Urda

A thirty minute OVA showcasing unbelievably bad CG, and one of the worst storylines ever to be brought to DVD.

Story: 1
The plot's only redeeming factor is that it is present. The show is essentially about a duo of rebels who attempt to stop a group of Nazis from obtaining a time traveling NASA space shuttle with the help of an incompetent astronaut girl from the future. While this may sound like it could make for some mindless fun, the way in which it was presented failed to do so. Furthermore since this is a set of five very short episodes it is covered ... incredibly fast; so much so that if any decent plot points were present you wouldn't have the time to absorb them. Even the shows clincher is incredibly weak and easy to predict.

Animation: 3
The series is almost entirely CG and all the characters in the show are textured using cell shading. This is not to say it looks good however. The processed framerate is extremely sporadic; animation can be smooth one scene, and stuttered in the next. This wouldn't be much of an issue if the show was drawn, but since they chose to use CG they should have kept the framerate higher. Additionally character models move unnaturally, background textures have a low resolution, and facial expressions look incredibly awkward. Some of the particle effects and vehicle models are decent however.

If this all seems a bit critical, keep in mind that this was released in late 2003 and computer animation was very advanced then. In fact less than 6 months after this was released the 2004 iteration of Appleseed hit theaters, also showcasing cell shaded CG, but of an infinitely higher caliber. While Appleseed obviously had a much larger budget to work with, that doesn't change the fact that this looks like it was made in the early 90's.

Visually the show resembles a cumulative project for a computer graphics school, rather than something made by a professional company.

Sound: 4
This is the shows strong point, but only for the fact that you won't hate it. Musical compositions are reminiscent of those you would find in a typical RPG, with both orchestral and piano pieces. There's a wide variety of sound effects but they aren't edited especially well, and you will recognize many of them from other shows. The voice acting is okay considering what they had to work with, but any expressed emotions are usually ruined by the awkward facial animations anyway.

Character: 2
The characters are so cliché it's laughable. From the female protagonist with superhuman combat ability, amnesia and big breasts, to her cycloptic Nazi mentor who can smack rocket propelled grenades out of the air with her bare hands, there isn't much to take seriously. The show does try and use its ridiculous plot to develop the main protagonist (Erna) somewhat, but it's all too predictable and rushed.

Enjoyment: 3
All enjoyment pertaining to this show lies in how terrible it is. It would be best to watch this with a group of friends to get a few laughs. Even the combat scenes are spoiled by awkward character animations and poor music.

Overall: 2
While still beyond redemption this show could have been easily improved by scrapping the CG idea altogether, and slowing down the pacing. Furthermore there are so many things in here that have been done before, it's almost like the show is trying to poke fun at the anime industry in its entirety. If this review seems overly critical you probably haven't seen this show. If you have, you should watch it again with my sympathies.

Overview:

Urda is an anime that I managed to discover after asking myself a very dangerous question: "What is generally considered to be the worst anime ever licensed by Media Blasters?"

The following paragraphs explain the business model of adapting anime in the United States during the 1990s when Media Blasters was a force in the anime industry. If you are an older anime fan and already know this stuff, or if you simply don't care, then skip to the plot section.

Anime Dubbing and licencing vs. Adam Smith's Economic Theory:

So who the HELL is Media Blasters?! In the year 2015 the absolutely DOMINANT force in ... licensing, adapting, localizing, and dubbing anime in the West is Funimation. If you started watching anime within the last 4 years and live in the United States, they have probably dubbed every anime you've ever seen in your life! During the 1990s when I first started watching anime, there were many licensing/dub studios and no studio had a monopoly. Some of these included: Central Park Media, Media Blasters, 4kids, ADV, and Ocean. According to basic capitalist theory, monopolies are bad because with zero competition there is no incentive to make good products. You could simply produce total shit and everyone would be forced to buy it because they have no alternative. However, the example of anime dubbing/adaptation flies in the face of this theory and the average quality of English dubs and the quality of the anime being adapted to the US has actually gone up SIGNIFICANTLY since Funimation gained nearly 100% of the market share. Once all competition was eliminated, Funimation didn't have to worry about having better profit margins than their rivals and were able to focus on actual quality. They were even able to start taking risks with shows like Spice and Wolf, which would NEVER have been adapted in 1990s for fear that it would be an expensive bomb and bankrupt the studio.

