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Nora is about a girl named Nora who meets a professor on a flight to a vacation resort in space. But as they start hanging out in (space)town they notice an inordinate amount of electrical appliances, machines, etc. malfunctioning. It turns out another professor has decided to do a sick prank on mankind using a supercomputer, but the supercomputer decides to take things too far and attempts to wipe out all mankind, including the bad professor. Not cool. So the the professor and Nora, who were already trying to find the cause of all the malfunctioning, decide to try and stop the supercomputer with the ... aid of the bad professor.

What you'll immediately notice when watching this OVA is that it looks like it's from a tv anime, despite being an 80s OVA. The art clearly hasn't aged well and I don't think there was a single shot of animation in the OVA that impressed me. Despite that, it managed to have one single element that was consistently nice to look at: the main character Nora. And as far as I'm concerned, she steals the show the entire way through.

The titular character Nora is an air-headed, happy go lucky girl, who, after seeing the professor who's sitting next to her on the space ship on tv, decides to hang out with him for the rest of the day. She enjoys the little things in life with a sense of childlike joy and is described by the two professors as a mathematically perfect generator of randomness. She's adorable and a ton of fun to watch. She's the type of girl who would try to prevent a supercomputer from wiping out mankind, by talking to it about its feelings. Hypothetically speaking of course...

This OVA overall was a pleasant surprise and kept my attention all the way through with fun moment after fun moment. Nothing about it impressed me too highly, but it's a fine watch if you just need something to fill 50 minutes worth of time. There is also a sequel to this anime, which seems to have a reputation for being an absolute train-wreck. I've never had any problems with trains, (except that one time as a kid I puked in one and my grandma had to clean me up. Oh, and that other time I threw up in one after eating too much and you could clearly see what I had eaten that evening), but I guess I'll scrap myself for when I get to that OVA.

This might be the first clear instance of this type of anime. This anime is one of the oldest OVA's out there and it tells its story almost entirely through music video. The closest thing older than this that I can think of that does a similar thing is Belladonna of Sadness, which I think might have inspired this OVA to some extent. It's a little Ironic, though, that this anime, mostly based around music, is most interesting for its visuals. The songs are fine, but they're nothing impressive; it's really the visuals you watch this OVA for.

The story is about a boy who ... bumps into a cute girl under a bridge and she drops some of her stuff. He helps her pick it up and they start going out. This is about all there is to the story and I'd say that's fine. They both have very beautiful character designs and they're animated quite well. The backgrounds are good looking, but not so much that you'd want more time to stare at them. Where it gets interesting is when the music starts playing and the animators let their imagination loose.

Sadly, with this being the main appeal of the anime, it's also it's biggest drawback, as not all the visuals are equally interesting. For every shot that I thought looked great, there were one to two shots that weren't interesting enough to keep me from spacing out. Those great looking shots usually came in groups; usually most of the shots during an entire song were good or all the shots were boring. Usually the more boring shots focussed around the couple hanging out and not doing anything interesting. The more abstract visuals can be about anything. There is one about the couple flying around the city in a bi-plane, there is one that is comprised entirely of creative abstract animation and there is one about a bunch of guys in suits who do a weird dance(which I think definitely must have been inspired by the plague scene in Belladonna of sadness. Where else could it be from?)

So the value in this OVA lies mostly in these abstractly animated sequences, but these scenes do little to enforce the emotions of the rest of the show. There is a point in the OVA where it gets a little sad and the music get a little slower to match. But the visuals only get weirder and barely do anything to strengthen the emotions of the scene. And so this anime has individual moments that are interesting, but it doesn't have an emotional trough-line, the way Belladonna of sadness does, or a strong narrative like 'A girl'. It's just kind of a boring mess with some high points that make it worth watching.

