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Ignore the negative reception completely; this OVA is amazing. It's not "deep" or "high art for the elite" or any of those other pretentious descriptors, but it's a very inventive, experimental, stylish, spooky, funny and above all else mind-bendingly fun horror-comedy. As far as I'm concerned, everything is perfect - it's conceptually sort of (I say "sort of" because it's always hard to simplify something extremely unique) like the kind of vague, unexplained short horror stories Edgar Allan Poe wrote, if made in the 80s, mixed with a ton of animated comedy and sci-fi elements. Don't worry, though. It's not generic anime comedy.

All the plot ... and lore explanations that left viewers confused would've absolutely destroyed the willfully mysterious structure of the work (compare to Poe's similarly mysterious and inconclusive "Manuscript Found in a Bottle", "The Masque of the Red Death" and others). The plot is solid and gets you interested completely in the strange premise, but you'll never know exactly what happened. And hey, that's the beauty of fantastical horror.

People complain the protagonist is "shallow", but he's simply a funny and charismatic everyman (not "charismatic"in the real-world sense, but in that he's entertaining and audiovisually engaging to watch all the way through) dealing with some absolutely maddening events that he's at the center of. I suspect people wanted more dialogue, or even monologues, to give him more personality, but that would have completely ruined the atmosphere - the extremely expressive visual characterization is more than enough to understand what the character is going through.

The film was made as a tribute to the late and great Jazz musician Duke Ellington, and its strange, experimental yet at times very upbeat score perfectly fits the strange story and action.

The direction is outright FLCL-like in its craziness, despite this coming from 1987. Imagine how insane and experimental this looked back then. The animation is generally kick-ass and highly worked with only a few shortcuts used here and there (which you should forgive, for such a niche release). The artwork renders the average (or sometimes even ugly) faces of its Japanese characters in a beautifully skilled way that shows amazing drawing ability; top-notch understanding of how to draw stylized and cartoony yet also organic and subtly realistic characters, mixed together with the knowledge to make them move and emote naturally & believably. Even outright ugly characters can have appeal - look at Ren from Ren & Stimpy for example, or Looney Tunes' Witch Hazel. Those characters are ugly, but looking at them doesn't make you uncomfortable, right? This OVA knew the secret of "ugly appeal" very well.

Take the X Train is mind-boggling, suspenseful, intriguing, scary, technically amazingly animated and drawn (especially so, given it's a niche production) and above all else it's fun as hell.

So, Genma Taisen: Harmageddon; a super-influential 1983 anime about a bunch of psychics including a "transylvanian princess" (lol), an angsty teenage boy and a badass robot with a broken heart taking on the galaxy-destroying demonic entity Genma and his evil followers. All this with Rintaro at the director's helm, Yoshinori Kanada (AKA THE most important Japanese animator that ever lived) doing some of his all-time best and most influential animation, and a young Katsuhiro Otomo doing the character designs and a bunch of artwork. Predating it are a series of novels from the 70s written by 8-Man creator and Spiderman manga writer Kazumasa Hirai and ... the original 60s manga he cooked up with one of my favorite authors, Shotaro Ishinomori. The soundtrack for the movie was done by progressive rock musician Keith Emerson and Japanese composer Nozomi Aoki. Apparently the former was high off his ass the majority of the time while recording which is extremely fitting given the film's general hippie theme.

Harmageddon is an anime considered to be one of the worst of all time by the western fanbase, devoid of any unironic merits, worth watching only for a few ironic guffaws. As usual, that's total nonsense and you shouldn't listen to it. Genma Taisen is a flawed film, but when it's good it's absolutely amazing and the quality and uniqueness of its highest highs absolutely make it worth watching despite its issues, especially if you're into historically important anime, stylish inventive visuals and progressive rock.

First, I want to get the bad out of the way: Otomo's character design input, while solid, feels like it had to be held back significantly in terms of style. There's a sort of Captain Planet-ness to the protagonists that's nowhere to be seen in his manga work from around the same period. If you compare his very own Harmageddon art book to the actual designs of the film the difference is quite obvious. I largely prefer the original cartoony manga designs over the more realistic movie versions, however there are some exceptions. Vega's girlfriend has a fantastic design and Vega himself looks absolutely freaking awesome. I love this robot design to no end and I would love to own a figure of him.

