To put it lightly, its visuals are as attractive and appealing as steaming, moist, chunky shit from a Great Dane. Eight minutes in, I was actually flabbergasted to not see flies buzzing around my screen because the appearance was so uncanny. Budget problems were really blatant from the get-go, and the animation is quite below even modest standards (awkward movements and stiff characters galore). Direction and action are abysmal, and the cinematographic technique known as shaky camera is overused and utilized awfully. The main character designs are generic at best, and the villain designs are severely pathetic. The villains' powers are ill-conceived as well (mouth beams are not, nor will they ever be, cool or clever).
The sound design is, as one might assume, sub par. Voice acting was definitely not a priority (so far it seems nothing during the production of this anime was); weak and humdrum performances fill up the entire OVA. Sound effects were ridiculously cheap and goofy, and its use of music isn't much better. Classical music is hamfistedly stuck in a multitude of scenes, and the transitioning from one song to another is, of course, crude.
Interestingly enough, it seems Mars of Destruction might have been a deliberate Neon Genesis Evangelion parody. Several similarities and possible pokes at the influential series appear throughout the OVA, including: their primary enemies being called Ancients (Angels in NGE), the use of religious symbolism, specifically with the cross, the usage of Classical music, the involuntary use of a powerful mecha by the main character due to his father forcing him to, the main character going through a rampage while being inside the mecha (similar to NGE's berserker mode), et cetera. It's plausible that the creators wanted to seriously lampoon the Neon Genesis Evangelion series, or perhaps they are merely unabashed thieves that felt the need to borrow various elements from a well-known series, without giving due credit, just to make their project "work". I'm not sure which one I believe is true yet.
In any case, all of of the inept qualities that Mars of Destruction shamelessly flaunts culminate humorously due to The Tommy Wiseau (or Ed Wood) Effect. In other words, its striking amount of inability in just about every area result in a decent amount of chuckles and a protracted smile. Most smelly, putrid garbage in anime generally manage to just be grating and intolerable, but Mars of Destruction managed to use its flaws to its benefit and invoke non-well-earned laughter from it. I doubt the creators desired it to turn out the way it did (something tells me they thought they were creating their serious, dramatic magnum opus), but this anime is fairly funny, albeit not throughly hilarious. It is most definitely not the incredibly emotionally-resonant, thrilling, and profound piece of art the director and producers may have wanted it to be, but it is, in a most likely unintended sense, entertaining and gratifying. And hey, that's enough of a reason for me to use nineteen minutes of my oh-so-precious time on it.
Six Squeaky, Unconvincing "Takeruuuuu!" Cries out of Ten.