The huge problem with anime licensing in the 1990s was that everyone thought that the best way to have a high profit margin was to adapt REALLY cheap series that NOBODY in Japan wanted the rights to. If it turned out to be a hit with US audiences the dub studio made a killing in terms of profit, and if it flopped then the loss wouldn't be a crippling blow. This is also why dub studios hired really cheap voice actors and paid them like shit. Everything was about keeping down costs! The absolute CHAMPIONS of this low cost approach to licensing was a company called Media Blasters! Although a tiny company today, they actually survived the recession unlike any of their 90s peers! Even the once mighty ADV who actually spent money and owned huge property like Evangelion eventually fell while Media Blasters limped on. How did they do it? By buying the shittiest anime known to mankind and providing some of the worst dubs in history while relying solely on boobs and blood to make cash off American otaku! Media Blasters once adapted a 2 episode parody spinoff of an anime that was never even released outside Japan...simply because the opening theme featured full frontal nudity! So how bad does an anime have to be in order to stand out in the horrendous repertoire of Media Blasters?! Read on if you dare!

Plot and Characters:

The plot is that some astronauts in the year 2100 are testing out a warp drive and somehow end up back in the year 1943. The spaceship is captured by Nazis of course, so a US Army woman that defected from the German Army and whose origins are never really explained, must stop the Nazis from harnessing its super technology. This seems like the plot to an early Wolfenstein game that would have run on MS-DOS! What surprises people watching Urda is that the graphics in this anime also look EXACTLY like a game from that era of computer technology! Urda was made in 2003 and was one of the first ever "ONA" anime released exclusively on the internet! However, internet speeds even for brand new computers were fairly slow in 2003 and most of Japan was still using dial up at that time! In order to make this anime more download friendly, they broke a 30 minute anime movie into 5 chunks of 6 minutes and used VERY primitive graphics so that it wouldn't take up much hard drive space. The biggest problem besides the graphics is that despite the seemingly bare bones plot, they STILL try to fit way too much character information and story in each 6 minute chunk. This leads to wild revelation after wild revelation in a highly anti-climactic and rushed fashion. Think of the ending reveal in “Mars of Destruction” only repeated 5 times in every 6 minute episode! Obviously the plot becomes a laughable mess and the characters aren’t given any chance to be actually fleshed out. Urda earns a very clear “F” for story and characters.

Graphics and sound:

I’ve already mentioned how bad Urda is on a technical level and referenced that it looks like a cross between PS1 polygon cutscenes with perhaps late 1990s PC graphics. Great art isn’t necessary to having a great anime, but Urda is simply unacceptable! It was a stupid compromise to butcher the art in order to make it easy to download. If technology was too limited at the time for ONAs then they should have waited until computers were more advanced or released Urda as a PS1 shooter game. Instead they tried to force a project to work regardless of technological limitations and created an atrocity! The music really isn’t much better, but at least they refrained from using midi renditions of classical music like Mars of Destruction! Thank God for small miracles!

Overall:

Urda isn’t just an everyday bad anime. Urda is the kind of shit that you simply have to see to believe! If I were reading this review and hadn’t seen Urda, I would think that this review was some kind of prank. Clearly no animation studio would ever greenlight an idea this bad! The problem is that this wasn’t made by an animation studio that cared about making money. This anime was released by a tiny studio created by the same man that wrote and directed Urda! Basically, this is the anime equivalent of a vanity published novel. The Japanese director who simply goes by “Romanov” had the money and didn’t give a fuck about how badly this would bomb. He was making this product for the lulz and no one could stop him! This is often how the absolute worst films are made: Birdemic, The Room, Manos, etc. One stubborn man with way too much spare money and a REALLY idiotic vision. Urda has truly earned its place in the pantheon of terrible anime!

Firstly I have to say: "Urda" could have been great. Set on the western front of the second world war, a landscape relatively unexplored by anime, "Urda" threw together a bunch of random plot elements like Nazis, UFO and time travel ... and ends up with a surprisingly intriguing sci-fi tale. But alas, the potential went to waste, as the end product felt more like the result of someone experimenting with CG from his home PC than a proper anime. With its short length and undercooked story and characters, watching "Urda" is about as satisfying as getting served a starter when you're hankering for a ... full three-course meal. In fact, the anime could almost be passed off as a multi-part trailer to a longer, greater series.

