I'm a big dumb dumb and forgot to flair it so this is a reupload! Sorry peeps!
For those of you who don't know, this is my ongoing project to watch and write about all the OAVs on my plan to watch list. This is a very very very long list, it has been over 1 year already! Anyway, I have a twin score rating system. The standard 1-10 is how good I think a show is while the letter score is how much I enjoyed it, whether that is in the way the show intended or not. The letter gradings are as follows:
- A=I enjoyed the hell out of it
- B=I quite enjoyed that
- C=Yeah, I enjoyed that
- D=I'm fairly neutral on it
- E=I didn't find it all that enjoyable
- F=I didn't enjoy that
- G=I hated every single moment of time I had to watch that
Now on with the show!
- Judge (1991: Animate & J.C. Staff) 1/1 ep.
This is one of those shows that isn’t really for you or I, dear reader. Instead, it is for the Japanese salary man. This features everything a salary man could want: a nerdy office worker who is constantly harassed by his boss, the hot shot ‘jock’ who receives his comeuppance, and the nerdy guy taking his revenge upon his boss. It is an escape for the salary man who spends all hours working for a boss who he hates and who receives little in return for his work.
The plot of this one is a bit weird so hang on tight. Ohma is a put upon salary man who is constantly taking shit from both his boss and the up and coming hot shot of the company. Ohma’s girlfriend, who serves no purpose at all, wishes he stood up for himself a little bit more and then they have the totally unnecessary sex scene that every OAV must have by divine law. I suppose the girlfriend’s narrative purpose is supposed to be that she provides some kind of wry smile from the viewer when Ohma’s reveal happens but honestly she seems to be in the show mostly so they could have the sex scene. Meanwhile, the company hotshot, Ryuichi, is having an affair with Yamamoto from Accounting. He is kind of a dick so he is getting her to cover up the fact he is embezzling the company despite her protestations. This embezzlement eventually comes to light and Yamamoto gets the blame. She ends up killing herself, though is quite obvious that Ryuichi killed her. This is where Ohma comes back into play as he dons a crazy outfit and does his hair up like he is Vegeta. It is revealed that he is secretly The Judge of Darkness! He crashes Ryuichi’s car with a swarm of crows, sticks a nail through Ryuichi’s tongue, and then kills Ryuichi by making him jump of a cliff while wrapped in an American flag.
Now this all may seem like spoilers but we are only 17 minutes in and the real story is about to start. So, at the beginning of the OAV there is a scene of a dude being shot in the jungle. This dude is part of Ohma’s company and so Ohma and a load of people go to his funeral. At the funeral Ohma begins to suspect it was his boss, Kawamata, was the one who killed him. Ohma confirms this with magic and starts to hunt Kawamata. But Kawamata meet up with the Attorney of Darkness who aims to defend him against Ohma! This is where the real story beings and it just gets weirder from here.
I don’t think Judge is very good. The art is laughably bad, the animation is even worse, and the narrative is so ridiculous that you can’t help but giggle at it. That last part is important because I actually quite enjoyed this show. The magic of the OAV era was the unfettered freedom that led to extremes in quality never seen before or since. Judge is extremely bad but it is that good kind of bad that leaves your jaw on the floor, due to how silly it is, and keeps you constantly engaged trying to figure out what the hell is going to happen next. I mean, this is the show that has a parrot that copies the sex noises of Ohma and his girlfriend because why the hell not? This is just a great example of the pure insanity that is seinen and I love it for that. If Hiroshi Negishi had tried to make Hosono Fujiko’s manga more sane then it wouldn’t be a fun experience. It would have been a boring sludge that nobody would want to watch. But as it is we have a crazy haired dude with a demon bird citing kaws from a book at a guy and his attorney whist in the court full of demons. What could have really made this a genuinely good show?
Final score: 1C
- Fantastic Adventures of Yohko: Leda (1985: TOHO and Kaname Productions) 1/1 ep.
Leda is one of those OAVs that doesn’t seem all that odd whilst you are watching it but the moment you sit down and try to explain what you just saw it quickly becomes clear that this thing is pure insanity. Yohko is a school girl with a great side ponytail and a burning love for some dude. In order to build up enough courage to confess to him she composes a piano piece. One day, whilst listening to said piece on her Walkman, she runs across her love in the park. Sadly, she can’t tell him and walks past him instead. As she reflects on her cowardice she is suddenly transported to another world. She wanders through this weird forest and accidentality loses her beloved Walkman. Luckily a dog returns it to her…a flying talking dog called Lingham. He tries to explain where she is to her when a gang of baddies on awesome speederbikes, that transform to also have legs, turn up and demand her Walkman. It turns out that her Walkman has something to do with Leda’s Heart and is the key to shifting between world, Leda being a God. The gang try to kill Yohko while they’re at it but she gets eaten by a plant and transforms into a powerful magical warrior, complete with skimpy armour. The baddies retreat to their base to give Leda’s Heart to their master: Zell. Yohko and Lingham chase after them and eventually team up with a priestess of Leda called Yoni who gives them some handy tools that will aid them in their fight against Zell. Hen all three of them head off to go fight Zell and stop his nefarious plans.
While not quite as rampantly bananas as something Like Crystal Triangle there is still plenty in there that is super weird, and of course I did leave quite a few things out. However, as I pointed out earlier you just don’t think about how weird it is whilst watching it. Instead it just comes off a fun adventure romp with some really fantastic animation that brings it all to life. The story is fairly plain but it works given the fact that this is little over an hour long and really seem to be more focussed on being a fun adventure than being a thrilling bit of narrative storytelling. While on the topic of visuals, I really have to give Matsumi Inomata a lot of credit here as her character designs are so absolutely on point that it hurts and the fact that she was also the chief animator means that whole lot of the enjoyment I got from this OAV is directly due to her.
Something interesting that Mike Toole pointed out was the connection to The Vision of Escaflowne. I didn’t think of it when watching Leda but upon reading this the dots immediately connected in my mind. I would love to know if anyone has ever actually asked Kawamori about this as there are just too many overlaps for it to be coincidence. This is not to say that this is a bad thing as I would say that Escaflowne built very smartly upon the things that it may have lifted from Leda. But we should give some credit to the Kunihiko Yuyama (Windaria and Goshogun: Time Estranger) as he did direct Leda after all and if he is any way even a little bit responsible for Escaflowne then he deserves even bigger props than he already gets for his many excellent productions.
Overall, Leda is just a fun time. The story and the characters are dead simple and it doesn’t really have anything greater to say but it is executed with such exuberance that you can’t help but be swept along by it and have fun with it. Yes it is weird but it is never jarring, which means you are never taken out of the experience. None of this would have been possible though without the lively and beautiful animation and art design which holds everything together. This is unlikely to become anyone’s all time favourite but it is a really fun way to spend an hour.
Final score: 6B
117 OAVs down!
Also, I have a blog version of this! I still haven't transferred everything across but I am working on it, really I promise I am. Please subscribe, share, and all that jazz!
Submitted September 30, 2018 at 06:08PM by babydave371 https://ift.tt/2ItfdFw
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