Ultimately I only recommend this OVA if you really like music video's with interesting visuals. Anime that are similar but better include Belladonna of Sadness, A girl and interstella5555. And I'm sure there are tons of normal music videos out there that are great as well. But if you've watched those and you want more like it, or if you are on a mission to watch all 80s OVA's like a madman, then Machiko no Märchen isn't a bad watch. Who knows, maybe when you finish it you'll click away the tab and say to yourself: "Man, that sure was an anime..." And isn't that what we all watch anime for?

In 1958 Toei Animation came out with their first feature length film, Hakujaden. This film was such a big success that throughout the 60s and 70s they kept making a film like it every year. Generally these films tended to be high in production quality and in particular 1968’s Horus, Prince of the Sun wouldn’t be outshone as a sakuga showcase untill well into the 80s. Horus was a commercial failure, however, and Toei decided to change their business model and started making two films a year: one expensive and the other cheap. This change, together with the fact that a lot of talent working ... at Toei left around this time, led to the slow decline in quality of these films.

Now, I'm telling all of this because I want to paint a picture of the anime industry in the 60s and 70s when Toei animation was still the big powerhouse of the industry. Anime hadn’t really become its own thing yet and when it wasn’t copying what foreign animation studio’s like Disney were doing, which is exactly what these Toei films generally try to do, then it could often be plainly amateurish. A lot of tv anime were cheap panel for panel recreations of the manga and besides summary movies that just used footage from the tv show, these yearly Toei films were basically all there was. Sometimes, however, something interesting popped up, that is worth remembering. I certainly don’t wish to push forth the idea that 60s and 70s anime isn’t worth your time, or that there weren’t tons of interesting creative figures in the anime industry who wanted to do cool stuff. What I do want to say is that anime around this time was on a leach. The people at Toei animation, in particular Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki felt strangled by this leach. Isao Takahata’s ‘Horus, Prince of the Sun’ was his attempt to get rid of that leach but it failed and just a few years later he and Miyazaki left for greener pastures. Just before Miyazaki left Toei completely, however, he created the manga, as well as the concept and a lot of the most impressive animation of the film Doubutsu Takarajima. This film is different from all the other Toei films, in that it is for a large part a passion project like Horus, but it is also extremely well suited for a large casual audience, like the dryer and more commercial Puss and Boots(1969) or most of the other Toei films. This is generally how Miyazaki’s entire career can be described.

The start of the film introduces you to Jim and his friend who is a mouse with glasses (I wonder if Ganba no Bouken was influenced by this film) and a baby. Where Jim’s parents are I don’t know, but if something like that had bothered me I wouldn’t be recommending this film. A mysterious man enters the inn, that Jim is working at and not long after a bunch of pig guys storm the place and try to go after him, whilst Jim climbs onto the roof with the map that the mysterious man left him. These first moments of the film are immediately pretty striking. The first shot in the film is of the town they’re in and the background art for this is really stylish and beautiful. The scene in the inn, though it takes a minute to get going, gets pretty exciting and fun, whilst also creating a decent amount of suspense. Generally the entire anime consists of lots of fun action moments like that, mostly taking place on the pirate ship and it culminates in this awesome 20 minute climax.

On his journey to get to treasure island Jim gets captured by pirates, meets a girl named Kathy and together with her fights these pirates, whilst also using them and their ship to get to treasure island. A lot of the film takes place on the ship and a lot of fun things happen when the pirates and Jim interact. The pirates try tons of things to try and get the map away from Jim and Kathy and Jim and his mouse friend pay them back with tons of hijinx of their own. The last 25 minutes or so of the film take place on treasure island and is almost completely full of action. It’s an epic back and forth between the captain and Jim and Kathy with tons of awesome animation by Hayao Miyazaki.

