Greed

I picked this up, hoping it was one of the earliest examples of sword and sorcery style fantasy anime. Well it isn't. If you've seen Leda (and you should), you will be able to recognize a very familiar aesthetic of ancient magitek interspersed with your typical sword wielding characters.

Greed is less of a big metaphor for discovering yourself and finding love and more of a stylish drug fuelled romp through setpieces brimming with experimental animation, one after another. In this aspect it reminds me of Birth with its relentless chase scenes employing all sorts of wacky shot angles.

Greeds art nor animation is particularly ... good but all the motion and visuals they try to pull off is enthralling. You cannot argue with flying over an ocean littered with a forest of twisting watersprouts while trying to avoid angering a giant grape man Thanos thing. There's also a Dunbine esque scene where they end up in a dream world of fairies (makes sense seeing how the director Kogawa Tomonori has indeed worked on Dunbine too) and of course a completely insane battle in space against some outcast from the Gremlins flick but blue.

You can probably guess the plot is quite nonsensical since within 30 minutes, you go from a traditional reluctant hero setup to getting laser shooting robots in a metal city, in that 80s tinted blue colour of course. There's also some half assed theme going on about emotions, which is why I assume the anime is called Greed. Don't think too much on the plot.

If you are the kind of person who likes early anime ovas such as Birth or Leda, and appreciate the bold do anything attitude they brought to a special period of anime history; watch Greed. If you want to see Dunbine esque character designs and visuals, but not in a mechashit context, also watch Greed. If you are literally anyone else, you are probably better off watching the new Fate series.

An original anime. And that is the downfall of this particular OVA, being original and having no framework to rely on when going forward with this story. It is basically supposed to be a hero's journey type piece where the boy is given a quest by his dying father to set things right in the world. What it becomes is an acid-induced nightmarish cluster F of different ideas from the story writer.
It's first like, let's make a fantasy world with a wide variety of creatures.
Then how about we throw in some mecha, yeah mecha robots shooting lasers.
Oh, lets go back and make the environment dangerous ... by throwing in a sea that is dangerous to cross, but we'll add a giant in there as well.
Oh, lets put some faeries in there in an imaginary realm where wishes come true.
Let's go to science fiction next with an ancient advanced city that is in a state of disrepair.
But now, lets escape all that and the whole time we've been in a dimensional plane created by a god like being we now have to destroy....
Yeah, it is just a jumble of ideas mish-mashed together and a poorly written mish-mash at that.