A common criticism with the film is that it draws from the epic, long-running story of the novels while failing to give that stuff any substance because it's turning a lengthy series of books into just one movie. As a result many assume that the Captain Planet-y diversity crew of psychics all had elaborate backstories in the original text. This is based on a huge misconception completely made up by The Anime Encyclopedia along with the nonsense claim that the manga came after the novels. Colony Drop sadly went on to repeat this misinformation along with the (for once) true claim that the movie only drew from the first 3 volumes of the novels. From what I gather the movie is simply a mix of the manga story and the first 3 novels; the same basic story but made to be more realistic, in tune with the novelization (the original manga had, among other things, cartoonier villains and *talking animals*). However Vol 3 did not go up to the epic final battle with Genma and in fact I'm not even sure if the novels went in that direction to begin with given from a quick skim of their illustrations. Meanwhile a lot of the movie scenes from near the end appear to be near-perfect manga adaptations. So from what I gather, the finale is instead taken straight from the manga. All of the extra psychic heroes like the Saudi Arabian guy, the Native American man and the Chinese girl seem to be anime originals. None of the novel illustrations show them off and by the end of volume 3 of the novels when the protagonists fight the giant rampaging ball thing that absorbed Sonny, the team is composed of only 4 psychics: Luna, Vega, Jo and the recently freed Sonny. By adding the new characters the anime simply creates the illusion that there's a deeper backstory to them in some kind of original source material. Instead they were just added to make the final battle more epic and give it all a teamwork feeling by having psychic fighters from all over the world come together for the final showdown. They were never meant to be deep.

But with all that out of the way, the movie's execution is still flawed. The mere fact that it feels like something wwas missing from the second half is still a problem. While there are still plenty of great moments, I can't help but feel there's a bit of rush-work and missed potential during the second hour. However, despite all this, I still feel that the west is horribly off in its reaction to this movie, which is just non-stop hatred. Looking at Japanese reviews, the gushing love for this movie from the 80s is not quite there anymore, but it's generally not disliked either. It's still mostly seen as above average, with a few people still loving it; not a masterpiece, but certainly not a failure. I like the film more than that, but I find that to be a reasonable response from a general Japanese audience. This is in stark contrast to the western reaction which is one of pure, unbridled, outright illogical hate that often denies any and all merits this film might have. Some people will go as far as to directly compare it to such actual abominations as Mars of Destruction. Existing flaws aside, this is total nonsense. Interestingly, the author has gone on record to state his dislike of this film; but, as I can't read Japanese and have to rely on translations for my Japanese information, I have no way of knowing if the original manga and book were significantly better. After all, one of the author's main complaints wasn't even the writing but the artwork, claiming that Otomo missed the spirit of Genma Taisen, nitpicking the hell out of the designs and complaining about Jo's forehead of all things. He just seems to have a strange hate boner for Otomo, I guess because he was popular and young and the kids liked him; a sort of "get offa my lawn" sort of attitude. Personally though I think the illustrations in the novel are extremely boring and sort of up their own ass in their seriousness, like they were trying really hard to go for a pulpy western style. I vastly prefer Otomo's work, even in its blandified form.

The first half of the film, with its mixture of surreal and down-to-earth imagery, is shockingly good. It has a relatively focused story, starting off with an exposition of the main villain's threat and the mission of the protagonists, then focusing on Jo Azuma's normal life and his eventual discovery of his psychic powers. It's filled with visually brilliant shots, from down-to-earth realistic ones to super-creative expressionistic fantasy compositions. Some scenes, like the one where Vega stops time and chases Jo around, have an absolutely fantastic sense of atmosphere. During these glorious moments, the artwork is pitch perfect. The sense for timing and cutting is spot on. And to top it all off, it's delivered with kickass animation from some of the best people in the industry; such as the climax of the aforementioned chase scene, by Takashi Nakamura, who went on to animation-direct Akira and then come up with his very own charming creations, like the Robot Carnical short Nightmare and the underappreciated children's anime film Catnapped. My favorite part from the first half, though, is the moment when Jo finally accepts his ESP powers and starts screwing around with them, having the time of life. It's a very well animated, well voiced, well drawn scene of a boy discovering something fantastical in an otherwise quotidian, realistically portrayed world. In fact, it reminds me of the equally awesome first Digimon short film by Mamoru Hosoda, right down to the use of classical music. Also worth noting is the oldschool monster movie tinge they gave to the title screen.