The art in the film is pretty striking. Lots of the backgrounds look great, with the only exception being the backgrounds in the jungle on treasure island, that just don’t do it for me. The character designs are simple but decently memorable. Because of their simplicity they can be animated in lots of ways and you’ll constantly be seeing them doing fun and wacky stuff. There’s also lots of visual comedy, which is often done in the middle of action scenes and lives on the general fast pace of all the action in this film. There’s also some great animation in this film, with lots of great shots of fearsome waves, a few really cool action bits with tons of stuff happening on screen at once and of course lots of great action bits during the climax with great rock slides and destruction.

If I haven’t conveyed it enough during my review I’ll just spell it out for you: this film is super fun and silly. There are parts where the film gets a little slow, but for the most part it’s constantly throwing fast action bits and silly comedy scenes your way and these always have a tendency of getting a little unrealistic. I think the best example of this is the sword fighting, which is never very well choreographed, but is lovably silly. The characters are basically just waving their swords around. There is even a moment in the film where Jim is fighting off several pig pirates and he has to hurry up to go and help Kathy, and so he decides to just start swinging his sword even faster. It didn’t work.

The music is pretty fun and there are a few tracks that really added to the scene they were in. There are a few sing-songs, but luckily, unlike the singing in Puss and Boots, they didn’t get in the way of the film, even if they didn’t add anything to the narrative.

Ultimately I think this film is a good watch for everyone who likes films that are just fun and not much else. It’s not always that: the first half is a bit slower than the second, but for the most part it’s a fun ride with lots of great action, animation and visual comedy and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s into that. Otherwise I can point you to the anime ‘Horus, prince of the Sun’, the other classic must watch Toei animation film, directed by Isao Takahata.

Sukeban Deka is perhaps mostly known nowadays in the west as one of the biggest influences to the show Kill la Kill. In particular the live action tv show and movies were quite popular and Kill la Kill even directly copied the ED of that show. The OVA, though lesser known, is nothing to sniff at either, even if it has it’s problems.

Sukeban Deka started out as a manga in 1975 and would have been considered a classic by the time this OVA came out. It was inspired by the rise of Sukeban, gangs of violent highschool girls that tried to defy gender expectations and ... were by some viewed with loathing and disgust and by others admired. Just like the Gyaru from the early 2000’s, cultural interest in in the Sukeban was longer lived than the Sukeban themselves and so the media started romanticizing them.

By 1991 Sukeban Deka was already a major multi media franchise, so it´s odd that the anime adaptation is rather cheaply made. If you know enough about the history of anime, however, you’d know that the anime industry was in a rough state in the early 90’s and as a result all the OVA’s that came out looked like garbage in comparison to the ones that came out just a few years earlier.

Luckily that leads us to the first strong point of this OVA: the directing by Hitoshi Nanba. Nanba seems to have a strong visual style, even if not a very personal one. His directing seems to take a lot of influence from that of Osamu Dezaki, with whom he worked as a story border and episode director on Ace wo Nerae! 2, just a few years earlier. This is good, because Dezaki’s directing has a lot of style and has a tendency of looking really good despite a low budget. Rarely does a shot in this OVA look flat or uninteresting, even if few of them look super cinematic. The fight scenes look cool and fun, even if the animation rarely impresses you, and they never outstay their welcome.

I’d say the strongest aspect of this OVA is the story, which revolves around delinquent girl Saki Asamiya, who’s been blackmailed by the police to help them fight three rich, criminal sisters, who’ve come to rule Saki’s school in her absence. She befriends an impoverished girl who aspires to be a painter and a lovable idiot named Sanpei. Oh, btw, did I mention her fighting style involves her beating up her enemies with her trusty yoyo! If that’s not enough to make you watch this anime, then I don’t know what is.

Other than that, I’d say the characters are pretty okay. None of them are super stand out or well developed, but all the good guys are really endearing and all the bad guys are really menacing and crazy. Whenever the good guys and bad guys interact there is an appropriate amount of tension and some characters even have a little more going on with them than first meets the eye.

