Green Legend Ran

Green Legend Ran is the kind of anime you'd to see on the sci fi channel at four in the morning one night out of the blue and absolutely love. It's really a diamond in the rough, folks. The story might seem unoriginal but it was a fairly unexplored concept when it was made. The idea is a little similar to Trigun and Origin: Spirits of the past, which I think some's reccomended. It's darker in tone, though, and the conclusion is a little abrupt. The art isn't outstanding but it serves it's purpose. Some characters are more thought out design-wise than others, which is ... a bit of a shame. The sound serves its purpose but you'll just as soon forget it. The story outshines the characters sometimes but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. It's still worth watching, I've enjoyed it a lot over the years.

Once again , this was one anime in a bargain VHS box decades ago i passed on because it din´t look interesting.
Decades and some months later i´ve watched it and it was an adventure i wish i was in it, at first look it is more to figure out ( after the narration ofc) where this ova is going , because though i had no expectations at all, after the 1st episode i was a bit skeptical about the animation and all, but DON´T Judge a book by its cover.
Onwards to part 2 &3 the storyline and all became more clear, even though ... some early 90´s anime had some bad 1980´s animation habits, it looked more ´proffesionally directed´ more colour and better camera work.
Storywise it reminded me a bit of the 1995 anime Blue Seed wich has simmilair plantlike enemies, Green legend ran looks more respectively but a much cheaper idea and product, but still fun.
Soundwise i had no problems with, i LOVE those 90´s anime sound effects blended into it.
No way that the charachters were´stereotypical´ because each important
charachter has like a clear own personality, ok at times it drops at unexpected moments but thats how it was back then, as for the heroes and villians design it looks quite good, but the villians got a special design given to then ( mainly the ´super villians´) since they are not from earth,that is understandable ofc. Through some oldskool grainy scene´s and sometimes wobbly sidecharachters i had a good time given to me , and as a lone ova project from the 90´s it had a good potential to became more ´wellknown´ as would put it so overall its a good saturdaynight anime for 135 min! enjoy

I first stumbled upon this quaint little OVA at a used bookstore, in a similar fashion to how I first discovered Ginga Ojōsama Densetsu Yuna… I thought the cover looked interesting and bought the VHS for a $1 on the clearance rack! The $1 was well worth the investment—Green Legend Ran changed my life, in my teens, and I still think about it quite often in my ‘20s!

—Story/Characters

Green Legend Ran takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth that has become a barren wasteland after an alien invasion. Six of the “Rodo”—a race of giant monoliths that are revealed to be more than what they seem later ... in the OVA—crash through the atmosphere and, through emitting a force field of carbon dioxide in the areas where they land, causing all of the planet’s food and water to erode. The massive climate change causes the divide between the wealthy and poor to become more extreme, leading the wealthier class to monopolize the remaining reservoirs.

The two factions are:
a) The ‘Rodoists’—the wealthy have taken to hoarding the remaining sources of food and water from the poor. They also fanatically worship the Rodo, despite their lack of communication with the monoliths. They refer to the areas around the monoliths as the ‘Holy Green.’
b) The ‘Hazard’—a revolutionary movement that opposes the Rodoists.

Travel between communities is infrequent, at a certain distance away from the monoliths, because of the carbon dioxide, the air between the impoverished and the ‘Holy Green’ can’t be breathed—necessitating *pressurized vehicles and suits. The only people that are legally authorized to use the pressurized vehicles and suits are merchants that bring the small villages food and water from the ‘Holy Green’ but it is barely enough to survive on and many of the villagers die from either starvation or dehydration.
*The suits and vehicles are very similar to equipment used for space travel.

Ran is a young, orphaned boy who seeks to survive, join the Hazard, and enact revenge on the man who murdered his mother, a muscular man with a scar on his chest. During a failed Hazard attack, he meets *Aira. During their meeting, Aira slaps him for trying to kill a wounded Rodoist and she says that he’s no different from them if he’s a murderer. After spending some time around Aira’s tranquil aura, Ran’s anger begins to wane.

