Love Position, Legend of the Halley was the first OVA by Tezuka Productions, a company created by Osamu Tezuka. The title was released in December 1985.
This, like so many amines of the day, was undoubtedly made with the intention of selling to the US market. For example, the opening sequences are set in a familiar Nevada desert setting (for no apparent reason). But the American influences do not stop there. The arrival off an alien agent comes straight out of the scenes when Arnie arrived to Earth in Terminator. The Vietnam War atrocities flashbacks are like homage to Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, and with a dose of Indiana Jones just to keep the Lucas fans happy.
The plot follows with a twist concerning Halley’s Comet, where an agent travels from a far off world which created Earth, traveling via the comet. But these far off beings see that humans are destroying Earth and basically not worthy, so the agent is set to destroy us. This first happened in 1910, but the agent saw the beauty of Earth and decided not to carry out its task. The present day (75 years later), the beings have sent another agent via comet express to carry out the original mission.
As you can tell, there is nothing really groundbreaking. Young man teams up with beautiful, innocent, angel-like alien against evil-looking alien who has taken the body of an escaped US convict. Bet you can not guess who wins.
It has all the clichés of its time; a love relationship hampered by an over jealous father, who happens to be the boss of a very large company, who in turn has thugs as bodyguards. One of them wants to marry the daughter in question. Also, like so many OVA’s from 80’s and 90’s, there are flaws in the plot so big one could go deep sea diving.
The artwork is great for its time, and some of the few fight scenes are well executed. There is some mild nudity, but nothing to get upset about, and it does sort of fit in with the plot.
The music is very unremarkable, though there is quite a melodic love song 30 minutes into the movie. Though one of my favourite parts is the disco scene; the dancing is hilarious.
You may be surprised, despite all of the above, that I gave this 8/10, as it really delivered everything I thought it would: crass plot, poor character development, etc. However, it just oozed that old school charm with a sprinkling of Tezuka, who only oversaw the original story.
Would I recommend it to you all? Probably not, unless you are a huge Tezuka fan and fancy watching a bit of light-hearted nonsense for an hour and half.
