Dragon's Heaven

I loved it.Made me feel warm and fuzzy at the end and I would recommend it to old-school-style fans.

I watched the English sub version on Youtube.I don't know if there is an English dubbing to this anime.

But there are 2 things I need to address:
1)According to MAL this is a 24 minutes piece.It is about 30 or 42 if you would include the credit scene.I hope someone would see and fix this.

2)I felt like I'm watching a pilot for a show.An unfinished work so to speak.The story felt rushed and could have been much more.The final fight didn't make much sense.

“Dragon's Heaven” is what happens when You mix “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” with “Gundam”… minus the good story and plot.

Listen, I’m not going to sit here and tell You this is a hidden gem of storytelling with an amazing plot and gripping story. It’s not. To be honest this 24 minute OVA is more like a proof of concept than anything else.

The plot itself is as bare bones as it can get. A young girl named Ikuuru encounters a robot (that for some reason hasn’t been discovered for a thousand years it was there) code named “Shaian”, befriends him, get to ... know him by the ancient way of small talk, teams up with his and fights antagonists that have a conquest and murder boners .Yes. It’s that basic.
To be honest, even for just about 24 minutes this show has a lot of illogical decision making by both the protagonists and antagonists and even some things that maybe make sense to the inhabitants of the world but need more explanation for the viewers. Like why Ikuuru seems to live outside of the city? Why people seem to trust Shaian from the get go or how the fuck did a girl in just a suit, without even a helmet, survived shooting basically a nuclear weapon (or at least a weapon the creates an atomic mushroom) point blank? If this was a full-fledged show that might get me riled up but I can let it slide as it’s just a series of events designed to show off the animation and art style. Unfortunately I’m the story first, art second type of guy.

That said, there is something pretty special here. The art direction. This OVA has a pretty unique, even for the 80s, art. The mechas design, the “evil” once especially, are almost technorganic with their slim torsos and a lot of questionably needed curves. Not, not erotic curves, just curves on the mechas that make them look so impractical for mass production and warfare.
There is some real charm and imagination in the designs, from Shaian being a weird mix of solid geometric figures but attached to a very slim waist, to a pretty massive combat suit the Ikuuru wears at one point that has the weirdest heels that I have ever seen, to the main big bad robot looking like some sort of hammerhead mutated technorganic Treant.
If this OVA was just a slideshow of the concept arts and designs I would be pretty satisfied with it. As it stands it’s, like I said earlier, more of a proof of concept than anything else. I’m not saying it’s not enjoyable to watch, just keep expectations at an appropriate (aka low to mid) level and I think you will have some good time watching this for the 24 minute OVA.

Somewhere out there has to be an artbook that is far more interesting to read than this is to watch. Given that the first few minutes of the show are shots of their human-sized, model robot articulating, the priority of the OVA is almost exclusively on the mechs to the detriment of everything else.

Honestly, the biggest criticism of Dragon's Heaven I have is that there just isn't anything to it. It's a post-apocalyptic setting, but it boils down to a desert that is a featureless Tatooine (and that isn't the only thing that looks ripped off from Star Wars). Our protagonist is a ... cute, spunky, 80's anime girl, and the most important thing about her character is... hold on, I'm sure there was something... she takes a bath? She's out in the desert and wakes up a robot. The robot follows her home, and she decides to keep it. Now she and her pet robot become the only force to stop invaders, for some reason. They win and mecha-fido doesn't even have to die.

Then there is the art that rides the line between being highly detailed and being messy. A lot of the shading was done in the lineart, and sometimes without any color, so there might be times you only see four or five solid colors. There will also be times where a liberal airbrushing puts colors everywhere, so it ends up feeling like it's lacking coherent art direction. Did I mention the four minutes of filmed footage?

If you have started to exhaust all of 80's mecha anime, then give it a shot. Otherwise, no one is missing anything that hasn't been done better elsewhere.