Bastard!! Ankoku no Hakaishin

Bastard!! is, for the most part, so hilariously, inexcusably bad that it's actually good; essentially a parody on itself. Or rather, it depends entirely on your sense of humor!

Let's compile a brief checklist of the bad. We have:
* a cliche-ridden story;
* a nonsensical amount of injuries (and blood loss) casually sustained by characters;
* pathetic sound effects;
* character design that is both bad AND forgettable (wow!);
* ridiculous screenplay and over-the-top voice acting;
* vomit-inducing fan service and ecchi humor;
* overpowered fighters and magicians beating the crap out of each other with named trump-card techniques;
* the essence of MANLINESS furiously emanating from most of the male cast with ... not a single female around who wouldn't be in heat over this;
* ripping off the naming of characters/locations/abilities after rock/metal music bands after JoJo had already done it.

If you're easily entertained by any of the above, chances are you'll like it and perhaps even regard it as one of the most entertaining OVAs ever. It plays all of these tropes completely straight, not ashamed of itself in any measure, and this self-indulgent sincerity is what makes it so fun. Those with less-developed sense of humor will rather think otherwise. Really, if you fail to be amused by Bastard!!, you most likely won't enjoy it in any other way. It's still an outstanding piece of crap from any serious standpoint, and don't blame me for not warning you.

And in conclusion, just to prove how delightfully bad it is to those who still aren't convinced, here's my favorite quote from episode 2:

Yoko: What are you going to do?
(green slime starts pouring from walls)
Gara: That's right, it's slime. It will dissolve your clothes.

I dare you to come up with a better response. I double-dog-dare you, highbrow MAL readers.

Our story begins in a far future where the world has been through an apocalypse that spawned all sorts of strange and evil creatures, leaving human beings in a precarious position. Things have gone back to a feudal era where sorcery, sword fighting, and armor plating rule the day. Four warlords of chaos get together to break the seals that hold back a creature of ultimate darkness, and as the viewer knows, this can't be good. At the same time...Yoko is best friends with Rushe, a little boy who follows her everywhere. Little does she know that buried deep within Rushe is a secret weapon, ... the wizard known as Dark Schneider. When the warlords' plans come to the attention of the free world, there's a realization that Dark Schneider is the only hope of defeating the threat.

There's only one problem. Dark Schneider is a freak.

Nevertheless, when your kingdom is under fire from the most powerful magic known to man, you resurrect whomever you can. With Yoko's kiss, Rushe becomes the legendary Dark Schneider. Now he's not really happy about the arrangement, since he was essentially imprisoned for a very long time. Eventually, he figures, why not? He'd love to prove that he's still the most powerful being on Earth, and if that takes defeating some of his old comrades in arms, so be it. As long as he can get his groove on, he's happy...but is a rusty white-haired jerk of a warlock going to be able to handle the job?

Bastard! really is a fun show, at least through its first half. Things move quickly and the artwork is great in the first two episodes. The humor is fresh and invigorating, too. If nothing else, when things get a little tired past this point, that start keeps you going. Now the third episode shows a little bit of problems, primarily because the artistic style takes a big left turn. A couple of characters are hard to identify at first because of the changes! But that's something that can be dealt with.

However, the second half gets a little snoozeworthy. Here's where Dark Schneider takes on his foes in humongous battles. Now I'm all for great melees, myself, but these just get old quickly. There's just not enough excitement to them and no sense of real danger--if a hero cannot lose, then a half hour of violence is pretty worthless. Now there is a surprise at the end of the fifth episode that some might find shocking, but it is negated in the sixth episode. So, for the last 90 minutes, we get a little antsy, particularly because the humor and life starts to slowly drain out like the water in a tub where the drain cap doesn't quite fit. It's not terrible, but unfortunate.

There's also a very real problem in that much of the show's humor is based around something that didn't get completely translated. In the original version, the various kingdoms, spells, etc. were all named after different 80s metal and hair bands. Because of copyright issues, a lot of these jokes didn't make it into the official US release. My best recommendation is to watch with the Japanese language track where at least the names are pronounced correctly and you can get in on the jokes. I mean, the funniest parts of the show are things like the "Stryper defense"!

So what's my position on this show? If you like violent, humorous fantasy shows with long battle sequences, this is something to run out and get as soon as possible. If your tastes are a bit more refined, then this is a questionable pick. I wish that the show had stayed on the funny, likable, yet action-packed track it set for itself in the beginning. It's not bad, but it starts off better than it finishes.

Bastard!! is dark fantasy OVA focusing on a powerful magician known as Dark Schneider. He tried to conquer the world with the help of four other magicians known as the lords of Havoc, but was eventually trapped in the body of a child named Rushe by a group of clerics. Fifteen years later, the lords of havoc are trying to awaken Ansla-sax, the god of destruction that destroyed the world and brought humanity back to the medieval ages. Trying to defend their town from the lords of Havoc, the clerics bring back Dark Schneider so that he can defeat his former comrades. Joined by a ... few other people, such as a girl named Yoko and the princess of the town, Dark Schneider goes on a quest to track down his former friends, beat them up and reconciliate with them, because as you know if you’ve watched Dragon Ball Z, when you beat the crap out of somebody they become your friend. With a plot as simple as this you would think there would be no way to fuck this up, yet…


--- Dumb and random

This OVA is plagued with dumb, random and unexplained things.

