The story begins with a space-craft returning to Earth with a biological alien sample from Mars. Upon re-entering atmosphere, the ship burns up due to some unknown malfunction, and we get our first glimpse of Mars of Destruction’s glorious animation. The ship inexplicably speeds up, crumbles into fragments that resemble cigar-ash, and then—in complete defiance of the Earth’s gravity—these framents fall towards the bottom of the screen.
I cannot overstate how much I love the fight choreography of Mars of Destruction. In the first fight scene, three high-school girls in knockoff Gundam body-suits are pointing machine-guns at a pair of aliens. The girls stand there, not shooting, for a full twenty seconds, at which point a third alien shows up an blows off one of the girl’s heads with a laser. Interestingly, despite the fact that the girls are standing no more than thirty feet from the aliens, the lasers take five seconds to reach their target, begging the question as to why the girl didn’t move out of the way. Are the girls all sent into battle heavily sedate? That would certainly explain their complete inability to emote.
After being decapitated by laser, the girl in question slowly falls over backwards, without changing her pose even slightly, or letting go of her gun. To top off absurdity of the whole scene, the girls then take their fallen comrade to the hospital where the doctor confirms that, indeed, getting one’s head vaporized is fatal.
The sound-track is hysterically inappropriate. At one point, the “Barber of Seville” inexplicably plays in the middle of a battle-scene. Yes, people are swinging laser-swords at each other to public domain opera music.
The voice-acting is so bad, it may actually out-do Dub Piece for the Worst Anime Voice-Acting of All Time. In the middle of a fight-scene, a woman hands the protagonist a dangerous experimental weapon, and then explains, as calmly as possible, that he must use it…(twenty second pause)…or everyone will die.
There is not a single aspect of Mars of Destruction that is not hilariously and bizarrely stupid.
The Negative Side: You will never be able to say you like this anime without instantly being labeled a troll.
Speaking seriously, if I were to rate this anime on technical competence, I would give it a 2/10. It’s entertainment value is directly reliant how awful it is, and it take a sense of humor to appreciate this work.
Final Verdict: A must-watch. Mars of Destruction is a laugh riot, and is only 20 minutes long in its entirety. Not only that, it sets the standard for low production value. You don’t know what bad animation until you’ve seen Mars of Destruction.
