Machikado no Märchen

Radio City Fantasy is certainly an apt title, as this combines a heavy dose of new wave pop music from Virgin VS (hahaha... lame name), takes place in an alienating urban setting that "hides spring," and employs numerous fantastical day dream segments cooked up from the imagination of the main male character, who eventually coaxes similar segments out of the female main character as well.

The character art from Yoshitaka Amano is striking, and the female character often reminds me of Seiichi Hayashi's art—a pretty distinct look; seemingly an iconic one for the '80s city pop era, kind of like what the flapper was for ... the 1920s (except flappers are gross). Shinji Kimura also provides some great background art, and I personally prefer the more "normal" scenery, which is well-composed and storyboarded, and Mizuho Nishikubo is also a quite talented director. This is worth a watch for the art alone, and the mood and flirtation with experimentation gives this a kind of a "new wave anime" feel, in the tradition of the Japanese or French new wave films of the 1960s-1970s, and to some extent, into the 1980s.

Wish I could say something for the sound design, as anime is a subset of the animation medium that doesn't tend to place much emphasis on that area, and the music takes center stage. Seems like the music is always pounding away in the background—a whole album of it! I initially thought this was going to sample a wider variety of music, but it's just Virgin VS: that's great if you like the band... unfortunately for me, I'm not crazy about them, but it fits most scenes pretty well. When the music really gets going, we're treated to very lively animation—truly, it's not always integrated into the plot too strongly, but it does reinforce the themes, no matter how vaguely. The imagery here can be hit or miss and contains a bit of visual mismatch. Sometimes the backdrops or characters/items on the backdrops look a bit flat—one or the other. Some are better than others, but there's always an appeal to be found for most enthusiasts of old animation of an artsier bent.

It's a simple enough boy meets girl slice of life romance (since I like this, I won't say slime of life this time), and there's very little plot—emotions, themes, and some story elements are fleshed out a little bit through the music video portions, but they often kind of just stand alone as psychedelic or whimsical animation segments that carry a particular tone—often with a childlike or fairytale-esque atmosphere. The female is being pursued by some shady men, but we never figure out why this is the case, even when the male main helps her escape at one point. I guess it doesn't matter—they're there to play the diabolus ex machina role and separate the two characters for the more solemn final arc as we ponder what flavor of ending we'll get.

I need to do a better survey of the '80s OVA period, but I feel this is one of the better and more memorable selections, especially considering it's a very early OVA. If it could have been expanded and used a better OST, this might have been one of the anime greats of the '80s—whether or not it's a minor classic or not, it's one of the more notable early examples of anime OVAs combining storytelling and music videos. The Nishikubo-directed Karuizawa Syndrome came out just a few years later, and I'd also recommend that for a fairly similar visual style.

The OVA uses the songs from the album Virgin VS Virgin(1981) from the Japanse rock band Virgin VS (in japanese: ヴァージンVS).
I really liked the music, catchy songs. Even if one of them was a cover for ABBA`s Mama Mia.
But the animation during the musical scenes honestly felt like i was on an acid trip. So yeah, not my cup of tea. Other than that it was pretty lively animation, and it doesnt feel like it was so old(made in 1984).
There isnt much of a story going on either.
Im not a fan of musicals, but i kinda enjoyed this. So overall, i would say its ... a solid musical OVA.

This might be the first clear instance of this type of anime. This anime is one of the oldest OVA's out there and it tells its story almost entirely through music video. The closest thing older than this that I can think of that does a similar thing is Belladonna of Sadness, which I think might have inspired this OVA to some extent. It's a little Ironic, though, that this anime, mostly based around music, is most interesting for its visuals. The songs are fine, but they're nothing impressive; it's really the visuals you watch this OVA for.

The story is about a boy who ... bumps into a cute girl under a bridge and she drops some of her stuff. He helps her pick it up and they start going out. This is about all there is to the story and I'd say that's fine. They both have very beautiful character designs and they're animated quite well. The backgrounds are good looking, but not so much that you'd want more time to stare at them. Where it gets interesting is when the music starts playing and the animators let their imagination loose.

Sadly, with this being the main appeal of the anime, it's also it's biggest drawback, as not all the visuals are equally interesting. For every shot that I thought looked great, there were one to two shots that weren't interesting enough to keep me from spacing out. Those great looking shots usually came in groups; usually most of the shots during an entire song were good or all the shots were boring. Usually the more boring shots focussed around the couple hanging out and not doing anything interesting. The more abstract visuals can be about anything. There is one about the couple flying around the city in a bi-plane, there is one that is comprised entirely of creative abstract animation and there is one about a bunch of guys in suits who do a weird dance(which I think definitely must have been inspired by the plague scene in Belladonna of sadness. Where else could it be from?)

So the value in this OVA lies mostly in these abstractly animated sequences, but these scenes do little to enforce the emotions of the rest of the show. There is a point in the OVA where it gets a little sad and the music get a little slower to match. But the visuals only get weirder and barely do anything to strengthen the emotions of the scene. And so this anime has individual moments that are interesting, but it doesn't have an emotional trough-line, the way Belladonna of sadness does, or a strong narrative like 'A girl'. It's just kind of a boring mess with some high points that make it worth watching.

Ultimately I only recommend this OVA if you really like music video's with interesting visuals. Anime that are similar but better include Belladonna of Sadness, A girl and interstella5555. And I'm sure there are tons of normal music videos out there that are great as well. But if you've watched those and you want more like it, or if you are on a mission to watch all 80s OVA's like a madman, then Machiko no Märchen isn't a bad watch. Who knows, maybe when you finish it you'll click away the tab and say to yourself: "Man, that sure was an anime..." And isn't that what we all watch anime for?