Ogami Matsugorou

Although it has questionable production values and a meandering story, “Ogami Matsugoro” is a decent OVA. It’s about a high school delinquent named Matsugoro Ogami, who is known as "Praying Matsugoro" (a pun on his surname in Japanese) for how he prays for his victims after he defeats them in fights. Fighting is all he knows, and it's all he's got... until a chance encounter with Koume Nagasaki, the daughter of the headmistress of a kindergarten that is plagued by yakuza. He falls in love with her at first sight, but she absolutely abhors violence! This is a problem, since violence is his way of ... life. He fights the yakuza threatening to take the kindergarten's land away, but this makes Koume upset. Violence is bad, you see. So he comes up with creative ways to help out the kindergarten, like having his underlings help make repairs to the place, and eating the land handover contract the yakuza coerced Koume's mother into signing. He does eventually fight them when she's unconscious or out of sight, though.

The 46-minute OVA meanders through 5 or 6 connected stories, so it feels like more than one episode. After Matsugoro’s initial encounter with Koume, there’s an arm wrestling competition at a ramen restaurant, a dance at a school festival, a girl gang out to get revenge on Matsugoro whose leader ends up falling for him, a “date” with the gang leader, and the climax — the kidnapping of Koume, in which Matsugoro and co. come to the rescue.

The plot takes its time to progress and drags a bit in some parts, but things do go from point A to point B, and the progression feels natural. It ends in a satisfying, although somewhat open-ended, conclusion. Some stuff happens that’s a bit unrealistic, like rough fights where participants remain relatively unscathed, lethal wounds that apparently aren’t so lethal, and other such fare that is par for the course for delinquent anime series. Also, when fights break out, there are conveniently no police or anyone else around to break them up. The whole thing is rather lighthearted and comedic in tone, despite the serious subject matter.

Since this is a one-episode OVA, the characters don’t get much development, and most of them are downright one-dimensional. Koume’s personality is basically “violence = bad,” and her dream is to operate a kindergarten. Matsugoro is a delinquent with a heart of gold who is impossibly strong. Kyoko is your typical delinquent girl gang leader who acts tough, but melts into a puddle when confronted with Matsugoro’s manliness. The rest of the characters are largely forgettable.

Production values for this anime appear to be low, especially when it comes to animation. There are scenes where characters look off-model, and items appear and disappear from the screen sometimes. There are lots of still images during action scenes. The art is serviceable, but there’s nothing unique about it. The all-instrumental soundtrack is bland, and doesn’t feel like it was made for this show in particular. The voice acting sounds uninspired.

Regarding objectionable content, there’s a fair amount of violence, with a small amount of blood, but no one dies. The antagonists threaten, beat up, kidnap and even slightly torture others. As for nudity, there’s a scene featuring the forced stripping of clothes partially down to a character's underwear, but the only actual nudity is a painting of a nude woman at the school festival shown on screen for a few seconds.

Also, there’s one scene that’s hilariously sexist. Matsugoro tells Kyoko, after she tries to stab him, that “women should use knives for cooking.” Apparently this line is so romantic that it immediately makes her go from wanting to kill him to falling in love with him, and there’s even a flashback scene where she’s recalling him saying this to her.

All the above being said, I do not dislike this show. I feel that the plot, meandering though it is, is put together well. The cheesiness of some of the lines and character motivations is pretty funny (ex: “My rollerblading gang and I are going to kill you because you injured my little brother’s arm in an arm wrestling match so badly that he couldn’t participate in his scheduled judo competition, and now he’s become a delinquent!”). So while there are a lot of subpar aspects to this OVA, it is an enjoyable watch.

I would recommend this to anyone who wants to see a cheesy, romantic and relatively lighthearted story starring high school delinquents — just don’t go in expecting stellar production values or any depth to the characters. (Also, it’s important to note that as of this writing, there’s no English version available.)