If you laughed when watching this OVA, then it's not "so bad it's good".

busterbeam said:
It's actually just good, because it's 100% intentionally comical. You're not laughing AT it, you're laughing WITH it. Obviously the original manga author, writer of freaking Lone Wolf and Cub, didn't intend the "hanging grenades by your ball hair" scene to be 100% serious. Is the comedy very low brow? Absolutely, and proudly so, but the same applies to many shows that don't get the "legendarily bad" tag.

I suspect the main reason stuff like this was so hated on back in the day, and the idea that it's only to be enjoyed "ironically", was the weeb desire to make anime look like a "serious art form". Now we have a very different environment where serious film critics are praising people like Satoshi Kon, Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Makoto Shinkai and Mamoru Hosoda and people will openly praise vulgar low-brow comedies like Ping Pong Club, Panty & Stocking and Azazel-san without thinking "what if this will make anime look bad to serious critics?". But people are only introduced to things like Mad Bull 34 from old fans who say it's a horrible shameful disaster and they're afraid to say "wait, this is just a funny vulgar comedy like all those other shows us modern fans like".

busterbeam said:
It's actually just good, because it's 100% intentionally comical. You're not laughing AT it, you're laughing WITH it. Obviously the original manga author, writer of freaking Lone Wolf and Cub, didn't intend the "hanging grenades by your ball hair" scene to be 100% serious. Is the comedy very low brow? Absolutely, and proudly so, but the same applies to many shows that don't get the "legendarily bad" tag.

I suspect the main reason stuff like this was so hated on back in the day, and the idea that it's only to be enjoyed "ironically", was the weeb desire to make anime look like a "serious art form". Now we have a very different environment where serious film critics are praising people like Satoshi Kon, Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Makoto Shinkai and Mamoru Hosoda and people will openly praise vulgar low-brow comedies like Ping Pong Club, Panty & Stocking and Azazel-san without thinking "what if this will make anime look bad to serious critics?". But people are only introduced to things like Mad Bull 34 from old fans who say it's a horrible shameful disaster and they're afraid to say "wait, this is just a funny vulgar comedy like all those other shows us modern fans like".

kandi_gloss said:


Like for instance in the second episode, we are introduced to Perine, who beats a man half to death in the first 2 minutes we see her on screen and then we are told that she is a master of all sorts of martial arts styles. Then later on she just sits around and screams a lot like some sort of damsel in distress as Edi gets brutally beaten by a bunch of thugs. With what we already know about her she was more than capable of doing something.