Down Load: Namu Amida Butsu wa Ai no Uta

It’s a great study for animation students and something I’m definitely going to study myself when I get the time. The premise of a spam email that actually kills you sounds like dumb fun. But it loses me with the main character trying to assault his boss within the first five minutes and how much xenophobia is in the movie. I’m not even exaggerating, the big bad company is Chinese and everyone who works for it looks like they came out of a WWII propaganda poster. Even his love interest ends up being a “evil Chinese woman”. I’m not going to lie and say that ... I didn’t enjoy the movie but it’s hard to ignore the glaring flaws. Honestly if you’re going to and enjoy the movie it’s important to also acknowledge how xenophobic it is. So yeah I see what you were going for but you lost me with the racism. D- go to the councilors office after class.

This is an interesting little OVA if you like quirky art projects, but it's all style without much in the way of story or interesting ideas. It's enjoyable if you can pick up on all the pop culture visual cues and references, and there are some delightful moments of character animation that are remarkable for how well they convey fluidity and weight of movement - but unless you're the sort of person who likes watching animation for the sake of appreciating the technical aspects, and recognizing trademark elements that the staff on this project used elsewhere, you probably don't need to invest 48 minutes to ... see this.

Download is an earlier Madhouse work that up until last week (at the time of writing), had never been translated. Well, now we've got some subs courtesy of Burger. We can finally watch this 50-minute OVA how it was meant to be viewed: in VHS quality with solid yellow subtitles.

To be honest, it's not great. The story, which centers around an email that kills its recipients, is largely forgettable. The main character is an unlikable sex-crazed teen, and he's accompanied by his formulaic pals Stripper Girl, Tsundere Sister, Gangster Pals, and Nerd Boy. This page tags the show as sci-fi and psychological, but the latter ... just isn't true and the former is wasted potential. Instead of a full cyberpunk thriller, this OVA's definition of sci-fi is a nighttime city and head-mounted computers.

But that's enough bashing, let's talk about some of the positive stuff.
For one thing, the music. The decision to make most of the soundtrack honky-tonk American country music is a weird one, but the music isn't bad by any means, and hey, it's pretty unique.
For an early 90's show, the animation is pretty good. I won't bash the art and details too much; the current releases are low quality so it's pretty hard to make things out, but that's no fault of the original work.

All in all, I can't say that I'd recommend Download. However, I'm still really glad that it was subbed, and I'm sure it paved the way to all of Madhouse's great shows later on.