Iron Virgin Jun

The jokes in this aren't funny, but the show itself can be laughed at. I watched this quite drunk last night, and boy howdy is this one of the worst things I've ever seen. The story is poorly written and a bad idea in the first palce, the art looks extremely half asses, the acting obviously had no effort put into it, there's really nothing redeemable about this pile of trash. I watched it cause me man brain is like "oo step on me big muscle lady" so that was definitely a positive thing, and I did have a hell of a time making fun ... of it

A funny OVA of about 40 minutes. If you are know on your 20's you will remember the cartoons you watched when you were a little kid.

Bear in mind that this is from 1992, so don't expect the design to be that of the 2000's, and an OVA so don't expect character development, or at least a lot.

It's a simple story about an "Oujo-san" who is being forced to marry, runs away, and her mother uses everything in her power to drag her back.
A really good point is that it depicts the female protagonists as Amazones. They are the ones in charge and the ... ones who fight!
I found it enjoyable, I got to remember the type of cartoons I watched when I was a kid and it's funny.
Watch it when you don't know what to do!

Iron Virgin Jun is a comedic action OVA based off of a manga by Nagai Go. I’ve never reviewed anything by him. He’s best known for Devilman and Devil Lady. It was handled by Dynamic Planning. Which is Nagai’s own baby company. So, you know they’ll handle his vision properly at least.

Story:

Jun is having her 18th birthday and, as per family tradition, she’s “required” to get married. So she does what any sensible person would do and nopes out of there followed by the loyal servant, Kurata. Her mother responds by… sending a group of rapists after her. Because, clearly, if she doesn’t want to ... get married to some random man getting brutally assaulted by random men will assuage her fears. Seriously though, this is supposed to be a comedy there shouldn’t be the threat of rape.

The OVA basically follows Jun as she tries to escape her mother and the gang of rapists in order to determine her own fate. There are some huge problems. First off, sexual assault and comedy don’t mesh. I don’t care if you make their genitalia floaties with ducks, turtles and other various bollocks. It doesn’t work. So, having a group of rapists as major antagonists don’t work. The lack of logic from characters (Jun refusing to throw away her tracker, her mother wanting her to get married at 18 but not having a fiancée set up or anything) could work in a comedy if there was strong humour. There are no good jokes in this. About the “height” of its jokes is Jun being cornered, flexing out of her party clothes and beating up some guys. Which isn’t really funny, it’s just unexpected.

Characters:

The characters are one note and rubbish. Yes, comedic characters can get by with being somewhat shallow if they’re endearing and they have strong comedic dynamics. The characters in this don’t have that because there are no funny jokes. So, they just come across as paper thin, low effort characters. Nagai tries to add some depth by giving the mother some informed characteristics at the end but it doesn’t work to tell us a character has these motivations or these traits when those traits are never demonstrated.

Art:

The artwork is really bad. The action doesn’t flow well. It’s clumsy and disjointed. Nagai is clearly going for a Wrestling aesthetic with it. Not Olympic style, the fake one. But it just fails to deliver any excitement or flair. The character art is lazy at its best and absolute rubbish at worst.

Sound:

The acting is of the “nobody gives a shit” variety. Yokoyama Chisa, Komiya Kazue, Nakamura Daiki… none of them seem to be putting in any effort. And these aren’t bad actors. Yokoyama was the voice of Biscuit Kreuger. It just sounds like they got their scripts and decided they didn’t need to try. The music is probably the best part of the OVA because it’s, at least, sub-par.

Ho-yay:

There isn’t any.

Areas of Improvement:

1. Have some comedy. Because wading through these non-jokes is painful.

2. Develop your characters enough to give them comedic quirks and dynamics. Characters in a comedy don’t need to be all that complex but they do need to be funny.

3. Get the Basics down. I realise that a lot of bad anime don’t give their actors enough to work with for them to give good performances, but you could at least direct them so they sound like they’re trying and put any kind of effort into the art.

Final Thoughts:

Iron Virgin Jun is pretty horrendously bad. No effort. Terrible comedy. There are many, many better things you can do in forty six minutes. To name a few examples, you could play with your pet, shiny hunt in Pokemon, watch any episode of any Star Trek series that isn’t Discovery, grind some levels in an RPG or light some candles and play with your genitalia. I mean, most things are going to be better than this. My rating is a 1/10.