy as our title character, the strongest little teenage girl elf in the universe, teams up with the eccentric zillionaire prince Mascot Tyler and the battle-suit otaku K.K. as they battle their way through the pro-wrestling areas of outer space. This airy trifle comes complete with giant walking tanuki statues and a Mitokomon reference, and it completely misrepresents Yamamoto’s manga work, which started off kinda lurid and just got more lurid with time. Later Yamamoto works include “Battle Goddess” and the super bloody, ultra lurid “Arnis In Sword Land.”  Yamamoto also provided the story for another completely non-essential OVA, Ultimate Teacher.

Ruu, aka Elf 17, will kick your ass
 Phantom Gentleman aka Dream Detective Gentleman (Mugen Shinshi: Boken Katsugeki Hen) - 2-21-1987 Mamiya Mugen is a famous detective, a famous, kinda girly-looking kid detective, who works in a weird retro 1930s Japan.  Strange kidnappers target club dancer Atsuko “Akko” Fukune - but Mugen is on the case to protect Tokyo’s exotic dancers! This 49 minute video mixes cutesy character designs with what you’re led to believe is going to be some kind of detective story but instead detours into magical relics, mythical monsters, and Indiana Jones-style adventure, but all the busty dancing girls or archeological destruction can’t help make this inexplicable film any more explicable. If we were Japanese we’d be familiar with the popular Mugen Shinshi manga by Yosuke Takahashi, but his eerily sensual pen line failed utterly to make the transition to this anime.  
underage drinkin', underage detectin'
Roots Search - 9-10-1986 This one is bad and it should feel bad.  Roots Search, aka “Life Devourer X”, is like something a dollar store or a truck stop chain would produce to cash in on what they heard was the exciting new “Japanimation” fad, like something you find hundreds of dumped at a Goodwill for a tax loss; poorly animated, badly designed characters wander through various spaceships having ESP visions and dodging a horrifying vagina dentata alien that murders astronauts. And then it just ends, denying the remaining few viewers any sort of closure.  This one is by some of the same people that brought us Crystal Triangle, another really terrible OVA that at least has an ending.

Good Morning Althea - 12-16-1987 This might be the exact point where Japan just gave up and decided to just throw mechanical designs at their OVA projects in the hope that the resulting confusion would resolve itself into some kind of interesting pattern. This is the sort of OVA you watch without subtitles and naturally assume that what’s going on makes sense and is in some way purposeful and of interest, and then later somebody fansubs it and you find out that the pattern your brain attempted to impose upon it actually made more sense than what was originally intended. There’s a spaceship, there are robots, there are people in robots fighting other people in robots from another spaceship. Somebody wakes up.

rise and shine Althea
The Humanoid - 3-5-1986 If you spent any time in the 1980s you’ll recognize his work: the shiny airbrush work of Hajime Sorayama appeared on the covers of Playboy and Heavy Metal and on album covers for bands like The Cars and Aerosmith. And if you find the idea of a shiny metal woman interesting enough to support a 40-minute animated video, then The Humanoid is for you! Antoinette, the sexy robot in question, was built by Dr. Watson on the planet Lazeria, which is about to be destroyed by the evil Governor Proud, right when Dr. Watson’s daughter Sheri and her hunky fiancĂ© Alan arrive. Terrible timing!  Luckily, this all happens when Antoinette’s sexy robot heart starts to have robot feelings of love, and she uses her sexy robot power to save the day. This 40-minute time-waster has lackluster character designs, cheesy 80s ballads, and an inexplicable obsession with coffee. 



Digital Devil Story (Megami Tensei) - 1987 Based on the Japanese horror novel series by Aya Nishitani, this one’s about a student computer genius, who’s also the reincarnation of an ancient Japanese deity, who uses his giant clunky 80s mainframe to summon up some horrifying devils. This involves some not-bad animation of a well-endowed teacher’s frilly brassiere heaving up and down as she becomes the conduit for horrifying monsters from another dimension to invade our world. Then giant piles of red goop start crushing students and a big blue hairy devil named Loki fights our student computer genius hero, who fights back with his reincarnated girlfriend and his magic sword and his pet devil animal throughout several alternate universes.  If you want lots of mid 1980s computer technology and lots of scenes of people staring intently at old-fashioned CRT monitors, followed by hairy devils and magic swords, this is the one for you! The Hiroyuki Kitazume character designs aren’t bad, if you’re into that sort of thing.  Apparently there are a lot of video games based on this novel, and I suspect they aren’t very essential either. 

