Choujikuu Romanesque Samy: Missing 99

So this is one of those forgotten 80s OVA's written by someone who thought mad libs were the best way to come up with a story. You see, the Biblical Noah's demonic twin brother, also named Noah, is trying to kill a girl whose DNA has a program written by god that gives her Bodhisattva powers, since she would somehow prevent him from creating a new universe for demons once the universe's entropy reaches zero. If any of that made sense to you, you're either a smarter person than me, or you should seek out a psychiatrist. This anime is really a ... series of weird events and setpieces that just follow each other with only the bare minimum of an attempt at linking them together, and none of the information it gives you helps you make much sense out of it.

The art varies from passable to ugly, the animation is never good, the fight scenes suck, with characters seemingly teleporting whenever they're not on camera, and there's barely any character or story to talk about. On the plus side, the amount of nonsense this constantly exposes you to keeps it much more entertaining than a lot of shitty, obscure OVA's, though it never quite hits that level that makes you laugh like Troll 2 or The Room. For a hidden anime gem of that sort, watch Crystal Triangle. But if you're having trouble finding an entertainingly bad anime, then give this a shot.

In short: It's a bad story idea...done badly.

There's the bones of a plot that is given in an exposition scene that tie everything in this Hot Mess together, but I wouldn't spend much brain power trying to understand it. In short, Evil Devil is trying to destroy the universe, but a young Japanese girl (Sami/Samy/Sammy) unwittingly holds the key to preventing this, as she goes dimension-tripping from Japan to a fantasy land to a sci-fi wasteland, fighting baddies along the way. Don't worry much about the particulars of the plot, because it won't help make this ... any better.

By the way it ends, it seems very clear to me, that they intended to use this OVA to "test the waters" to see if there was interest in continuing the story of Samy with future episodes. But they did such a terrible job with this OVA, that it pretty much sank into the morass of low-grade schlock that came out that decade, that it pretty much killed that idea right then and there.

Not only is the story a ugly mess, but by god is the quality of the character designs, artwork and animation crappy as hell. Visually, it's awful from start to finish, and you spend more time marveling at how awful the art is, than you do focusing on the story. They didn't just farm the production of this out to the "B-Team", but probably a few letters lower than that.

As a fan of obscure 80’s and 90’s OVA this has been one of the worst I’ve seen in a very long time. It commits the worst sin of any anime, just being boring. It’s so boring it was to the point where I was watching this on 1.5X just to make the pain end sooner.

REVIEW OF PLOT: Plot? What plot? Basically this feels like a copy and paste job. Average Japanese High School Girl gets transported to another world where she has mystical powers. Then at the end she’s magically at home again! But they made a bland setup even more boring. The setting ... is literally a barren wasteland with no life, no atmosphere, WOW it couldn’t be more boring. Characters??? Yeah they don’t exist and I can’t remember any of their names. There’s the girl, a mysterious guy who she likes, an old witch, and demons because it wouldn’t be an awful anime without demons. Girl eventually meets up with some allies, she uses her powers, they defeat the demons, and then everything just ends. The problem with having characters with absolutely no personalities is I’m not given any reason to care. Girl doesn’t even treat that being sent to another world is a big deal, maybe because she knows just as well as we do that this story is going to be super predictable. I understand it’s only an hour long but lots of other OVA’s are able to establish likable characters, and conflicts right away. What’s laughable is that immediately at the beginning and end you’re hit with a wall text containing all the exposition, like why can’t they explain that in the actual anime?

REVIEW OF ART: It’s okay, but it’s uninspired and none of the characters stand out. Even for an 80’s anime the characters don’t have much detail. It’s boring like the rest of the show. The scenery is fine given with the setting they had to work with but it just makes every frame boring to look at.

CONCLUSION: Overall watching this was an absolute waste of time. DO NOT RECOMMEND. There’s absolutely nothing salvageable here. It’s not even in the category so bad it’s good, it’s just simply bad in everyway. Boring plot, boring characters, and boring art combine into an absolute trainwreck of an OVA. Just the fact that this is 58 minutes long is insulting.