So let me say it straight:
This show is a piece of shit.
A MASTERPIECE of shit.
It's like a published fanime. Give the chick who did Nyan Neko Sugar Girls a halfassed budget and a small team of intern animators and I can guarantee this show is what you'll get. I can't say that it does everything wrong because Skelter Heaven doesn't really DO anything. It's a nineteen minute OVA that doesn't bother to establish setting, characters, or conflict--it just launches you into a CGI space squid attacking an apparently evacuated Tokyo and some girls have to pilot mechs to kill it. Although it doesn't really do anything. It mostly just floats around Tokyo and doesn't attack anything until its attacked. Seems like they should've called space pest control instead of sending out a bunch of Ripoff Reis to float around it menacingly.
The only thing I can give them credit for is actually explaining where all these girls came from (again: Ripoff Reis). Not that any of them are going to leave any impact on you. I'd be surprised if anyone left this show and remembered a single character's name (some of them aren't even GIVEN a name). But hey. At least they explained where they came from. It was unnecessary but they did it. Other than that the story is just a cluster of god knows what and ANY viewer is going to be left laughing at not only the car wreck they're watching, but also at how seriously its trying to take itself.
The art is a joke. The majority of the shots are either the girls strapped into a robot without moving at all, headshots with two frames of mouth animation, and some of the most hilarious CGI integration I have ever seen in my life. They could've green-screened a guy on a budget of five bucks and still gotten a better result. Along with that, the designs are boringly generic and constantly shifting. I'd really like an answer for why Lin keeps shrinking and growing when she stands next to Shinji Wright. Nevermind how her body looks like it's been broken at the hip in the shower scene.
I can't say much about the sound because there is about three total background music pieces in the show and I'm almost sure they're stock music. The opening and closing are by no means terrible, both are actually kind of nice sounding, but they're also pretty generic. As far as the voice acting goes...its annoying. Lots of shrill shrieking, underacting, and jamming a buttload of dialogue into poorly shot scenes with no lip flap coordination. There's no dub for this, thank god, because if there was then I'm sure Garzey's Wing would have finally met its match.
Overall this may be the worst thing I have ever seen in anime. But does that mean its UNWATCHABLE? No. I mentioned Nyan Neko Sugar Girls earlier in this review for a good reason: because like Nyan Neko Sugar Girls, the badness of this show makes it compulsively watchable. For the first time in a LONG time I was genuinely laughing so hard that I was tearing up. Skelter Heaven is hilarious. Is it intentionally hilarious? Well, based on the kind of quality Idea Factory churns out, I'd say no. But that doesn't change that it is absolutely worth a watch if you want to see what it looks like for an anime to fail in pretty much every way possible.
So please. Watch Skelter Heaven. Its the worst thing you'll ever see. But its also the funniest thing you'll ever see. I can't even fully put into words how bad it is, its that hilariously bad. It's only 19 minutes long so it won't even take too much time out of your day. But by god will it brighten it.