Suddenly, the Rodoist army attacks the Hazard base and Aira is abducted. Ran tries to board the Rodo *sand ship as it is taking off, doubly enraged at the sight of the man who killed his mother, but fails. Ran attempts to traverse the desert in a stolen pressure suit to rescue Aira from the Rodoist’s base and is rescued by traveling merchants, right before the oxygen tank in his suit runs out.
*Think Frank Herbert’s Dune.

The merchant leader, a contemplative man named Jeke, offers Ran his assistance to rescue Aira. They infiltrate the ‘Holy Green’ disguised as supply shipment, and it is revealed that Aira is not only abducted by the Rodoists to *extract water from her veins but to also as *a source of communication with the Rodo. Meanwhile, Ran catches up with Aira—after the man who killed his mother, Kiba, comes face-to-face with Jeke, who is then revealed to be Ran’s father!
*Aira is a descendant of Rodo, born from the monolith, so she’s a plant-human hybrid. Rodoists are able to distinguish descendants of Rodo apart from normal humans because of their silver hair. In captivity, she meets Rurui, another descendent of Rodo, who talks to her telepathically before he dies from having all of the water extracted from his body. It’s not explicitly stated but it implies that they keep her alive, as a source of communication, because she’s a sexually attractive female and the previous descendent was male.

Rodo manifests itself into a human form and tells Aira that the Rodo can replenish Earth’s greenery, but are waiting for the remaining humans to kill each other, so all other lifeforms of Earth won’t be destroyed by human greed. Rodo urges Aira to join the past maidens in a collective conscious to let humans be their own undoing. Aira pleads with Rodo to give humanity another chance; Rodo concedes and decides to leave the planet with the other monoliths.

Jeke leaves behind an escape plan for Aira and Ran to be ejected from Rodo’s alien pods that are filled with seeds. Jeke then blows up the Rodoist’s base, killing most of them, himself, and Kiba; and the Rodo lifts up into space and it begins to *heavily rain; and the Earth begins to go back to how it used to be, before the apocalypse. The end.
*In the first OVA, it only shown to sparsely rain. To the point where the people in the Hazard faction can barely even glean sustenance from how little it does.

Before Green Legend Ran, many of the OVAs I had seen weren’t able to form a cohesive story; that’s why my mind was blown upon my first viewing! The conclusion with hopeful melody of ‘Tears and Rain’ by Ichirō Suzuki playing, while Aira and Ran glance lovingly at each other is one of the greatest endings!

The characters weren’t the strongest but the duality between Ran and Aira’s demeanors, as well as the roles that they played—more than made up for it! I still believe that Green Legend Ran is a criminally underrated gem, and after revisiting it, I still believe that! If only, more people would just sporadically find something at a used bookstore and decide to check it out on a whim. I still am fairly sporadic with streaming, but there was a certain magic to staring at a physical VHS cover and eagerly anticipating whether it would be good or not!

—Technical

There are a couple of A-list seiyū in this production, which is surprise seeing as it was a *Mushi Production animation. Some of the notable voice actors include:
*Mushi Productions was a studio founded by, none other than the father of manga himself, Osamu Tezuka! Mushi Productions used to crank out a lot of high quality series until the ‘00s, examples of some of their productions are: Ashita no Joe, Moomin, Belladonna of Sadness, Astro Boy, Princess Knight, Dororo, and Kimba the White Lion.

• The voice of Aira—Mitsuki Yayoi, a seiyū famous for her roles as:
1) Riquinni Nonderaiko, Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise
2) Chan Agi, Mobile Suit Gundam, Char’s Counterattack
3) Lena, Shamanic Princess

• The voice of Ran—Hidehiro Kikuchi, a seiyū famous for his role as:
—Hiroto Honda, Yū-Gi-Ō!