Overall I’d say Sukeban deka is a fun, exciting and sometimes dramatic action OVA, that you should definitely watch if you’re into over the top action. Other than that you should check out Kill la Kill if you haven’t already, as it takes a lot of influence from this story and also has a lot of Dezaki-esque directing.

In the late 80’s, at the peak of the Japanese bubble economy, money was being thrown around almost arbitrarily, and as a result a large amount of incredible looking OVA’s were being funded, regardless of whether they were any good or had the potential to sell. This, besides cementing the time period as the most visually interesting time period in anime history, would be the downfall of the anime industry and directly lead into the sluggish(though certainly not irredeemable) early 90’s. The mid 80’s however were slightly different. Yes, a large amount of OVA’s were flooding the market, but most of them were porn. And ... if they were not they were often summary films, side story or sequel episodes to tv anime or short 24 minute films. Just before, thanks to porn, the OVA market exploded, however, a small handful of OVA’s largely defined what OVA’s in the future could and would look like. Among these were Dallos, which was a high budget space drama, several short films like Rain Boy, directed by Osamu Tezuka, several porn OVA’s like lolita anime and cream lemon, which were more noteworthy for their out there visuals, than for their sex scenes, and, most interestingly in my opinion, Birth, the first feature length direct to video Japanese animated film.

Birth wasn’t a very big success, neither in Japan, nor in the west(though I heard it got two dubs for whatever reason), and this was for a good reason: it wasn’t very good. It wasn’t very uncommon in the 80’s for an OVA to have amazing visuals, but to be terribly written and Birth is a perfect example of that. Immediately upon starting the film you are greeted by boring shots of space, followed by boring landscapes of some boring desert planet. The first minute of the film seems dead set on convincing you the setting is not interesting in the slightest and you’re immediately put off. After this you’re somewhat pulled back into the film by this weird yellow goo ball eating a plant and being chased by another, bigger goo ball, this one being blue and holding a Triton. The high usage of background animation is immediately striking and there is this awesome shot of the blue goo ball running into a rock and the rock breaking into a million pieces. Next the yellow goo ball gets saved by a girl in a weird outfit and pacing falls flat again, and so does the films attempt at comedy, as this boring scene is mostly meant to be comedic. This is then again followed by some awesome shots of the girl flying around accompanied by some mind blowing background animation, just before the pacing comes to a halt again. The film for it’s entire run keeps switching between these awesome traveling and destruction shots, with fantastic animation, and more boring moments, where the completely uninteresting plot is being developed or equally uninteresting characters take the spotlight. The biggest problem, however, is that the boring moments become longer and longer throughout the film and the really cool looking moments don’t.

The most common complaint given against Birth, is that the plot is hard to follow. Though I don’t disagree with this complaint, I personally don’t really think that’s too important. This is clearly the type of film that is just trying to be fun and I don’t think that a good plot is necessary to achieve this. The problem, however, is that the film is almost never fun. It’s almost always boring. Though a good plot could probably have helped, I don’t think it’s the main reason for why so much of the film is boring. Rather, I think the characters are the main issue. The main character is a hot girl and exists solely for the purpose of being the hot girl you can put on the cover art for the video tape. She’s completely cliched and generic. Besides her there is the guy who swings a sword, some old space boy who is just a cliched old man who likes hot girls and some other guy who works with him in his space ship. Never in the entire story do these characters bounce off of each other in a funny or endearing manner and never do these characters do anything interesting or do they have their emotions explored. Anytime the films focuses on these characters and they’re not chasing or being chased the film falls completely flat.

The actual plot of the film focuses on MC girl being chased by In-organics, weird green aliens that are implied to be wiping out all organic life in the universe, but are more portrayed as generic, dumb punks. Their only purpose is to ensue chase scenes(and god bless them) and fighting scenes. That brings me to the MC boy who finds some cool sword that the In-organics are trying to find and that makes him really powerful. He takes the In-organics down in some laughably poorly choreographed fight scenes, in one of which there is a small cut away in the middle of the boy’s attack in between which the boy and the big Inorganic he fights are suddenly in different positions and the boy cuts the beast in a way that he couldn’t possible have without the cut. It’s extremely disappointing that this film, which has some stellar animation, did not manage to have stellar fights scenes. The plot continues with all the characters going to some big city and fighting some big organics and it’s all terribly unexciting.

