Riki-Oh 2: Horobi no Ko

This is an extremely crappy Ova with one of the worst, nonsensical plots I have seen out of all the trash retro Ovas out there.

In between the poorly elaborated apocalyptic plans of the bad guys coming out of nowhere, Riki's brother going from 'don't kill muh brother; ANGERY' to 'Imma destroy all of Japan' within 10 minutes and Riki Oh getting mortally wounded only to fight as if nothing had happened in the very next scene, this anime is like Evangelion in how it chucks in random religious symbols in the hopes that the viewer would over interpret it as a sign of 'intelligence'. However, ... even Evangelion manages to have a somewhat coherent plot, Riki Oh's is just shit flinging that hopes it sticks.

Of course any genre savy viewer knows that you don't watch this sort of garbage for characters, plot or anything that you know, makes an anime good.
You watch it for the hilariously cheesy gorefests.
In this regard, Riki Oh truly delivers; at least for the first half. Disappointingly, the gore in the first 15 minute so completely overshadows anything else that happens later.


Art is more akin to a mid 80s Tv show than a 1990s production. It is rather crappy for its time and is absolute garbage by today's standards.
Similarily the music is more akin to mid 80s Nwobhm/ heavy metal. Not a good thing in this case as it is cheesy even for its time and is absolute garbage by Nwobhm standards.


Overall, the only reason you should watch this super trashy Ova is for the gore in the first half, if the gore were better paced and spread out in the anime, there is no doubt that some of these scenes would attain the notoriety on the level of such classics as Angel Cop.

The story was a continuation of the first OVA.
WHen i first watched it i thought it would be enjoyable but when it goes the the part where Riki's brother gone berserk it went all poor. The fight scene with his brother was also really short.

The story doesn't make any sense either. How did Riki get his streignth? Is he a martial artist or just gifted? And the ending was also probaly a cliffhanger.

The art looked like a deformed JoJo drawing, but the fight scene was pretty decent. But in fact that's the mistake, if the character was too overpowered then the story has to be ... good

This OVA is not very good. There is not much more to say than that, but I will try to elaborate a little, bit. It seems like it is supposed to be a continuation of the original "Wall of Hell" OVA but it doesn't seem to connect or relate to it in any way. Either way, on it's own the story is pretty bad. It would be better as a 13 or more episode series instead of a 40 minute OVA. A lot of stuff happens too fast for me to care about, and many characters are introduced and die ... in less than 10 minutes.

The art is not great either and while the setting is not a pleasant one, I don't think the art needed to be so drab to showcase this. All the scenes are excessively grey and faded.

The characters are not interesting nor very cool, yet they could have been if this was written better. And either way, most of the characters that I thought had more potential were the ones that were killed off quickly.

The action might be a little bit better than in the first one, but it's still not great and always ends too soon.

Overall, while there are definitely things worse than this, it's far from being worth watching.

As the title suggests, “Riki-Oh 2” is the sequel to 1989’s “Riki-Oh.” This OVA explores the titular character’s past and his quest to find his twin brother from whom he was separated as a child. While “2” has its fair share of gory violence, it’s toned down compared to its predecessor, and the stilted scenes, animation errors and jumpy narrative do it no favors.

Presumably, the events of this OVA take place after what happened in the first one, although it’s hard to tell. Riki-Oh is searching for his twin brother, Nachi, who has similar powers to his, except Nachi has a swastika on his hand, ... and Riki-Oh has a Star of David. (The reason behind the existence of these powers is unclear.) He walks around in northern Japan and talks to a psychic woman who almost dies but is suddenly okay just a few moments later, and then he’s in a jungle where some guy tries to kill him but immediately reveals that he’s a friend, and that guy subsequently gets killed by the main antagonist, who shows up in a tank. Then Riki-Oh gets imprisoned in a mysterious city with nuclear power plants that has death matches, where he quickly becomes best friends with a cyborg guy named Robo who lifts weights with his mechanical arms, and finally encounters Nachi. Is Nachi good or evil? (Well, he’s got a swastika on his hand, so...) Will Nachi ever forgive Riki-Oh for abandoning him during a game of hide-and-seek to become the adopted son of a rich old guy? (Yes, this happens.)

As you can tell by the above, the plot is all over the place. Rather than going from Point A to Point B, it beelines it to Points J, K and L, meanders down to X, and then zigzags back up again. Many of the introduced elements aren’t explained well, if at all. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s going on, and why it’s happening in the first place. The characters are flatter than the screen I watched this on. The dialogue is terrible and borders on “so-bad-it’s-good” material, but I feel like with how incoherent this OVA is, it doesn’t quite reach that level of entertainment.

The first “Riki-Oh”’s saving grace was its gory violence, but even that is toned down here. There are only a few truly gory scenes, but they happen quickly, and the animation quality isn’t good enough to make them look interesting. Also, sometimes a character will get seemingly mortally wounded in one scene, only to appear just fine in the next. The characters in “2” were designed by Akio Sugino, strangely enough, but even his character designs can’t save it.

The rest of the technical aspects are similarly bland or bordering on forgettable. The direction, the soundtrack, the voice acting — all dull. The ending theme is decent, although it doesn’t leave much of an impression.

As one would expect, this OVA contains significant objectionable content, but as I mentioned earlier, the goriest violent scenes are kept to a minimum. There’s lots of blood, bodies exploding, etc., but these aren’t shown in much detail. There’s also a scene of a woman breastfeeding and then getting executed. Additionally, the gratuitous use of religious imagery might make some uncomfortable. For those who are photosensitive, there are a couple of scenes near the middle with flashing, but these scenes are easy to avoid.

Overall, “Riki-Oh 2” is a narratively meandering and tedious sequel to the already lackluster “Riki-Oh.” It has some unintentionally funny moments, but they aren’t enough to salvage it. Not recommended unless you’re in the mood for something confusing.