Bounty Dog: Getsumen no Eve

Bounty Dog dives right into the deep end with surreal, near psychological drama imagery and is guaranteed to confuse the sh*t out of you within its first 5 minutes; but what a beautiful 5 minutes it is. The anime starts with an absolutely beautiful montage of its moon city setting set to some slick city pop music and sets such a powerful tone of a false utopia beset by impending doom that will permeate the rest of the ova. It will take your mind off the plot confusion until the anime finally explains its premise; our main characters are secret agents and the mysterious girl ... is some clone of a moon goddess.
Show not tell is great except when it is used before viewer has even been given any story details to begin with! A 2 episode short ova generally does not have any business attempting a complex plot anyhow.
Even with the premise established, I still couldn't make sense of the themes and full story of this ova. It is another one of those ambitious sci fi ovas like Big Wars, Megazone 23 and Dallos and indeed borrows many sci fi elements and tropes from them. On a more superficial level, the moon setting recalls Dallos while there is a great hovercraft vs military chase sequence ala Megazone that is easily one of the ova's highlights.
Big Wars shares far more than a passing similarity to Bounty Dog. Both use a plot about cosmic deities monitoring and then suppressing humanity to explore themes of human civilisation developing too far. Both also share a very murky, saturated colour palette and have rather poor, overambitious execution of their stories.
The murky palette may have saved up on production costs but its oppressive, clinical look lends heavily to the surrealist and ominous atmosphere that I earlier mentioned. The execution of the story on the other hand is unsalvagable, it really is too much concepts and not enough time to linger on any details.

Ultimately Bounty Dog is forgettable if not for the absolutely rich mix of sci fi concepts and tropes it represents, resplendent with gorgeous futuristic art oozing with the passionate vision that dominated retro sci fi anime. Its not as high production as something like Venus Wars, Dragons Heaven, Five Star Stories or Bubblegum Crisis but if you like beautiful anime sci fi art, watch this one.

Though I doubt any of you misguided bastards will notice, Bounty Dog: Getsumen no Ibu is pretty good. Not that it's that intelligent or subtle that you're missing something. Not at all. It's just that you're too used to seeing this stuff, done better. But the year is 1994 and anime had yet to fully crawl out of it's depression and start booming again.

Then what exactly are you missing? I'm gonna be really vague and say I can't really tell you. Just the general spookyness and mindfuckery, the reason why we're all still watching Chinese cartoons as adults. There's something about this anime, a kind ... of vibe created by the combination of the sci-fi setting and the possibility of supernatural elements that I don't recall feeling in any earlier thing, but is present in later anime. Ergo Proxy comes to mind. I can't really put my finger on it.
Also any naked boobs are small, which is basically a sign of the makers' confidence in the story.

Come to think of it, this ova could've been either great or horrible. There's a lot of potential in the story for awesomeness, but also for a cheap, pulpy boobs-and-gore anime.
Thankfully the boobs were small and the bloody stuff was presented the way it should be, in moderation and at the right moment so it hits you in the gut. I guess the gut feeling is why I consider this underrated.

8/10 might be a bit much. It could have been better written. I was confused in a few instances I think I shouldn't have been confused. The animation was fairly cheap and bleak compared to other ova's of the time, although there were some nice character designs and movements on the freaky girl character. Also, due to its short running time, the characters never really got fleshed out apart from the focus on the main character's backstory. But it does deserve a hell of a lot more than the 5.whatever it's getting now. Which is basically the same score as your average early 90's hentai. Come on people, show some love.

Overall, it could've done with more action in the opening scenes and maybe some more episodes to spread out the action of the latter part and flesh out the characters, but I guess it's fine the way it is.

Final judgement on Bounty Dog: Getsumen no Ibu: better than you'll think it is.

Bounty Dog is one of the myriad sci-fi OVAs released in the 90s, and in many ways, it reflects the fact that it is just part of a crowd at the end of the day. While it does harbor some fun and creative ideas, and manages to be generally entertaining in a passive kind of way throughout, it doesn't capitalize on its unique aspects enough to really stand out. Beginning with the story, it is easily this anime's strongest aspect. The core concept of a fully settled, metropolitan version of the moon, harboring a dark alien secret within, somehow connected ... with a bounty hunter and his painful past, is actually a really good one, and has the potential to go quite far narratively. The execution itself doesn't really live up to the quality of its ideas, however, feeling distinctly rushed and somewhat disjointed. It definitely would have benefited from having some more time to marinate- I could have seen this being a cerebral slow-burn cyberpunk kind of show, like Ghost in the Shell or something like that. Still, it is a fun time in any case, inasmuch as you personally enjoy 90s OVAs.

The art is interesting, with a strong art direction that captures a gritty, cyberpunk version of Japanese futurism, and features some impressively animated fight scenes, though it sort of does a number on itself by applying this weird yellow piss filter over episode 1. Episode 2's art is far superior, in my opinion.

The sound is solid, meeting all basic standards of quality, though it must be said that the soundtrack is a good fit, with a citypop-style OP that serves as a very strong hook for the show as a whole.

The characters are generally pretty good, again meeting the basic standard of quality that I'd expect from this kind of work. They feel like they have agency in the story, too, and aren't just being moved along by necessity, which bolsters the general interest they bring to the table. Of them, our protagonist Yoshiyuki and his mercenary coworker Shoko are my favorites. Yoshiyuki is your archetypal blade runner-esque badass which is always fun to watch, and Shoko is a wisecracking mercenary girl who brings some much needed levity to the melodrama that can often come off as a little overbearing. Overall, Bounty Dog is a fun, if generally unremarkable, anime. It was worth my time, but at the end of the day it definitely lacks a more definite appeal.