Cipher

This is a prime example of a piece of media that is best admired for its audacity of existing (like, at all) as opposed to being good in any critical sense. Seeing a classic 80s Anime ooze so much Americana is just a head-trip, and for the fun (FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN) it invokes I have to recommend this to anyone who is interested. Additionally for all the fans of overanalyzing media, this is an excellent catalyst for interesting tangents, which is my bread and butter so I must doubly endorse this OVA to all that are interested in it.

For those don't care ... to overthink a good thing, you don't have to bother reading any more of this review. Just watch this and have a blast.

On a technical level there's nothing remarkable, if not softly crude, but that is undoubtedly part of the charm; the English voice acting is uncanny but also goes a long way to adding to the OVAs quirkiness. If I had to describe what works best about this short, the words ethereal and dreamy come to mind: this is pop-media at its purest and exists as a testament to the most romanticized aspects of both the American and Japanese experience of the 80s. In that sense it acts as a very interesting link between two distinct cultural moments on the other side of the world, celebrating the commonality of carefree, innocent opulence. Of course, it would be impossible for me to talk about this feeling without acknowledging how radically the world shifted away from this ethos (something that is reinforced by the repeated imagery of the Twin Towers, which will sadly forever create a haunting feeling in all media it is featured within,) and in that sense it would not be hard to understand how a contemporary viewer might get a sense of an "end of civilization" feeling while watching this.

The other elephant in the room is the palpable homoerotic undertones. Sexual analysis is not my area of expertise but there's a very Björn Andresen-esque pretty boy in Japan vibe going on, and while never addressed in this manner, the existence of identical athletic teenaged supermodel twins that trade lives and sexual partners has very Freudian implications. There is absolutely a rabbit hole to go down here if you want to.

All in all, I got a lot out of this OVA and I think there's no reason you can't as well. Just go in with the right expectations and enjoy yourself. Peace.

This thing's wild. It's a jumbled up montage of music videos stripped of context, and then an MTV-style "real bro interviews" thing where the main actor has a very noticeable accent, completely breaking the illusion of the character, along with a few real bad voice actors to go along with it.

Yep, this is a Japanese anime movie where it's voiced entirely in English. It's not much better than you'd expect.

It's wild and barely comprehensible, but it's also pretty short. 15 minutes of the 40 minute runtime are actually a making-of featurette after the fact; that's pretty nice and I appreciate it.

"Hello Japanese people we plucked off the streets, can you speak English?"

"Yeah!"

"OK, great, you're hired!"

If I were a gambling woman, I'd place money on that being the way they found the VA's for what is essentially a 30-minute long AMV intercut now and then with dialogue. I can't say I wasn't entertained, though, oddly enough. Maybe it was the music, or the way they hype up American culture and the film making process, but this just left me nostalgic and longing for a decade I wasn't even born in.

It's definitely something I would recommend if you want decent animation set to catchy pop songs ... and don't care too much about story or characters.