Despite what you might have read, the film is not internally inconsistent, confusing or thematically incoherent, and in fact it has an obvious message: one of throwing away prejudice, not being single-minded and being a philantropic person. Above all else, the messagea that impacted me the most was the one about embracing a love of the entire world instead of clining to a single-minded obsession with one person. A relationship might fail, someone you cared for deeply might change beyond recognition and someone you've dedicated your entire existence to might end up leaving you one way or the other. Given my personal life experiences this is a very effective message that had a legitimate emotional impact on me. But of course, the highest high of the movie is the climax. Like a modern day Hokusai, Yoshinori Kanada brought us one of the greatest masterpieces of Japanese animation. The uniquely Japanese, hyper-stylized, super-flat yet gloriously alive final "boss form" of Genma, that of the now-iconic Kanada fire dragon. A sequence of pure creative genius that left a massive mark on the minds of many animators and still inspired young artists to this day. What's even more impressive is that the idea of the final battle being against not just a dragon, but a shape-shifting dragon made of fire, was an anime original. While still very cool, the manga version was a far more standard design and the manga-to-anime change was a brilliant one that takes great advantage of the medium. And then there's the criticism of the stereotyped nature of the "Captain Planet diversity crew"; but really now, the same thing applies to Cyborg 009 and that one is considered a classic, yet somehow it arbitrarily makes this movie an abomination. The thing is, I'm Romanian and I should be the first one to take issue with Luna's characterization, yet I don't really give a crap given the overall message is a good one and the staff have their hearts in the right place. And hey, they definitely toned down Sonny hugely from his offensive blackface manga incarnation. I don't think Ishinomori was racist, and in fact he showed great respect for African and other black people in Cyborg 009, but he way he chose to stylize them is hard to morally justify in this day and age.

One of the main reasons to experience this story is to realize just how massively influential it was on pretty much everything from Japan that was "nerd-related" in some way. From anime and manga (Akira) to video games (Chrono Trigger, Streets of Rage 2, even more obscure stuff like Monster Party) to Gainax's second Daicon short, the influence is just all over the place in Japanese culture. In fact, from what I gather, one of the main reasons this movie was hated at first was that Americans thought it was a ripoff of Akira, which is absolutely ridiculous.

But perhaps the most shameful criticism people direct towards Genma Taisen is the claim that it's badly animated. I mean, sure, there is some budget saving; the cataclismic scenes are mostly a slideshow. But they're well-drawn slideshows. One of them was even done by Otomo himself and it looks great. Not to mention, no one bitched when Gunbuster slideshowed its way out of the final battle. Besides, there's still a ton of wonderful art and animation in this movie.

This is a flawed film, but one that's nonetheless a must-see for fans of iconic, stylish old-school Japanese cartoons and I assume it's utterly fantastic if you've read the novels, manga or both first. I'm sad to announce there are no translations of either of those. I'd like to read both in English, but the Ishinomori-drawn manga is the one I REALLY want to experience because I love that guy's artwork. Scanlators, please pick that up. For now, though, watch this film and unironically enjoy the good parts, because they're definitely there and they're super-underrated.

This is, putting it simply, a softcore lesbian porn anime. It exists primarily to arouse the viewer; nothing more, nothing less. The story is simply an excuse for seeing sexy girls interact, fanservicey fight-scenes and borderline hentai scenes. The truth is, actual hentai anime tends to be stuck with very small budgets; meanwhile "softcore" anime can more often afford significantly better production values, as this anime shows, and I much rather enjoy a softcore show with decent production values over chicken-scratch "hardcore" OVAs.

The story of a bunch of girls being trapped on an island, the "Soul Eater, but with orgasms" premise of the action scenes... ... all of this, as I said above, pretty much an excuse for boobs and yuri, and the characters primarily exist to fit specific fetishes. In that regard, both the "plot" and characterization do a pretty good job.

The visuals are pretty nice; sometimes the amount of polish obviously falters, but the lewd scenes tend to look quite good and the character designs are obviously the best and most appealing out of all the Valkyrie Drive projects. They lack the typical VN-esque cheapness often found in such anime, instead managing to be quite stylish and charming and, while not particularly unique, nonetheless have their own look and feel. The animation is pretty competently done when it matters and the series succeeds at having many genuinely sexy scenes.

Sound-wise there's nothing to complain about; the VA cast is fine, as is the music, and the obligatory moans do their job quite well.

As a fan of competently done lewd yuri, I quite enjoyed this series in the basest way imaginable; and really, given what its intentions are, that's just about all that I needed.

Referenced and revered by such modern animators as Seiya Numata (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roNIB248mco) and Hiroyuki Imaishi (Dead Leaves, Gurren Lagann, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt), Birth is considered by some to be master animator Yoshinori Kanada's magnum opus. This might initially come off as a little weird... considering it was directed by the relatively unknown Shinya Sadamitsu. Mere minutes in, however, the reason for this becomes apparent: Birth is, quite unashamedly, a total animators' OVA. With Kanada (creator of his very own unique, frantic and cartoony animation style back in the 70s that still influences many young animators to this day) at the helm, the animators are ... the real stars that make this silly little OVA work.

