The animation is also great and gets more lively as the OVA goes on. The animation isn't the best looking though as when there is a lot of motion, the shading will tend to be taken out to save on resources. That doesn't make what's here bad, but it doesn't make what's here fantastic either. Even so, there are some fantastic scenes in this anime that are done in a relatively creative manner. I found the art style nice and it treated everything in a proper way to make it all a bit believable for an anime thriller. The machines move and act like machines, and they're given a bit of an unpredictable functionality that makes them a tad eerie. There are also many moments where multiple people will move about on screen, along with vehicles and ships. The designing of the futuristic setting is also well handled, while not too original. What I found most interesting was that a number of the futuristic flying vehicles still had propellers and wings that gave the ships a moderately unique and cool look.
The direction and the sound do well to keeping the atmosphere feeling deadly with some good work on sound effects. To the music, there's a lot of fast and loud electronic beats that should be expected from an 80's thriller. I watched this OVA in english dubs, and I can report that they were better than average for the most part. However, while most actors did well, there are two stand-out bad actors that sadly have a somewhat concurrent place in the run-time. I was able to forgive that though as the other actors were doing a fine job.
The story is, again, average to what one would expect from an 80's thriller. However, the characters that occupy the story aren't bad in their interaction. There are plenty of side characters that I found myself fairly interested in, but sadly more so than the main character for much of the time. The main character has basically zero back-story to her and basically no personality. She serves as the doer and is kinda like a Ripley character with a camera. If it was just her starting out she may have been more interesting at the beginning, but she was stuck with a pointless side-character for some time whose contribution to the enjoyment was in the light negative - feeling like a talking brief-case she had to carry about with her. That character doesn't have much screen-time in reality, but so does the main character in a way as she has a close amount of time compared to some side characters. Overall, the characters serve their purposes and act reasonably for the most part, but are in no way developed or all too interesting on their own. When considering the situation around them though, there is still some interest to be had.
Black Magic M-66 is a cool thriller for anime that is one that's also actually able to pull it off well. Many thriller anime focus on gore as the eerie part, but that doesn't connect much of the time (Elfen Lied, Another, etc.). What they usually forget to do is keep the atmosphere done well and have the monster act mysteriously. It couldn't be said that the machines in this OVA act "mysteriously" though the whole time, but more so in the first half. The second half is where the relation to "Terminator" becomes more apparent than that of "Predator", and also the way in which the robot acts changes in a slightly plot-convincing way. Even so, there is a light bit of reasonability to the sudden change in the robot's abilities and even if there wasn't, it isn't really necessary to take the story too seriously in that aspect. Although, some situations do arise where you think the robot has won if it acts like it was before, but it instead acts much like a Frankenstein monster of older black and white movies. Still entertaining, and surprisingly still a bit thrilling in certain moments. Black Magic M-66 is an old anime thriller that those who want something a little different from the usual should check out.
