Goddamn

This is only for Part 1. I'll come back and write another for Part 2 after I watch it, but I REALLY need to vent.

First off, the art, animation, sound, and all that are all on-par for the day. There's nothing to complain about there.
Every problem I have with this OVA comes from watching it as an avid rally fan.

The story takes place in 1993, yet none of the cars featured are even close to being that new.
Before competing in the Safari Rally, Gen is forced to do a preliminary drive along a mountain road in France. The car he's given is a Peugeot 205 ... T16 E2, a car that was banned from competition after the 1986 season. While he's driving the 205, he comes up against a homologation model Lancia 037, which eventually goes over a cliff and explodes. That explosion is the ONLY accurate thing that happens in the entire episode (Lancias were always prone to catching fire).

Next up comes the Safari Rally itself. We have the team he's driving for, Seiou Corp., fielding a pair of Ford Sierra Cosworths, cars that were phased out of competition in the late 1980s by the onset of Group A regulations. What's better is Toyota Team Europe (a real team) is seen fielding MkIII Supras, which were never even used in rallying. They should've been running ST185 Celicas, but those didn't exist at the time the OVA was produced. The sensible thing to do would've been to draw what was being used at the time: the ST165 Celica.

Beyond these obvious flaws, the pacenote systems for each driver are borderline-incomprehensible as there's almost no consistency and the way the rally is presented leads me to believe the people who wrote this had never even seen a rally before. It's as if somebody who watched the Safari Rally on TV explained it to the producer and then he waited a month to explain it to everybody else.

I was all sorts of excited to see that a rally anime had been made and now I'm incredibly disappointed at the result. I can't say I have high hopes for Part 2.

Update: Part 2 was just as bad. This OVA is total shit.

This interestingly-titled anime is a 2-episode OVA that follows a Japanese driver participating in the world of rally racing. Unfortunately, the title is about the only notable thing about it; the confusing plot, unlikable characters and lack of an ending, combined with subpar technical aspects, make this a frustrating watch.

After an “in medias res”-type start, the first episode shifts to the real beginning, in which the main character, Gen, is walking around Paris rather haphazardly. The reason he’s there isn’t explained well, if at all. He gets followed in a car by another Japanese person, a young executive in a major Japanese company. The guy, ... Rokkoji, introduces himself, treats Gen to dinner, and asks Gen to sign a contract with him to drive for his company in the World Rally Championship, but only on the condition that Gen is able to race up a mountain within a certain amount of time. Due to some odd circumstances, Gen fails, but Rokkoji decides to offer him the contract anyway, because of his “brand image” of being a “survivor.” You see, Gen has a nasty habit of totaling just about every car he drives, but miraculously surviving every crash, as he utters the OVA’s titular expletive. Specifically scouting out and offering a racing contract to a guy who habitually crashes cars doesn’t seem like the smartest business decision in the world, but I guess it had to happen for the sake of the plot.

Most of the rest of the OVA is set in Kenya, where the rally is taking place, with brief cutaways to the company’s headquarters in Japan, since there are some executives there who are displeased with what Rokkoji’s doing. Gen has some issues with the people on his racing team, particularly his first co-driver (who’s apparently named Dick Van Dyke), and he gets into a lot of arguments and car crashes everywhere he goes, while also being followed around by a French girl named Cotti (seriously, why is she there?). Can he successfully complete the Kenyan leg of the rally, or will his car-crashing and hotheaded tendencies get the best of him?

The plot is confusing and it jumps around a lot. I don’t know anything about rallies, but apparently even people who are rally fans deem this to be an inaccurate depiction of the sport, so having prior knowledge about rallies probably wouldn’t help that much. Events that should be dramatic turning points are presented in an underwhelming manner, and the anime ends rather abruptly (presumably to be continued in the manga). Also, there are some anti-foreign undertones to this OVA, with regards to economics, race and culture.

The characters aren’t developed at all, and sometimes it’s not even clear why they’re where they are in the first place. For instance, Cotti is first introduced cutting Gen off in his race up the mountain, and after she crashes her car off a cliff and it explodes, he saves her. But then, she’s down in Kenya as part of the team helping Gen and co. out. Why is she there? She’s the daughter of the founder of a major French company that’s going to partner with the Japanese company, but she’s not exactly an employee or anything. And she was supposed to be a runaway from school, but that whole plot line got thrown out the window as soon as it was introduced. Most of the other characters are barely memorable, except for the fact that they’re unlikable. Gen in particular is mean to just about everyone all the time for no reason. He treats his second co-driver condescendingly, says some inappropriate remarks to a woman in Japanese (so she won’t know what he’s saying), demands that his team feed him steak even though steak is not on the menu (likely due to there being an Indian on the team), etc., etc.

The technical aspects are below average. The character designs aren’t bad — they’re typical Kaoru Shintani designs — and the animation is decent during the racing scenes. However, scenes focusing on the characters speaking or moving around look rather stiff. The voices aren’t that memorable, and I felt that the actor for Gen was miscast — he sounded too old and deep-voiced. The ending theme, which is sometimes used as an insert song, is a mostly instrumental piece that sounds more like a flamenco song than something that would be appropriate for a show taking place in Kenya.

There is a fair amount of objectionable content here. Besides the titular expletive getting said a few times, there’s a racial slur, some questionable visual depictions of Kenyans and a couple of sexist remarks said by the protagonist. As mentioned above, the OVA has some anti-foreign undertones, and there are also some scenes which could be seen as sexist or mocking religion.

Overall, this was a disappointing OVA. It didn’t interest me in rally racing at all, due to the poorly constructed plot and unlikable characters. I don’t recommend watching this.