I guess it's time to point out once and for all that THIS IS NOT A MOVIE YOU SHOULD WATCH FOR THE STORY AND WRITING. The script has a few funny lines from the characters, and Bao's introduction is an enjoyable little skit, but the visuals are clearly the main event here. If you find the idea of watching a cartoon to appreciate its visual creativity alone unappealing, trust me; this is not your cup of tea by any means. Assuming you're into fast-paced, cartoony animation and can get past the not-obscenely-high-budget production which results in a somewhat messy, unpolished look during a handful of less important scenes, this OVA is a great visual treat with a lot of nonsensical and silly yet brilliantly joyful action. At its best it's like looking at the drawings of a ten year old kid who's grown up on a steady stream of sugar, Looney Tunes and 70s anime, only the kid is actually a very skilled animator.

Some of my gripes would have to be the sound direction (sometimes a sound will come too early and a characters' mouth will start moving BEFORE the lines come out which can be pretty grating) and the fact that the second half of the movie honestly drags for a bit too long. There are some talky bits where the art & animation quality take a serious hit which the movie really could have done without, and most of these are during the final chase scene (which, by the way, could have used a slightly better choice for a 'final boss' enemy). Lastly, despite its overall cartoony, Kanada-style look, this is still an 80s anime made by 80s animators and occasionally some odd glimpses of a more standard, less cartoony anime style will randomly pop up in the middle of otherwise loose and undetailed scenes and you will wonder if you've just accidentally switched channels to an episode of a different show.

But these are all minor gripes with a film that generally succeeds at being precisely what it intends to be: a fun, visually creative ride. All in all, this is an OVA you should definitely watch if you enjoy fast paced cartoony action and can deal with some minor yet undeniable flaws. It's not for everyone, and it certainly shows its age, but I feel that even in this day and age it's a very impressive and enjoyable example of auteur animation. A more cynical viewer might expect something so old and rough around the edges to come off as a decrepit relic of the past compared to the modern works that its influence led to... but despite all odds, it still manages to give the young whippersnappers a run for their money and stands as not merely an interesting old-school example of Kanada-style animation, but also as a genuinely enjoyable experience.

Apocalypse Zero is a completely insane, surreal and over the top Kamen Rider-esque OVA based on a manga by Takayuki Yamaguchi, the artist of hyper-violent yet wonderfully drawn Chanbara manga Shigurui: Death Frenzy. It is also one of the most absurdly loathed pieces of Japanese animation of all time, especially among English-speaking anime fans - there is something about this OVA that has a very special effect on anime reviewers and manages to send them on indignant nerd rage frenzies like no other work. To most viewers, it is to anime what The room is to cinema, or more accurately, what the pixely rape simulator ... Custer's Revenge is to video games - a work that is not only devoid of any talent, skill or effort but also, in the eyes of many people, a disgusting and irredeemably vile story that anyone with a hint of taste and common sense should deride and vilify to no end.

Just HOW bad could this OVA's content be if a viewerbase normally accustomed to shameless, gratuitous sexuality and strange fetishism being passed off as thought-provoking means of storytelling, very young children being sexualized and even such tropes as *justified rape* is left completely repulsed by it? I'm... not entirely sure, but I'll try my best to figure it out.

This post-apocalyptic tale focuses on two young martial artist siblings: the calm and determined Kakugo and the feminine, elegant and frankly crazy Harara. They inherit two all-powerful armors containing the souls of the many, many people who have given their lives for their creation. Although the armors were initially intended to be weapons of mass destruction designed for World War 2, they were passed down to the two brothers by their father slash mentor as a means of taking out evil, grotesque mutants and defending the innocent. Harara, being generally batshit insane, eventually grows up to become a psychotic rebellious misanthrope and comes to the conclusion that erasing humanity from existence and preventing it from harming our pure, beautiful Mother Earth any further would be a far better course of action. After going through a seemingly random body and gender change that is only explained in the manga, Harara hijacks one of the suits of armor before their training is complete, takes out his/her father and has a quick one-on-one fight with Kakugo, which the latter instantly loses in a very odd and disturbing way that no normal human could ever survive. But naturally he does, and it's up to him to defend innocent bystanders from crazy monsters and his insane transgendered sibling while also dealing with the standard day-to-day anime high school life (yeah, they all live in a hyper-violent post apocalyptic world... but why should that get in the way of education?).

