Micro Teukgongdae Diatron 5

Man, so, Diatron 5... Just... what a hilarious trainwreck. I don't even know where to start.

The script is just terrible. For some clarification, I watched the Hosca Home Video English Dub. Everybody just says a bunch of stupid crap in every scene, and while a lot of it is really funny, I feel like none of it was intentional. It unintentionally becomes some pretty funny satire, but it also seems to take itself too seriously, which kind of kills the mood at certain points. Still, if there's any saving grace to this anime, it's the funny moments in the script.

As for the actual storyline, it's just nonsensical garbage. It makes even less sense than your average Saturday morning cartoon, and I've seen some pretty dumbfounded plots before. Scenes are strung together by loose threads and the story just seems to be there in service of giving the viewer some cool visuals.

However, they also fail in that respect. The visuals they actually give you to look are so poorly animated that it's just a disgrace to even suggest it could possibly be good. I realize this was made in the 80's... but even by those standards, I've seen much more nicely animated things. Hell, I've seen better animated stuff in the 60's! This just looks super low-budget.

The art style isn't horrible, but it's not very good, either. Again, that apparent super low-budget rears it's ugly head. Character designs are at least a little varied, and the backgrounds don't look terrible for something from the 80's, but the linework is all super rough, and the color palette is really poor.

Finally, we get down to sound design. The soundtrack ranges between annoying and forgettable, aside from the main theme. However, I'm still not actually sure about what the lyrics to the theme actually are... There's a "Diatron" in there... and then some mumbling... and then another "Diatron"... and then some more mumbling... and some trumpets, I think?
As for the sound effects, they're pretty low quality, and sound more like what you'd hear out of a mid-70's production than something from the 80's.

Overall, this is a pretty piss-poor production, but it has some redeeming qualities in it's humor value, and the art isn't entirely bad, even if the animation is. It's not something I'd recommend if somebody was looking for something good to watch. However, if they're looking for a movie to put on in the background while they're drunk and bored, this seems well suited to that.

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This movie is bad. Really bad. But, as bad as it is, that's what makes it so good.
The art is old, not the worst ever, but what makes it horrible is the dreadful animation, which is extremely choppy and sometimes has things just randomly appear, thus making some things confusing, and others, laugh-out-loud hilarious. The writing is very, very bad, and the story is almost, not quite, but almost incomprehensible, and what can be comprehended involves essentially that an entire universe of space lies within in dying girl. And it has grass. And streams of water. And castles filled with dumb soldiers who invite people with guns into the castle to see their king because they are enemies. Did I mention that when main characters had to enter this dying girl's body to fight diseases (Yes. It has THAT as a storyline) they say in the body when they come across a garden that it's so wonderful that they should stay there and never return to the real world. Despite the fact that they were in a dying girl's body. And there are giant robots in the girl's body that look like badly drawn Transformers. The English dub is awful, and I think that you could get people to work free nowadays and have a better dub. Overall, a terrible show. But at least it has decent 80s background music. Anyways, this show though, is so bad, that it's one of the most hilarious things ever, so I recomend watching it.

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Micro Teukgongdae Diatron 5 is a movie that fails at every possible marker. Just to be clear, I watched the dub since the sub is non-existent.

Firstly the story is a train wreck. For one, it takes about a third of the movie to even introduce the main character, which speaks about the all-over-the-place pacing of it. Not only does it switch between subplots, but those subplots have subplots until it can't even be comprehended anymore. Even the beginning is pretty hard to follow, and that's when it's sticking to a single story.

The art is cheap. The designs aren't too bad, but they feel like copies of characters from any other 80s anime. Since the story is literally just action, the art should fit to the action but the scenes are poorly executed. The art seems to be repeated in action scenes a lot, leading to repetitive and jarring viewing of the movie.

The sound is terrible. The music is forgettable, the sound effects sound like stock and the dub's voices are utter trash. Namely, every female character sounds like they were told to mimic Japanese voices and sound cute, but it instead sounds grating, whiney and annoying as they were told to talk at a higher pitch than they were capable of. Furthermore, all lines are spoken in monotone.

There is no characterisation. Characters do not act as semi-reasonable people would, not even quarter reasonable people. A lot of characters act foolish or stupidly, for no apparent reason. Even in non-threatening situations they act against whatever logical or emotional reaction a regular human being would do. It's mind boggling. The worst thing is that the motivations and personalities of characters are non-existent too. In fact, the whole reason the movie starts is due to the attack on the "most intelligent girl in the world"... despite her getting little to no airtime and no evidence of her supposed intelligence and how it would help the human race (in fact, this can double as another issue of the plot).

Finally, my enjoyment was near none. It's in the realm of so bad it's bad, rather than so bad it's good. (I am someone who is currently trying to watch all the worst 100 anime on MAL, and I have seen a lot of bad anime at this point which has been laughably bad.) As such, this is an irredeemable film that deserves to disappear into obscurity.

Unless you're as insane as I am, give Micro Teukgongdae Diatron 5 a pass for your own sake.

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