Shadow Skill: Kurudaryuu Kousatsuhou no Himitsu

This is an OVA for Shadow Skill which I watched a couple of episodes because I thought it'd be cool, but I dropped it because I couldn't get into the plot. So I was surprised to find this OVA and decided to watch it purely for the art style which sands down all those nice 90s characters into emotionless rubber.

It's an early 3D animation. Which, despite the character designs, is honestly not as bad as it could have been. There are some moments where you can tell they put some thought and effort into the direction. Unfortunately for my sanity, these moments are quickly ... undercut by very strange and weirdly disorienting moments. There's this exposition scene near the beginning that is just a solid minute of rotating from character to character which kind of gave me a headache. Sure 3D animation was really difficult to make back then, but understanding this fact does not make it any less difficult to watch.

The animation isn't the worst of it though. The music actually drove me insane. I swear it's like the same song looping for an hour, I started hallucinating. The voice acting is good though, probably a remnant of the original show.

The plot... I honestly don't remember much. It has this strong focus on the theme of the cycle of violence and pacifism which I'm not sure I entirely followed because my brain was decomposing at that point. It's not terrible, just typical over bloated anime philosophizing.

Would I recommend watching it? If you like watching weird bad stuff then yes, otherwise obviously not (why are you here?). Because of the animation and music it has a kind of unnerving liminal vibe which despite my complaints I kind of loved. It reminded me of an unskippable cutscene.