What can I say about it? Well, If you’re reading this, then I assume you’re not sure whether you should watch it. So I’ll do my best to help you make up your mind. Don't worry, I'm not gonna trash it that much or anything. I report, you decide (more or less).
So if you’re familiar with Go Nagai you know that he's known for having eroticism and violence in many of his works. Besides that though, he did end up creating some influential and creative titles (Cutey Honey, Mazinger Z), but I don't think Violence Jack falls in to that category.
Anyway, this is an 80’s torture porn OVA and is known as one of the most grotesque, sadistic and cruel anime ever made (and rightfully so).
As you can imagine, the story takes place in a grim post apocalyptic setting. And that's about it, any background info about this is pretty vague.
As for the story itself, well... Each episode has the same story structure, they’re all stand alone and follow the same basic pattern. In each of them there’s some disastrous event in Japan and as a result, the strong people take advantage of the situation and persecute the weak. And we (the audience) get to witness that, with all the Gory details. Sure, it involves themes like anarchy, lawlessness and how some people might behave in such situations, but there’s hardly anything that resembles commentary on it. It’s just there to shock and disgust. And in other cases, to arouse (yep, that's how sick this anime is, folks).
Jack himself is some sort of Giant who always happens to be in the neighborhood during these attrocities. He's quite obviously very strong and he always sides with the weak, but it doesn’t seem like he really wants to. It just looks like he’s doing them a favor or something. Even though I guess he has some sense of justice in him. Besides that though, he’s just a bland heavy dude as far as the anime is concerned because we don’t even find out who he is, since this is an incomplete adaption of the source material (which I haven’t touched). It turns out this is actually a sequel to another of Go Nagai’s works (if you wanna find out who Jack is, just check his character page here on MAL, but apparently it's a spoiler or something).
The rest of the characters are either just there to die and for you to feel sorry for, or completely evil and sadistic people you’re gonna hope to see die miserably. There’s not much else, really. Most of them don’t have any back-story (with an exception or two) and none of them are particularly focused on, or alive long enough to develop so there’s no point in talking about them much.
Production values are somewhat good for its time. The soundtrack has a lot of 80’s sounding music (very 80’s!) but it’s quite creepy and fitting most of the time. Sound effects and (Japanese) voice acting also do a decent job in making the violence more graphic and disturbing. The character designs aren’t very pretty and neither are the colors, but they are mostly detailed. And the same goes for the backgrounds. Animation was ok for its time (not great though) and it gets better with each episode. Overall the directing certainly does a decent job in giving off a post apocalyptic atmosphere. Though it's recommended to watch it in high quality, if possible.
Now that that’s over with, I’ll do spoiler free rants on each episode separately so this review will be more informative, and then go on to my conclusion:
-Vol’ 1- This one has an earthquake, after which, a man kidnaps women and turns them in to sex slaves in addition to going after our hero, Violence Jack. Did I mention that this is the tamer one of the three? Yep, at this point the violence seems pretty basic for an 80’s gore OVA. Besides nudity and sex, there’s nothing here you haven’t seen in the Hokuto no Ken movie. The story was both meh and also paced badly, it seems messy and rushed. 2.5/10
-Vol’ 2- Oh boy, what a nightmare! I can’t describe what takes place here because this review might be removed (assuming these reviews are moderated), but I’ll tell you what the basic premise is; after yet another natural disaster, people go underground and separate in to 3 groups. One group consists of people who just want to find a way to survive, another group has women only (from fear of getting raped) and the third is a group of vicious thugs lead by a transvestite and his.. Giant lover. So you can imagine what horrors take place here... I’m just gonna say that there’s some similarities to the images I’ve seen from the Nanking Massacre. Besides that, it has more of a story, it's paced better, ends properly (for an end of an arc) and the animation improved a little. But it’s also the most offensive. 3.5/10.
-Vol 3- It takes place in a peaceful town somewhere in the wastelands and its quickly attacked by a motorcycle gang. This one is basically like an average HnK episode. But wait, there’s actually a notable character in this one that has some background and a proper motivation (hurray!). The character is a muscular chick with scars on her face and body (she’s really hot btw, they rarely make anime chicks like this nowadays) and we witness her lover being torn to pieces in front of her in the beginning of the episode. As a result she’s out for revenge. Not as insane as Vol’ 2 but still very gruesome at points. Character designs seem more polished and the animation is better too. Unfortunately, this episode ends with some sort of cliffhanger and was left incomplete. 3/10
*Final score and conclusion* 3/10
It’s obviously very bad and repulsive. And it’s not enjoyably bad either.
But believe it or not, It’s actually watchable (assuming you can tolerate the violence) as well as somewhat memorable because it's still on my mind from time to time. Which is more than I can say about some other 80’s/ 90’s gore OVAs that have no narrative coherence whatsoever.
But that still doesn’t make it good.
If you want something similar (and good), I suggest the Hokuto no Ken franchise. Yes, it’s basically Violence Jack for kids, but it has a great deal of memorable characters, nice music and a cool martial arts concept (despite being a little silly).
Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I need some counseling.
