Dark Cat

10/10 creative plot idea, amazing visuals, there's nothing more I could've asked for (just kidding but not really)
i think the cat guys were strange and jukokubo was an aamzing villain. so good i literally wrote a german fanfiction for it yay
im so proud of the creators for embracing their inner desires to make this and i hope there will be more in the future
who else wants a sequel guys??? i sure do i could do with some more snazzy character development
the ending really made my eyes water it was very emotional (no spoilers though)
jk even bamboo blade was better than this

Dark Cat is an early 90s OVA that has two main focuses in it's story. The first follows Aimi Koenji, who is hopelessly in love with a boy in her school, Hiroki Koizumi. However, Hiroki is in love with somebody else, who ended up rejecting him. The other is a tale of two brothers, Hyoi and Hiroki Koizumi, who have the power to transform into creatures known as "Dark Cats", and who are busy fending off evil monsters that are being awoken in humans by the main villain, an ogre named Jukokubo.

Either story on it's own would be somewhat generic, and combining the two makes ... the anime seem a bit unfocused. However, the two tales intertwine at the end. I can't say the story was super unique, but it was at least entertaining for the duration, even if it's somewhat poorly executed with some plot holes.
The characters are pretty basic and forgettable, but they were interesting enough for the story they were telling. The ending also didn't seem very satisfying, which is a downside. I would say the story is probably the weakest part of this whole thing, but it's got just enough in it to keep things interesting for a 50 minute OVA.

The visual directing also isn't very great, consisting mostly of very typical shots, without anything impressive standing out. This doesn't do any favors for the art, which seems to be dated, even by 1991 OVA standards. It definitely looks more like the kind of thing that would have came out 5 years earlier than it did. Still, the art wasn't atrocious to look at, even if it was kind of plain and unrefined.

The music was great, and was definitely the highlight, being one of the more memorable aspects of the anime. It had this 80s J-pop sound to it which felt really reminiscent of the era, and worked well in the setting.

Voice acting in the Japanese dub was above average. There weren't any standout performances, but each actor did an adequate job at voicing their character, even if the lines they had to read were somewhat generic.

Overall, it's not anything special, but it's a decent enough anime to check out if you're bored and can forgive some rough edges and a generic story.

Story: 4
Characters: 5
Art: 6
Sound: 8
Enjoyment: 7
Overall: 6

Overview:

It is time again my friends to dive into the depths of obscurity and uncover an ancient evil that has long since been buried. Dark Cats UNITE!

Anime has gone through many trends over time and although I often complain about cheap cash ins and cliches that plague modern anime, it is important to remember that the grass wasn't always greener back in the good old days! In fact, even the most incompetent anime in 2014-2015 generally don't compare in terms of technical ineptitude to some of the OVAs from the late 80s and early 90s. Dark Cat is one of those legendarily bad titles. It ... was basically the Mars of Destruction of the early 1990s! After all, you don't simply get a 4.48 MAL rating on accident. This is a site so generous with its ratings that even Valvrave the fucking Liberator has over a 7.5! What did Dark Cat do to deserve such a low rating? I'll explain.

The story is that 2 brothers in high school have the awesome superpower to transform into cats. Do they transform into ferocious werecats or thundercat creatures? Nope, just regular house cats. Together the 2 brothers must fight against generic hentai tentacle demons...even though this isn't actually a hentai. These action scenes typically involve the brothers chasing the demon in their cat forms, then transforming back into humans and fighting with light saber ripoffs. The author was inspired to give the characters cat powers after reading the fact that house cats can run at up to 30 miles per hour, which is slightly faster than the fastest human. The problem is that house cats can only sustain short bursts of speed and are actually VASTLY inferior to humans at distance running. If you were going to chase a demon for miles through the woods like they do in Dark Cat, it would actually be a greater advantage to just stay in your human form. This makes the cat transformation, which is the ENTIRE selling point of this fucking series, absolutely worthless! If this wasn't bad enough, Dark Cat has one of the stupidest romances in the history of anime! The dialogue is absolutely terrible and no 2 characters have even an ounce of chemistry together.

The reason for the relative fame (infamy) of Dark Cat is actually not the horrendous plot and characters though, but rather the ludicrously bad voice acting. For some reason, I keep reviewing titles that have insanely bad voice acting, but Dark Cat might actually dethrone Cipher for the title of all time worst! Why is that an accomplishment? The "voice actors" in Cipher were people literally taken off the street and asked to read cheesy lines with zero context. Not a single voice in Cipher was a professional voice actor. The voice actors in Dark Cat actually ARE professionals...but they are all early 90s hentai actors that aren't use to voicing regular anime. They know how to make sexual moans, but they have no concept of how to deliver actual dialogue. Generally, bad voice acting makes an anime laughably cheesy and "so bad its good". However, the degree to which "badness" is enjoyable actually follows the mathematical graph for a concave function. It goes up to a certain point, then rapidly starts decreasing and keeps going down further and further. Dark Cat is WAY beyond the high point in the graph and deep in negative Y axis territory.

The art and animation as you probably suspected by this point, is completely atrocious. This was just a lazy effort all the way through!

MOST bad anime have at least one thing I can say positive about them. The art was decent, I laughed at one scene, at least it had tits and gore, etc. For example, MD Geist had a freaking kickass theme song! Kite made me laugh a couple times. Seikon no Qwasar had fairly decent jiggle animation for the bouncing tits. I find the opening to Steel Angel Kurumi to be amusing. If you look hard enough, there is almost always a small silver lining. There is NOTHING positive to say about Dark Cat. This is one of those rare anime that just FAILS in every single category across the board. The art is bad, the music is bad, the writing is bad, the premise is bad, everything about it is fucking terrible! If you ever manage to see a physical copy of this on VHS or DVD, fucking burn it!