From "Urda"'s often amateurish production values, I'd estimate its budget to be around the astronomical figure of £5. One of the primary offenders is the cranky animation, which was often so shoddy that I had trouble comprehending what was happening on screen. That said, "Urda" has its moments; at times, the direction felt sharp, and it seems to have a good instinct for handling mood and atmosphere, particularly with its use of music. The action sequences possessed a surreal stylishness, and made me think they took inspiration from movies like "The Matrix" or the cut scenes of some video game. Some of it was pretty cool, but other parts were blown out of all proportions. In one such scene, as two characters dueled on a flying plane - literally "on" it, as in stood on top of it - another plane got destroyed above them, and the battling characters managed to snag a piece of debris each, and promptly started hacking away at each other with the pieces of broken plane. Honestly, I shit you not; I'm not even exaggerating.

Complaints aside, "Urda" deserves some plaudits for being as good as it is given the obvious limitations of its production. The ending is especially brilliant, but if anything made me lament even more that the show was held so far back from its potential. I would love to see it expanded into a longer series by a proper anime studio.

Only one creator worked on URDA -- Romanov Higa. He had others handle the voice acting and music, but all of the visuals are his and his alone, using a combination of Hash: Animation Master and LightWave 3D. He self-published this work on the web in segments before distributors picked it up. So this work has more of a cult audience than guaranteed mainstream appeal. As a celshader artist, URDA inspires me on two levels. First, it contains one of the finest celshaded character models that I've seen to date: Janet Hunter. She actually looks hand-drawn, and she has a wonderful personality to boot. Second, ... Romanov Higa exploits the celshaded 3D medium to the fullest, from the use of the 3D camera to atmospheric and lighting effects. He's not locked down to a camera stand, and he knows it. While I strongly recommend that celshader artists view URDA at least once, casual fans may prefer something else. URDA's only 30 minutes long, and not all of the character models reach Janet Hunter's level of quality. Also, as the work of one man and not an entire studio of artists, URDA does not have the finely polished look of the high-budget ANIMATRIX shorts. For a more moving 30-minute film by a single artist, casual fans might prefer VOICES OF A DISTANT STAR. For folks intrigued by celshaded 3D animation, though, URDA is well worth a look.

I have to say, that despite the shocking artwork and mediocre storyline, Urda is brilliant for half an hour of silly fun. Sure that story is basic, the character development is none existant and the ending throws up more questions than it answers but seriously, how much story/character developments can be fit into a 30 minute show where a good chunk of the time is used up by nazi fighting scenes?
This is by no means a good anime but, give it a chance and half an hour of your day, an you never know it could lead you to appreciating other animes all the better.

Rate a 5
English Dubbed

Story
-introduction was okay
-Story content might not be liked given the basis but could have been much worse. I assume nations somewhere in the world the symbols were changed or blurred.
-Conclusion was something special. Not only did it it answer one of the bigger questions but if you stuck around after the ending of the show you got a real special treat. At first glance you might dismiss it as a more clearer ending but actually the writers just gave you a riddle. That riddle alone made me smile and brought this movie from a possible four to a five.
- plot of ... the story was different but confusing. Normally, a stage is set in a specific circumstance time wise. Here another one was thrown into the mix. And when you really think about it a third circumstance.

Art
-computer generated. I haven't seen much on that particular art style but i wasn't happy with it. The art work made each character look like robots. Just not visually appealing.
-Art was a bit bright overall.

Sound
-Overall okay but you might find the voices to be a tad high pitched.
- animation sounds in some cases were a tad light in volume or a tad off in timing. Good enough for it to make sense, bad enough for a person not knowledgeable in sound dynamics to catch.

Enjoyment
Most movies i can think of are designed with a genre or two in mind. Whether it is comedy or action or horror. To play with at least two and to provide a memorable moment makes a movie stand out from the rest. Here is such a movie but in regards to both of the endings. Remember credits come and go. Yeah, they do such for they are not appealing but for those that worked on the film means wonders. To make people stay to read some clever directors place Easter like eggs at the end of them.

Ahhh, Urda, where i should begin?

For me - it is one of those anime, where very good, even outstanding ideas hits poor implementation.

Story - 8 of 10

The story of Urda is simple, yet very good. It is told in proper pace without any unnecessery slowdowns or rushes - it is clear to me that length of the series was chosen wisely.

Art - 4 of 10

It is difficult to say about the art. Most of the time it's decent and sometimes it seems even good, but battle scenes are example of one of the worst CG that i saw. Contradicting to the story - art really ... lacks some budget.

Sound - 6 of 10

Mostly fit to the flow of the story, nothing fancy or distracting, but also nothing that helps to feel the story better.