I’ve been implying that the only good aspect of the film is the animation, and this is not entirely true. I also love the score, which is filled with tons of cool 80’s beats and really helps with giving the film that cool 80 aesthetic, which so many people nowadays seem to crave and have nostalgia for. Sadly the other aspect of the sound, the sound design is fairly lacking and it’s not uncommon for a ton of stuff to be happening on screen whilst only half of it is being heard and as a result these scenes feel like you’re watching something that is so old it has become unwatchable(which is not something I often feel, as someone who watches quite a bit of old anime). It doesn’t help either that these types of scenes are generally already the boring ones and take you completely out of the film.

Ultimately I can’t say I regret watching this film, as it did give me some nice eye candy, but it’s certainly not good. I only recommend this film if you’re really into old 80’s action films and you can appreciate some good background animation. Otherwise I recommend you go watch something else. For example, go check out the film Magnetic Rose, a must watch film and the first of three shorter films that make up Memories. Have a good time!

From the promotional art of this show it looked like it wouldn't be more than a boring kid's show, however, after seeing the (2017) besides the title, meaning this is a remake and the original is probably quite popular in Japan and after seeing it's rated PG 13 and after reading the synopsis of the manga I decided to give it a try.

What I expected, as the synopsis suggested, was a cute and somewhat fun show about video game tropes. However, what I got was a show that was far less focused of video game tropes or being cute and much more on comedy...good comedy. ... This show is absolutely hilarious! In the beginning of the show the parents of MC tell him to become a hero and, when the boy refuses, shoot him of with a giant slingshot! Who thinks of this stuff? This show is comedic gold! And it isn’t just a good joke occasionally; this show is funny constantly. This anime is a remake of a 45 episode show from the 90’s and a 38 episode show from 2000, but this one is only 24 episodes, so they could skim all the fat and as a result this show is dense. There are constantly jokes flying left and right and you’ll find yourself constantly entertained.

The show mostly advertises itself as a show about RPG-tropes, but you don't actually need to have any interest in this subject. Sure, being into old jRPGs helps, but the meat of the story is the personality driven comedy. Old RPGs aren't the subject matter, but the theme. It can be fully enjoyed as a comedy show or even a fantasy show, without caring about RPGs.

The two main characters are a young boy and a young girl around his age (They’re 12 at the start of the story). The boy is lazy and easily seduced, but seems to at least have the heart of the traditional hero. The girl is a typical girl of around her age who is very concerned with her image and who is infatuated with the boy in a very endearing manner. The two are absolutely adorable together. Also, a lot of the comedy around these characters is based on the contrast between them being normal teenagers and the fact that it is expected of them to be capable warriors, ready to take on the big bad and any of his henchmen (which they are not).

One of the first things you'll notice about the show is the art style. The character designs look very young, which will turn a lot of people off, but if you take the time to look at it you will realize they are actually very nice to look at and incredibly cute. Also, a lot of work is put into their outfits. Half of the time they’ll be walking around in their usual clothes, but whenever they go on an adventure they put on cute outfits that look adorable and have a lot of work put into them. And also, because the designs are very simple, they are permitted to constantly be moving and often in interesting ways. The show is constantly animated and oozes style. Besides that, the backgrounds are fantastic and especially the landscapes are incredibly nice to look at. It’s a very visually pleasing show.

Despite all that, the show is still a comedy show and the main appeal of the show is this comedy. If you watch one episode of the show and you didn't like the comedy you'll probably not like the show at all. If you do find it funny, then you'll love the show as it just gets funnier and it stays funny throughout.