Mouryou Senki Madara

This Was Actually A Pretty Good OVA Series

It Had A Descent Story And The Characters Were Pretty Good As Well, MADARA Is A Good Series For People Who Like Those Classic 1980 Fantasy Anime's With Good Violence

! This was a fun discovery.

It is a two-part OVA, with 90s graphics and mediocre sound effects. You follow the adventures of a boy trying to find his way in the world of evil and decadence . He has enough arrogance and conviction to be a worthy protagonist , without being too superficial. There will be plenty of fights and random obstacles in his path. A lot of WTF moments. It can even be somewhat stereotypical. But if you credit yourself as a fantasy fan, you should give it a try.

Something to enjoy on the side while you delay on your backlog.

One of few anime, that I've seen at least, that builds a world I could see happening in old western dungeons-and-dragons fantasy (two other series being "Record of Loduss War" and "Ruin Explorers"). The animation is solid while the art style is what you'd expect for the time of release. The main characters are moderately likable, but don't have too complicated of situations or anything to keep them very memorable. The story isn't too far from something in your usual, cheap fantasy story. This short anime is an adaption of a manga too, and that links in to the worst part of this anime - ... being how terribly the story was executed in the limited run-time. I haven't read the manga, but I honestly doubt that the entirety of the story could've been reasonably told in two hours. What should've been done is the main parts of the plot should've been kept in and other less important aspects should've been held back or scrapped all-together. Instead, the story is executed in a way that the first hour (basically the first episode) moves at a very nice and enjoyable pace that would be a good pace if the entirety of this anime were to expand it's length to properly accommodate the whole story. But, in reality, there's still only two hours to work with, and you can tell how much the people behind this anime knew that as they pulled out the tape and glue in the last hour/episode. You have developments of the story passed over casually like a bowl of dip and characters brought into light only to fade back to the corner once their name and presence is known enough that they can be differentiated from the other background cast. The most hilarious part of how the second episode is handled though is that the logic of the main characters is lowered to that of a child to make everything conclude immediately. You have one person who uses the chicken before the egg logic to have a change of heart on who to direct his drama, and you have another person who was built up to betray to achieve his own goal only to stop because, oh, "it was a stupid idea" *with a vocalized wiggle of the wrist*. Take note I watched this in the English Dub and that the localization/script-writing could've been worse on that side of things. I could definitely understand that too as the writing quality noticeably dips a bit into the second episode, like those working on the dub knew it wasn't a winner. I can at least report that the English voices are fine. While there's no terrible actor, though, there isn't any exceptional/notable actor either. I would say Madara was a worth-while viewing just for it being one in a light number of anime to carry that western fantasy feel, but this anime is still nothing to write home about - just to MAL.

I'd recommend watching "Ruin Explorers" over this, and I have a review written for that too.