Character - 7 of 10

Main character is well written, conflict between protagonist and antagonist is shown quite good.

Enjoyment - 9 of 10

I really liked the whole story - it was interesting to watch it and the finale was 'oh, maaaaan....'(could not write it more properly without spoilers, sorry).

Overall - 9 of 10

Despite obvious drawbacks, that i mentioned previously, i think that this title was clearly worth watching.

I'm noticing a pattern in my reviews. I seem to watch a lot of things that could be pretty good if they had more time to work with. Urda is no exception.

For some reason it's broken into episodes. No need really, it's shorter and could just be reedited into a one shot. The story is interesting to me; femme fatale uber soldiers, futuristic scifi plot twists (the ending is very Marvel, I gotta say). It's hard to say if it's rushed or just too fast paced for something so short, but either way it feels incomplete. If ... you've ever read a Matt Rielly novel, imagine your copy is missing pages at random.

The animation is video game-ish, cell shaded and detailed, but action sequences are animated too quickly and feel unnaturally puppet-like. It is right there with Galerians: Rion as far as CG era just with a brighter contrast.

Concept: I'm sold. Execution: not impressed. Verdict: Definitely a niche experience.

Urda is a 1-man project (barring voices and sound design), and I can respect that. Whle overall subpar, there are a lot of places that show that the creator does have the sensibilities for direction and scene composition.

- Animation: Mediocre but praiseworthy
The 3D CGI is definitely subpar in terms of its quality, dating it as a product of the early 2000s. Yet, animation-wise the creator's diligence absolutely shown through for me. Given what was available, he absolutely did as much as he could, and did not slack in the least, with many interesting set pieces strewn throughout what is ultimately just a 30 minute ... ONA.

- Direction: Strong
Kind of a extension of the above, but I just wanted to state it clearly. I think it is only hindered by the technology used.

- Story: Mediocre
Story is nothing special at all. By today's standards it's absolutely mediocre. There are interesting ideas and twists, but only so on paper. Execution needed to be better to carry it.

- Voice Acting: Mediocre to poor
On to voice acting, I actually liked the english dub slightly more that the japanese dub. The japanese voice actors seem amateurish, at least that's how I felt about it. Voices for the leads are good (for japanese), but it breaks apart with the background characters. Not that the english dub is amazing, but I personally prefer it, due to a mix of the overt russian accents plus some so-bad-its-funny moments with the character Janet specifically.

- Sound: Poor
Sound desgin is definitely weak throughout, nothing to be expanded here. Music is also basic, but nothing terrible or distracting here.

- Conclusion:
I would rate it a 4 (below average, but not outright terrible) from my own enjoyment, but under a objective lense it's absolutely a 3 within the grander landscape.

I am speechless. How do more people not know about this dumpster fire? It's easily one of the worst anime I have ever seen, somehow failing on every front. Though, paradoxically, I had so much more fun watching it than many of the anime immediately above it on my list, because it is hilarious. There are moments of totally unaware comedy gold that I will be thinking about for the rest of my life, and that is in and of itself an incredible feat. Beginning with the story, it is ridiculous from the start. An astronaut from 2112 is flung back into the past to ... 1943 Germany, where cartoonish Nazis attempt to track down her spaceship, while a scrappy team of busty anime women do everything in their power to stop them. I'm not exaggerating, it is every bit as campy and off-the-wall as it sounds. This isn't even to mention the bargain bin tropes used dozens of times in 30 minutes, or the time travel 'twists', or the snarky sidekick. However, the shoddy story is nothing compared to the 'art' that Urda puts forward. This anime, released in 2002, makes the bold decision of making a 100 percent CG anime. I don't think I even have to say more than that, but I will, because it's funny. Nothing, not a single thing, looks good in this anime, even for 2002. There are no discernible facial expressions, the characters move in stiff and unnerving ways, the 'fight scenes' only consist of their arms flailing wildly in different directions, the physics are totally nonsensical, the lighting is garbage, and the backgrounds look straight out of a PS1 game. The sound is somehow just as bad, serenading the ears with a clunky electronic synth that only serves to make literally every scene that much funnier. This is compounded by the voice acting being even worse, sounding like they recruited from and recorded on a porn set. This garbage bag is tied off with a neat bow by the characters, who are so ridiculous and paper-thin that you can't help but laugh. Overall, Urda is unadulterated bottom-of-the-barrel trash, and I highly recommend it. Best viewed with a room full of your closest friends, and possibly drunk.