Firstly, it is never properly explained what were Dark Schneider’s motivations. He wanted to conquer the world, but not to rule it, and as such he brought chaos to every country. Perhaps the motivation was sex, as it stated that he had sex with hundreds of women. Same thing for his former comrades. Why are they now against him, and why are they trying to revive a god that would probably annihilate what’s left of humanity, nobody knows. Perhaps the manga readers know, but a proper anime adaptation shouldn’t have to make you read the source material to actually understand what the hell is happening. If the lords of havoc were evil for the purpose of being evil, it would make sense, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, as after they are beat up by Dark Schneider they loose any evil goals, without any explanation. Not knowing what the characters’ motivations are makes it hard to like them, and hinders the show significantly.

Secondly, you often don’t understand what is happening on the screen. Why this spell does this, why doing this does that, how the hell did Dark Schneider “shrink himself into his arm” to dodge an attack, you are never given a proper explanation.

Thirdly, the universe is completely random. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, and you often see ruins of skyscrapers and modern buildings, but at the same time you have tons of things that feel completely out of place in a post-apocalyptic world, such as magic, orcs, ninjas, medieval castles and towns, monsters, dark-elves, werewolves, minautors, cyclops, vampires, and so on. The randomness also applies to the names, as they are just random syllables put one after another: Di Amon, Tia Note Yoko, Arshes Nei, Witos-neiki… For the umpteenth time plot writers, randomness is not an efficient way to create good names. Some of the names are apparently references to Heavy Metal (Meta-Rikana = Metallica), but I know jack shit about Heavy Metal, and even so it doesn’t make the names sound less ridiculous. Of course, the attack names and incantations also sound ridiculous, with the characters saying random stuff like “zazard zazard scrono-rono-sook”, or “tesla”, sometimes English words that are unrelated to the effect of the attack, like “damned”, “exodus”, “accused”, “raven”, “riot”… Why not “garlic bread”, “prostate cancer”, or “dialectical materialism” while we’re at it?

Lastly, there’s the fact that Dark Schneider is overpowered, and basically immortal. It doesn’t matter if he died after tearing his heart out of his body, he will come back to life anyway, with an explanation that can basically be summed up in “shut the fuck up it’s magic!”. Regarding how he defeats his enemies, it is either very stupid, like using very hot fire to beat a fire elemental, or the usual anime thing where anger makes you stronger.


--- No, the characters aren’t that good

One of the things people praise this anime for is the characters, and in particular the protagonist Dark Schneider. While I do agree that Dark Schneider is a better protagonist than the average modern protagonist with zero charisma and no balls, as this one is arrogant, manly, and has had sexual intercourse with hundreds of women, it doesn’t make him a good character either. When he is first introduced, he is portrayed as a bad guy with incredible power. But it turns out that he is just a very arrogant good guy, as he fights bad guys, saves his friends, spares his enemies and even sacrifices himself to save his former comrade who had become his enemy. As you can see, Dark Schneider shares many similarities with the archetype of the “demon lord” in modern anime, that is to say an overpowered man who was, is, or pretends to be a demon lord, but is actually kind and good, like Diablo in Isekai Maou to Shoukan Shoujo no Dorei Majutsu, Sai Akuto in Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou, or Maou Sadao in Hataraku Maou-sama!, to name a few bad series that I made a review for (obligatory self-advertising).

The other characters are worse. Male characters are very manly, while female characters are frail and stupid, and that’s all. Alright, the vampire count Di Amon is pretty comical and somewhat enjoyable, but he doesn’t have much screen-time.

To sum up, the characters, which are supposed to be this OVA’s strong point, are actually very average and forgettable.


--- “Randomness equals funny”

Some people defend this OVA by saying that it is bad on purpose, as if that was an excuse! To these people, having an incoherent universe, cheesy dialogues, and throwing Heavy Metal references everywhere is enough to make a show funny and entertaining! To these people, randomness equals comedy! It’s a parody, so all of its flaws are made on purpose, some of them say! And what is it parodying, exactly? It’s true that this OVA is – or tries to be – a parody. There are a few things that indicate it, for example when Dark Schneider uses a 5 yen coin, or when one of the characters breaks the fourth wall. But that is not sufficient. A parody should make it obvious to the viewer that it is a parody, otherwise it will just come out as as bad as the thing it is trying to parody! Parody or not, this OVA isn’t funny, and at best you will only smile a bit.


--- The production value is decent at best

The animation is pretty average overall. Obviously, it must be taken into account that this is an OVA from the early 90’s, and that it can’t be compared with modern animation standards, but it doesn’t excuse everything. It doesn’t excuse, for examples, the characters designs. Most of them are boring, forgettable, and sometimes even ugly. One of the characters is literally just ninja Guts. The girls are neither cute nor sexy, which makes the fan-service even more tasteless. The art-style appears to me as the standard art-style of that era, and doesn’t strike me as particularly good. One of the features of that art-style is that pretty much all of the males are huge, tall mountains of muscles with normal-sized eyes, while females are short, frail, and have the usual large anime eyes. The fights scenes look okay to me. However, the backgrounds look meh.

The sound is also average. The quality of the background music varies, it is sometimes shit, sometimes good, but never like something you would re-listen to on YouTube. The sound effects can also be bad. Regarding the voice-acting, some of it is bad, mostly secondary characters (the clerics, for example), but Dark Schneider’s voice-acting is actually pretty good.


--- Verdict

To conclude this review, Bastard!! is yet another anime that tries to be “so bad it’s good” and ends up being so bad it’s shit. The plot is a failure. The characters are pretty bad and boring. I don’t know if the arrogant protagonist was something original at that time, but nowadays it just feel like a re-skin of the “demon lord but actually he’s a good person” type of protagonist that you can find in a lot of recent series. The animation and the sound are nothing incredible and don’t manage to make the show entertaining. I guess that people who understand what the hell is this OVA parodying, and are Heavy Metal fans that can get all of the references could enjoy it, but most people should avoid it.