Yami no Purple Eye

If you can watch this with an open mind and appreciate it for it's artistic and experimental approach, you can enjoy this 30 minute OVA.

Not much of it is animated, but it does have some very beautiful drawings while sometimes using some effects on them. When it does animate it's very pretty, such as the ocean scene, hair blowing in the wind scene, and also where the woman turns into a panther.

The music was actually pretty good in this OVA. I think half the songs I really enjoyed. During the last 8 minutes it really picks up and shows a struggle between humans and the ... panther humans. There is gore at this point, and the song featured here has great bass playing.

It's pointless to rate this for story and character because there is almost no dialogue in this one or character development. You sort of have to follow along and the still shots and little animation, carried by the music.

I can appreciate the experimental and artistic approach of this OVA. I enjoyed it.

This anime is just purely music so don't come in expecting a 30 minute segment of peak fiction or any development at all, although this is certainly peak music. The animation itself is pretty poor but as expected for the era it was made, there isn't much of a plot to this at all and the plot that it does have is pretty boring and isn't worth following. The only take away is that the music is actually quite a bop so perhaps you want a break from watching some anime and want to listen to some music or maybe you'll add this to your ... playlist instead. It really kicks off about half way through and despite there most definitely being better music out there this is still quite enjoyable and niche.

It's very clear that Yami no Purple Eye is a low-budget advertisement for the manga. The majority of the first half of the music video can be summed up as a manga panel slideshow with some special effects. The second half, however, features a slight increase in animation which brings some cool scenes with that classic retro anime aesthetic. These visuals are accompanied with some relaxing 80s Japanese music.

Despite these elements, I believe the project ultimately fails to achieve its goal, which appears to be promoting the manga. The music video is too much of an out of context manga panel slideshow and not enough ... of a cool retro animation showcase which makes most of the experience boring and the manga that is being advertised to appear uninteresting. Additionally, the length of the music video is much longer than it should need to be, a shorter 3-4 minute video cutting all the stills would have been far more effective.

Unless you are already a fan of the manga or are curious about J.C. Staff's early works, there isn’t much reason to watch this. The music is by no means terrible, but there is plenty better within the same genre. There are also other anime projects that deliver the classic 80s anime aesthetic visuals with more animation and less still frames.

Final Scorings:
Animation: 2/10 (Mostly still manga panels)
Sound: 6/10 (Fine music but nothing amazing)
Value: 3/10 (First J.C Staff project)
Enjoyment: 2/10 (Very boring)
Overall: 3.25/10 ~ 3/10 (Very Bad)