May 30, 2015
I want to preface this review by saying I watched this anime thinking that it was a merely an episode zero for a longer anime series and not a prequel to a live action movie and because of that I don’t really hold a bias for it being good or bad depending on how I felt about the movie. So I can only judge the OVA and nothing else. Let’s begin, shall we?
-CHARACTERS
In the terms of the characters, Shiroishi(MC) is the only one that kinda stands out. All the other characters were pretty one dimensional and stayed that way throughout the entirety of the OVA.
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The bullies were dicks, his friend betrayed him, his parents didn’t seem to care that much about him, his parole officer and love interest(I don’t know what else to call her) just wanted to use him, essentially everyone in the OVA is pretty much a dick to Shiroishi. Shiroishi is the only character that seems to have any development whatsoever when he snaps and turns into a sadistic murder machine who gets off on killing people. So the characters were pretty bland, but Shiroishi does redeem it partially because of his interesting transition and his internal battle with his feelings.
-STORY
The story is nothing to write home about. If you want to know what it is about, you can go read the synopsis. The story didn’t take any surprising turns and pretty much followed how I thought it was going to play out after I got a read on the mood. From the little research I did on the movie, it looks like the stories do connect with the mobster that Shiroishi is sent to kill. The story was alright at best, didn’t really make me feel anything. Felt like the did some things just for the shock, but I guess that is a major reason why you would watch this OVA though.
-ART/ANIMATION
The animation seemed pretty normal for the time. It really hasn’t aged that well and the parts where Shiroishi has machine punches or kicks is kind of a disconnect. The art is much worse. All the character designs seem just plain ugly, especially some of the faces that they make. Some the characters in the dojo scene looked like children with the faces of adults, which made for a good laugh. Still, the art is pretty bad. The gore isn’t shown that much and when it is, it’s not that great. If you want to watch an anime for the gore porn, there are better choices than this.
-MUSIC
I actually liked the music in this OVA. The use of Shiroishi’s vocal clips in the opening/ending reminded me of the This Is Sparta remixes. The background music did it’s job and added to the scene, it might of been a little overbearing at times.
-FINAL THOUGHTS
I would pass this OVA up unless you watched the movie and wanted some backstory or you wanted to see how it compared to the manga. It was bad and just felt like a waste of time. While I didn’t really like the OVA, I am kinda interested in what the movie is like, so it is good in that respect. If you came for gore, you should go elsewhere.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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