Ranked #3923

Parasite Dolls

This is more of a 7.5 or a weak 8. Good cyberpunk anime. If you like Akira, A.D Police Files, Battle Angel, Ghost in the Shell or those type anime, you won't be disappointed. Animation is good and it starts slow, but picks up good. Decent violence and gore. Fits in well with anime from the 90's and has high rewatchability due to only having 3 episodes. Cheap to buy online and I recommend it if you like other animes I compared it too.

At first, it seemed like Parasite Dolls was trying to tread on the classier side of cheap pulp stories, employing light noir elements and given some life by a very excellent soundtrack (not the least bit by its mostly-flat dialog and directing). It’s like that through the first half of episode two, then suddenly a bunch of action is shoehorned in (not usually a bad thing, but it was pretty tacky here) and the plot gets completely lost, the episode ending in confusion. Finally, the third episode jumps off the cliffside of class into a pit of utter cheese. Sex and violence are cranked up to tasteless levels (I’m not against tasteless sex and violence, but it kind of blindsided me) and it all culminates into a shockingly over-the-top finale.

I liked the show best when it was cruising along, being not all that cool, but not looking like a try-hard. The inclusion of gratuitous action scenes would’ve been awesome if the show had come from the 90s and sported a 90s OVA budget, instead of being from 2003 and having a few decent sakuga moments before totally blowing the third episode’s budget on a couple of bad CG chase and explosion scenes.

The best part of this OVA was the rookie cop girl, Michaelson—a tomboy with the right mixture of badass and cute vulnerability, hopelessly crushing on the main guy like a modest Faye Valentine from a far inferior show. She was the only character worth a second thought in the show.

I don’t recommend Parasite Dolls to anyone unless they just can't get enough mediocre pulp anime. There are plenty of better pulp OVAs out there. (Riding Bean and Gunsmith Cats are my personal favorites.) I will say, though, that for all the ridiculousness of the third episode, the climax was pretty satisfyingly cool. read more