To wit:
One day, Yoshiyuki Tomino, creator of Gundam, went "hey what if i wrote a prequel to that Aura Battler Dunbine thing I did". So he did.
Sometime later, someone went "let's adapt that prequel into these OVAs". And Tomino went "lol sure dude".
And lo, GARZEY'S WING was born.
It's so quintessentially bad. Legend says it pierced the veil of time and H.P. "Racist McGee" Lovecraft saw it and went "that's less explainable than Cthulhu".
So where to begin? Story? There's a story? I mean this half-Japanese dude goes to a fantasy world but he's still on Earth but his soul and body are connected, he's surrounded by 12th and 13th century foreign warriors, there are even dinosaurs there, and his sword is unbelievably dull.
Also most of the time his Earthbound body is at a pool party or asleep.
The English dub is bad. Not painfully bad, no. It's amazingly bad. It feels like the ADR director left after a few minutes and the voice actors just delivered everything as quick as they could There's an ACTUAL ACTRESS in this dub! She's been in a ton of stuff including Better Call Saul and House of Cards. It's mindblowingly inept, unlike the rest of the liscensor's work which is just inept.
The music's ok. Shiro Sagisu of Evangelion/Nadia/Bleach fame did it. It's not memorable. It's ok.
The art's bad. Its the 90s generic style. The animation is decent in episode one and laughable the other episodes. The second episode features a man sliding across screen to avoid an arrow in one of the funniest moments in the show.
Character-wise? it's so rushed nobody has a character. There's a very telling moment in the final episode, where Chris (our hero) goes "Why does that guy live with monkeys?" and the main girl goes "He's interesting because he is a loner". That's all the development that man gets and he's important to the final episode. Kind of. But not really.
I don't know anyone's name aside from Chris and Rumiko, who's voiced by the aforementioned House of Cards lady. The best character is the fairy who I literally just remembered exists.
It's bad. Nothing is good about it. But get a couple friends and it's the greatest 90 minutes of your life for the next 90 minutes. It's lie Street Fighter: The Movie, except that's actually fun on its own and not fun because it's bad.
A final adage to leave you with from one of the side characters: "Humans are just human." That's the most Tomino thing I think Tomino's ever written.
I want that line engraved on my tombstone.
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RETROMETROID
1992-20XX
"Humans are just human" - Garzey's Wing
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