In the last couple years, Area 88 has seen an explosion of popularity here on MAL. This makes it a rather tricky title to review. It used to be criminally underrated, but now it's actually in danger of becoming overrated. While Area 88 is a strong OVA and does a number of things really well, it also has some aspects that really bug me.
The Psychological Effects of War:
Area 88 is entirely devoted to showing the horrible effects that war has on the human psyche. It's not just PTSD or even the dehumanizing effect of how soldiers learn to see their enemies. Once you go to war, it's immensely difficult to adapt back to civilian life. Soldiers have a hard time relating to civilians, who have never been in real danger and can't possibly understand what they've been through on the front lines. This leads to social isolation, depression, and often suicide. Many former soldiers become mercenaries because they feel they don't have a home outside the battlefield.
Literature devoted to this topic bloomed after World War 1 with the writers of the "Lost Generation" like Hemmingway, Wilfred Owen, Remarque, etc. In the Western world and especially the United States, these themes made a huge comeback in films, shows, and literature of the 1970s and early 1980s following the Vietnam War. It was this second wave that directly inspired Area 88. The mangaka, director, and anime writer had never been to war themselves, but they saw the critical success of American movies like Deer Hunter, First Blood, Platoon, etc. They wanted a piece of that pie, so we got this anime. To be fair, it's pretty damn good and handles the topic with respect. Unfortunately, the plot is...kind of a mess.
Plot: (Spoilers Ahead! Skip plot section if you don't want anything spoiled)
Shin is a Japanese commercial airline pilot who is in love with the daughter of an airline CEO. Unfortunately, the CEO is an evil asshole and collaborates with Shin's traitor "friend" to create a ridiculous scheme to get rid of Shin. Do they put a Yakuza hit on him? Nope. Do they pay off a waitress to falsely accuse him of rape and fire him? Nope. Do they get him drunk and trick him into joining the Iranian Air Force during the Iran/Iraq War? If you guessed that last one, congratulations! You win!
I'm dead serious, that's really what they went with. Now they can't call it Iran for legal reasons, but it's a Middle Eastern War raging in the 80s with Soviet fighter planes vs. US fighter planes. It's clearly supposed to be the Iran/Iraq War. Shin of course rejects this once he sobers up, but the Iranians absolutely REFUSE to let him back out. The fate of the war clearly hinges on this commercial pilot with zero experience piloting fighter jets, doesn't speak a language anyone understands, and has no desire to be there. It turns out the Iranians were smart like a fox because this airline pilot is immediately the best fighter pilot to ever live...for no reason! Even Erich Hartmann and Manfred von Richthofen bow down to Shin. Oh, and he can instantly speak Farsi, or they all learned Japanese...or the writer wasn't thinking.
Shin becomes a super successful pilot and gets all over the news as a modern fighter ace. This infuriates evil CEO, so he commences what might be the most pants on head retarded sub-plot I've ever seen in anime! He flies to France to hire the Italian Mafia to steal an F-16 and fly it into Iranian airspace to somehow find and shoot down a specific pilot! Jesus fucking Christ! This is "galaxy brain" shit! Shin keeps surviving while his co-pilots all die. He's able to get out of the war but can't adapt to civilian life. Instead, he decides to return to the battlefield and go out in a dramatic blaze of glory! That last part honestly feels like something Hideo Kojima would write...minus the nanomachines.
Art:
The dogfights are well animated and well-choreographed. This is some beautiful, hand drawn 80s animation that has aged very well. The character art has kind of a Leiji Matsumoto feel, but it works. I don't have anything negative to say about the art, it's pretty spectacular.
Overall:
I feel like I've been unfairly, overly harsh on this anime, but I can't discuss this title without mentioning some of the issues. Maybe this would work better if it were set in the modern Congo with 2 grizzled mercenaries meeting. One is an American soldier who fought in Iraq and the other is a Russian soldier who fought in Chechnya. Area 88 is beautiful to look at and has all the potential in the world, but the show we got is more a flawed diamond in the rough than it was a flawless masterpiece. That's just my thoughts on it though. I would still definitely recommend watching it!