Chojiku Romanesque Samy – Missing 99 - 7-5-1986  Let’s see, what we have here is your typical everyday story of a typical anime schoolgirl who finds out she actually has amazing mystical powers that not only transport her into an amazing fantasy world but give her amazing super battle armor that doubles as a bikini. Raise your hands if you’ve seen this all before. Can she survive the attack of the reconstructed demon beast warriors in time to reveal her true Bodhisattva nature? 



Girls Detective Club (Katsugeki Shoujo Tanteidan) - 11-25-1986  You’d think that a video starring three high school girls armed with automatic weapons battling an evil girl-genius with a giant flying battleship would be jam packed with the same sort of excitement and flash that made Project A-Ko such a success, but you’d be wrong. This stunningly boring piece of junk – from TMS, shockingly enough - limps from nonsensical setup to nonsensical setup, never explaining who these girls are, why they have a detective club, why one of them lives in a mansion filled with machine guns, or why this was animated in the first place. It feels like a Cream Lemon with all the sex removed, like an episode of Urusei Yatsura without gags, fun characters, or pleasant design, like a half hour of your life without anything productive or fulfilling accomplished. What purpose Girls Detective Club served other than clogging shelves down at Tsutaya Video is a mystery which I suppose we’ll need to hire a Girls Detective Club to solve. 

get detecting, you
 What’s that? I didn’t mention The Wanna-Bes or Twilight Q or Twinkle Heart or even Twinkle Rock Me Nora? Didn’t see your favorite least essential OVA listed here? Ready to take this to social media and tell the world how Let’s Anime arbitrarily ignored your favorite least essential OVA in its totally subjective list? Sure, why not. Make sure to let us know what YOUR time-wastingest OVA is, or was; maybe we can get another column out of ‘em.

-Dave Merrill

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28 comments:

Superdeformed said...

Watch out Regan Strongblood lives in Canada too.

ydy said...

I'm a little disappointed that I've only seen two of these.

Animu McGee said...

On Digital Devil Story: "Apparently there are a lot of video games based on this novel, and I suspect they aren’t very essential either."
lol.

Chris Sobieniak said...

Though I've only seen a couple things on this list, one OVA I bothered finding on eBay that I curiously bought was called "TWD EXPRESS Rolling Takeoff". I haven't seen the darn thing yet but I see someone stuck it on YouTube anyway. Just thought I pass it along but I wasn't sure if it was "least essential" anyway.

Anonymous said...

i've seen one of these time wasting ova^^;; you forgot to mention greed or nora those videos were really bad^^;;

Vichus Smith said...

You would be wrong about those Persona games. They're very good, on average.

d.merrill said...

Very good, perhaps. But are they essential?

Anonymous said...

Yes. As essential as that SMT movie was not.

d.merrill said...

Having never heard of the video game before last week, its effect on my life has been, and continues to be, zero. I suppose values for "essential" may differ.

Dustin Kopplin said...

Don't feel bad ydy, ive seen Cosmo Pink Shock and Sammy Missing 99 on that list as my 2. The rest are on my external HD waiting (some for months and years) to be watched by me eventually.

. said...

Basically the entire BOX fansubs collection,no California Crisis and Body Jack WHAT!!!

d.merrill said...

The Box fansubs of these and many other titles have been terrific, my hat's off to those guys.

Carl said...

Globian seemed to specialize in covering anime like these.

Regan Strongblood said...

A lot of these titles are just fun, I really love all these ovas you named. Im surprised California Crisis didnt make the list. I wish we could get BOX fansubs rolling again, im gonna see what I can do. I really hope to get Scoopers fansubbed.

GoldenPigsy said...

I quite like the Persona games, the Playstation 2 Devil Summoner games, Soul Hackers, and SMT: Nocturne. But, y'know, they're video *games* and therefore not essential by definition.

Speaking of video games, the OVAs based on Falcom's Xanadu and Dragon Slayer series are highly inconsequential. And terribad. Although I think the latter was made in the 90's

Lila said...

My nomination for least essential OVA is Battle Royal High School, which remains the only video I have ever seen to come with a note from the company which translated it and released it in English apologizing because it is so terrible. They got it as part of a licensing job lot and couldn't get out of releasing it. It's even worse than you'd expect from its coming with a disclaimer.

ZeonicFreak said...

Battle Royale High School is my second favorite anime by Ichiro Itano.

SJV said...

Most of these sound like a fine waste of time....so long as you don't pay anything for them or waste time, postage or gas money to get them.

