Area 88 follows Shin Kazama, a pilot working for Yamato Airlines. Shin gets tricked by his best friend into signing a contract that ties him to the foreign legion of a remote country called Aslan, where he gets stationed at Area 88. The foreign legion are almost like hired mercenaries. Aslan has been split into two sides and a civil war has broken out, and both sides are doing everything they can to win this war. Shin just wants to get out of this hell and get back to his normal life and his girlfriend, but there are only three ways to do that. One way is two serve his three years, another is two earn 1,5 million dollars to pay himself out, and the third way is to desert.
I have to say, the story in this OVA series sounded fairly interesting going in to the show. However, after a while I realized that it wasn't quite as interesting as I thought it would be. The dogfights were cool and all, and I liked seeing Shin struggle with having to kill people just to buy his own freedom, however, when we first meet Shin he has already killed quite a lot of people, so I also feel this disconnect from him since he's already turned into a very capable killer. I feel like one of the things this show is going for is trying to sympathy towards Shin and his situation, cause it is a very shitty situation for him, but ultimately it just felt kinda cheap to me. Especially when his "friend" who tricked him into signing the contract is portrayed as such a one dimensional villain.
The characters in this show felt very standard in my opinion. You have our protagonist Shin Kazama who's the unlucky soul who got tricked into fighting in a war he wants nothing to do with, and all he wants to do now is go home. Then you have Micky Simon, who ends up becoming one of Shin's friends at Area 88, but again there is not really that much to him apart for a little backstory that explains why he's there. You also have Shin's girlfriend Ryoko Tsugumo who's the daughter of the owner of Yamato Airlines. Her entire role in this is basically just to worry about Shin and eventually trying to bring him back from Area 88 when she realizes that he has been tricked and sent there. The last character I wanna touch on is Satoru Kanzaki. He has been Shin's best friend since they were at the orphanage, and together with Shin they both became pilots working for Yamato Airlines. Satoru is very jealous of Shin though, cause he is a better pilot than him and he got the daughter of the company, and Satoru just hates people who are more successful than him in general, so he plots to send Shin away, take over Yamato Airlines and steal Ryoko away from Shin.
The animation in this series is something I have to give credit. It looks really good, and no, I am not just talking about Shin's fantastic hair. The movement is very smooth and the attention to detail in the fights were extremely cool to look at. It made me very immersed in the aerial combat which is a huge part of the OVAs.
The music in this show was pretty decent in my opinion. While nothing I would listen to outside of the show, it did complement the series fairly well. But at the same time, there is not a single piece of music that I felt stood out in the series.
Overall I have to say that I'm disappointed in this series. I was expecting something a little better than what I got. We basically got two stories wrapped up in one. One story was about a man who had been unwillingly drafted into the millitary to fight in a war that he has nothing to do with, and the other story was that of a long distance relationship and believing and trusting the other. However, I do not think that any of those things were handled all that well. I will even go so far as to say that if it were not for those fantastic dogfights on display I would not have liked this at all. That more or less saved this series for me and made it an ok watch, since it is such a big portion of the series. But when they were diving into backstory or trying to explain why things had worked out the way they did for everyone, I just felt like it was lacking all the way through. I wish I could be more positive on this show, but sadly I just feel like it has a few too many problems when it came to telling it's story, and I think it would have been way better as simply a series about millitary pilots with cool dogfights.