OVA-wise, that's... pretty much all there is to the backstory. While the manga contains many lengthy flashbacks to explain the history of the armors and further solidify the characters as being crazily awesome, the anime simply uses the main premise to deliver plentiful amounts of crazy violence, sexual humor, mindless surrealism and pure, unadulterated badassitude. The entire two-episode OVA is simply a series of silly high school segments, followed by a scene of the Monster of the Now preying on the innocent in excessively violent ways (an infamous scene involves a massive, fat dominatrix mutant squeezing a young girl to death with very graphic results, taking her boyfriend back to her place and quite literally KISSING HIS FACE OFF), only to eventually have to face the righteous ass-kicking of our obscenely powerful hero in increasingly strange, hilarious, and dare I say it *freaking awesome* one-on-one battles.

I'll try my besy to not spoil the rest, but please note that this is not a show for the faint of heart - if you can't deal with gallons of graphic cartoon gore, this OVA is not for you. Even then, if your inner 13 year old who still laughs at immature sexual humor is long-dead, this OVA is not for you. If you think a pointless scene of a 10 year old female character taking a leak all over the floor or masturbating in the shower counts as valid character development and yet find the idea of a monster attempting to take out the main character using an attack named "Double Tit Bomb" inherently insulting to your intelligence as an anime connoisseur, this OVA is not for you. If you view anime as a refined artistic medium and the mature, thought provoking equivalent to Western cartoons (which are nothing but insipid children's entertainment in comparison) your pretentiousness and sheer nerdiness have reached critical levels to the point where you will surely never feel the touch of a lover's hand (and also, this OVA is not for you).

Another unfairly bashed aspect of this OVA lies in its visuals. While it's pretty far from being a mind-blowing sakuga anime, there is really nothing bad about the way it looks and moves. Harara's monsters have a hideous, grotesque look to them... but that's kind of the point. Similarly, the human characters have a very charming, well-stylized and cartoony look. They might seem ugly to some people, but technically there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way they're all drawn and I honestly think they are far more expressive than most anime characters out there. One particular visual aspect that I can't help but love is Kakugo's Zero Armor, which has a very stylish and cool design to it. If I ever broke down and started paying for useless pieces of plastic, I wouldn't mind owning a figure of this thing at all; in fact, it almost makes sense that Kakugo has a strange, bordeline fetishistic obsession with it. Almost.

Most of the music is pretty standard action anime stuff, but it certainly gets the job done. At times the epic heroic music clashes hilariously with the crazy psycho-violence and sheer absurdity of the fight scenes presented, and that simply adds to the ridiculous over the top nature of it all. Another interesting note is that the ED was sung by Hironobu Kageyama, also known as the guy behind the Dragon Ball Z opening and a ton of equally hot-blooded, heroic-sounding theme songs. It's really about as fun and catchy as you'd imagine, and my only beef with it is that IT WASN'T USED DURING THE SHOW ITSELF AT ANY POINT. If you have a great theme song on your hands, shouldn't you use it at least once during a particularly cool scene? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

So with all that out of the way the only remaining issue would be, "do I think that this is a good OVA?" ...well, in all honesty, I would say without a hint of irony or self distance that it truly deserves to be labeled as such. Not a GREAT OVA, no - this brand of over the top vulgarity can certainly be done in a better, cleverer way - Dead Leaves this ain't. But for what it is, it's a perfectly fine waste of 60 minutes. Anyone who can get past the initial shock factor caused by the over-the-top blood and guts portrayed should instantly realize that this is, at its core, a very silly and ridiculous OVA. What many people seem to miss, for some reason that I can't quite comprehend, is that IT WAS CLEARLY MEANT TO BE VIEWED THIS WAY. If you're not messed up enough to find this stuff equal parts cool and hilarious, then this OVA was clearly not designed for you... but that's not really a reason to claim that it's an irredeemable pile of trash with no positive qualities to it, or even watch it to begin with. After all, a simple Google search should instantly warn you about the graphic content, and I doubt many people watched this expecting a family-friendly experience without a single cock joke or drop of blood. Similarly, people who found it hilarious and fun in a "so bad it's good" kind of way should realize that it was created with ridiculous over-the-top camp in mind to begin with. If it made you laugh and you had fun watching it, mission fucking accomplished. Above all else anime is meant to be fun, and to its admittedly niche audience, Apocalypse Zero delivers this in spades.