The Urban Vision production music for the Dragon Slayer trailer had me air-guitaring as if I were possessed by the very late 90's themselves. *sigh*

Ken Arromdee said...

It's hard to tell if you're making a joke about the SMT games or being serious. Judging from your comments it sounds like you're serious. The SMT series absolutely is essential, to the extent that video games can be essential at all. They're one of the most highly regarded series of Japanese RPGs, even if, like many other series, the early games never reached us, and even if there is the occasional stinker among them. It's actually pretty hard for a game series to last 26 years.

That was about the equivalent of reviewing the Ni no Kuni game, saying it's not all that great, and adding "apparently there are also a lot of anime films put out by Studio Ghibli, and I suspect they aren't essential either".

d.merrill said...

Their existence upon the Earth has failed to ever impact my life in any meaningful way, so I guess you could say I'm serious, in that I could not care less about "the SMT games", whatever they may be. I'm sure people find them enjoyable, and that's great. Still; don't care.

ettagatzhart said...

I know you reeeeally want to hear from another Shin Megami Tensei fan about how categorizing the OAV/games 'unessential' is incorrect, but consider this--Shin Megami Tensei is all about using a computer to talk to, befriend, and meet up with demons. Predating internet social media sites and easily accessible chatrooms, which is how many of us communicate with and meet demons nowadays. So basically SMT predicted this phenomenon before it became widespread. How unessential is it now???

Tim Eldred said...

Now wait a minute. I was told that everyone who rises to the level of creating anime has paid their dues and learned the lessons of how to tell a story properly. They MUST be good writers, or why would anyone pay them? This is universally true and can't be otherwise.

Anonymous said...

DDS OVA can be tossed into obscurity (it only slaps on 'digital' label onto Makai Tensei copycat stuff in a bad way), but I can't say the same for its game counterpart.
Devil Hiring system and Devil Fusing system became an inspiration for SaGa(Final Fantasy Legends) series, Dragon Quest 5, Dragon Quest Monsters series, Monster Ranchers series and Pokemon series, to name a few.
It is rather essential for modern JRPGs and their followers.

Anonymous said...

Hi there, I've been looking for a 1980s anime high and low, and I just found your blog and thought to ask in case you recognized it.

It was about a girl with a pink motorbike, I think she did food deliveries and built gadgets in her spare time. She had a crash on a guy from school. Here is where it gets weird, and hence why I think I might be confusing two different anime: her parents go on a trip and she sees on TV that their plane crashed, so she travels to the crash site and it's a strange island. I also think there is a sort of convention going on about some environment issues at the island, but my memory is really hazy about that part. At night some toys or creatures come alive, and it has this eerie funfair/carnival atmosphere and a lot of surreal things going on, including her getting transformed to her adult self (or meeting her adult self?) who was a kind of ethereal character, and she also meets a mysterious guy there. I think there might have been some strange things in the clouds/sky as well. This later part of the story took place at night-time, and I remember it was very prominent in the story.

The first part (with the girl inventing robots and doing deliveries) sounds like the 1985 series 'Haai Step June', but from the few scenes/screenshots I could find online, there wasn't a pink bike, and it seemed like a comedy series, and I think what I remember was probably a film, and also it doesn't fit the second surreal part (with the strange island), which is the one I remember more vividly.

Anyway, sorry for the long description, but if you happen to read and this and it reminds you of any films/movies from the 80s (or possibly 90s) I would really appreciate it! Thank you very much :)

d.merrill said...

the only faint idea of what this might be is the Minky Momo film "La Ronde In My Dream," which does feature a trip to an island, and an adult version of the character. It has been a hot minute, or thirty years, since I've seen that film, so this is just a guess. I'll throw this out to the hive mind and see what people say.

Anonymous said...

No way, you found it! I can't believe it! The full movie is on YT, so I just checked it out, and indeed the plane crash and trip to the island with the sky structures is from there! I think the subplot about the robot inventions is from Step Jun, and I just mashed the two in my memory. Not sure if there is a pink delivery bike in either one (unfortunately I couldn't find any long clips from Step June to check) but I'm so glad I finally know where the island bit is from. I've been searching for 84 years :D Thank you SO much, I'm so excited to rewatch it!

d.merrill said...

Glad I could help! I have a children's book from Step Jun but have never actually seen any of the show myself. I suppose that would make a good Let's Anime piece!

Anonymous said...

I hope you get to make it! I saw some clips online and it looks like fun, kind of a wacky 80s comedy. I wish it was easier to find older series, there were so many good ones. Thank you again, this totally made my day! :D