• The voice of Chimin—Kōichi Yamadera, a seiyū famous for his roles as:
1) Spike Spiegal, Cowboy Bebop
2) Beerus and Tenshinhan, Dragon Ball Z
3) Kōichi Zenigata, Lupin III—待て, ルパン!! WAIT, LUPIN!!
4) Ryōji Kaji, Neon Genesis Evangelion
5) Papacharino Nanadan, Photon
6) Mew and Lugia, Pokémon
7) Ryōga Hibiki, Ranma ½
8) Akihito Kayaba, Sword Art Online
9) Abert Desler, Uchū Senkan Yamato 2199
10) Meier Link, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
11) Sorata Arisugawa, X/1999

• The voice of Honran—Michie Tomizawa, a seiyū famous for her roles as:
1) Shiiko (C-ko) Kotobuki, Project A-ko
2) Rei Hino, Sailor Moon
3) Roberta, Black Lagoon
4) Linna Yamazaki, Bubblegum Crisis
5) Pony, Gall Force
6) Sumire Kanzaki, Sakura Taisen
7) Doris Lang, Vampire Hunter D

• The voice of Jeke—Michio Hazama, a seiyū famous for his roles as:
1) Walter von Schönkopf, Ginga Eiyū Densetsu
2) Bruno J. Global, Macross

• The voice of Kiba—*Takeshi Aono, a seiyū famous for his roles as:
*Sadly, Takeshi Aono passed away on April 9th, 2012 from cerebral infarctions.
1) Kami, Dragon Ball
2) Gengai Hiraga, Gintama
3) Vanilla Ice, JoJo no Kimyō na Bōken (1993)
4) Wagnard, Lodoss-tō Senki
5) Gambling King, Ranma ½
6) Hades, Saint Seiya: Meiō Hades Jūni Kyū-hen
7) Shirō Sanada, Uchū Senkan Yamato
8) Yosho ‘Masaki’ Jurai, Tenchi Muyō!
9) Sugoroku Mutō, Yū-Gi-Ō!

• The voice of Ran’s mother—Kikuko Inoue, a seiyū that is so famous that everyone reading this has probably already heard of her.

• The voice of Rurei—*Daisuke Namikawa, a seiyū famous for his roles as:
*American voice actor, Vic Mignogna, has been cast as two of Namikawa’s roles—including Benawi from Utawarerumono and Fai D. Flōrite from Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE.
1) Narsus, Arslan Senki (TV)
2) Rokurō Okajima, Black Lagoon
3) Ulquiorra Cifer, Bleach
4) Jellal Fernandes, Fairy Tail
5) Waver Velvet, Fate/Zero
6) Leonard Testarossa, Full Metal Panic
7) Van Hohenheim, Fullmetal Alchemist
8) Kei Kurono, Gantz
9) Seiya Ichijō, Kaiji
10) Tōru Oikawa, Haikyū
11) Rumaty Ivan di Raginei, Hanasakeru Seishōnen
12) Walter C. Dornez, Hellsing Ultimate
13) Italy, Hetalia
14) Hisoka Morow, Hunter x Hunter (2011)
15) Yashiro Isana, K
16) Shōta Kazehaya, Kimi ni Todoke
17) Yū Narukami, Persona 4
18) Fai D. Flōrite, Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE
19) Benawi, Utawarerumono

The solid scripting is thanks to the writer, Yū Yamamoto, who also wrote Mobile Suit Gundam. Yoshiyuki Tomino often gets all the credit for creating Gundam, so much that the people under him efforts are depreciated in the process. Despite my nostalgia for Green Legend Ran, one of the reasons that I rate it so highly is because of its tight story telling!

The director of Green Legend Ran, Yoshimitsu Ōhashi, doesn’t have many series that he chiefly directed: Amnesia, Aquarian Age: Sign for Evolution, Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto, Galaxy Angel, and Kokkoku—while many of the series aren’t above aren’t very widely acclaimed, Galaxy Angel and Kokkoku both have their own niche followings! Ōhashi also did key animation for a lot of animations that I am a fan of, like Bakuen Campus Guardress, Darkside Blues, Fushigi no Umi no Nadia, Tokyo Babylon, and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust!

Conclusively, Green Legend Ran is story that still tugs at my heartstrings—after more than a decade of initially watching it. My eyes still tear up when I hear the opening verse of ‘Yasashisa wa Furu Ame no Yōni’ or when I think about Aira and Ran’s scene together at the reservoir or when Aira pleads with the Rodo to forgive humanity for its mistakes; Green Legend Ran is a powerful OVA that is still near and dear to my heart! It’s an animation that will always be beautiful to me and stands the test of time!
NOTE: Gin'iro no Kami no Agito borrowed a lot from Green Legend Ran’s story, but blundered in its execution.