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Sumptuous and mysterious, though I wish the story was a little more taught.

Two women enter a ladies-only section of Edo Castle with big plans, but a dark spirit in the walls threatens to upend everything (and dissolve a few folks along the way). As with the original Mononoke series, it's up to the enigmatic medicine seller to investigate the phenomena and defeat the monster.

While the visuals were brilliant—perhaps even richer than those from the original series—and the music and voice acting decent, I did feel the tiniest bit let down by the story. The series's stories generally had layers and pathos, but this ... one was pretty straightforward. Some threads seemed to be red herrings or were dropped, and the symbolism of the monster's realm seemed to imply some events that just didn't pan out. Will these be resolved in the next film? I don't know.

Still, this film is a dazzling and exciting 90 minutes and I rate it highly despite its shortcomings.

I really wanted to like this one, but the positives just don't outweigh the negatives enough to recommend this vintage OVA.

A young lady escapes the martial arts training of a hundred-year-old hag to seek her older brother. Along the way she encounters her brother's old workmates and fights off some magic users. There's a pervy nerd, a vengeful dryad, and a number of mysterious folks who bark orders from the shadows.

But little of it gets explored. The first episode features a number of nice fights and a bit of fan service (even during the fights!) and seems to set up a direction for ... the series. Then the second episode goes in a completely different direction with a visit to a hot spring, where the characters can get naked and fight again.

The series just drops the ball in the second episode, leaving loose threads and established characters in favor of a silly love story and embarrassing boner gags. In fact, watching the opening credits, one might imagine there's an entire world of sorcery and action awaiting the viewer, including a white tiger. That world, tiger included, never shows up. Thankfully the fight scenes were competently animated, but are nice fights and bare breasts enough?

This is animated way better than it deserves to be.

Playing card themed heroes battle ... who are these people? Who is this guy with bad grammar and a flying drill? Who is the leggy wolf lady? What's up with the Cookie Monster-eyed ninjas? Who's this Joker guy or the Red Lobster guy? More to the point, who are these heroes, zipping around, crashing vehicles, fighting gargantuan chess pieces? Who knows? The world-building and characterization in this brief OVA are as shallow as a playing card is thick.

A bit more meat on the story's bones wouldn't have hurt. The world of table-top-game-themed heroes and villains ... is, admittedly, unique, but it's not really enough to engage the viewer. Maybe if one were a fan of the manga or the video game this would resonate more. Perhaps that was the idea behind the OVA, to give fans a chance to see these characters clash and shout in a big ol' brawl.

But if you're not a fan, what's this OVA got going for it? Not a heck of a lot, frankly. With zero story or character depth, what else is there? The English dub has subpar acting. The character designs are standard 90s magical girl stuff. The music is unmemorable. There isn't a lot of fan service, if one's seeking titllation. So, why watch it? Well, the quality of the animation is actually really, really good. The action is dynamic and sometimes quite inventive. So, give it look if all you want to see is nicely animated girls run and punch stuff for an hour.

Definitely a product of its time with a moderately strong start and a pretty weak finish. Fans of the early internet's promise may find this entertaining, back when the world wide web was imagined as an alternative world for users to explore. Here, "cyberland" comes in layers to be delved by the avatars of heroes and misfits alike.

The first episode is definitely the superior one. The animation is better, the story is stronger, the jokes hit better, the stakes are higher. The end-boss monster is tentaclicious per the era's norms. Its tendrils are probably the best animated things in the OVA.

The second episode is a ... let down by comparison. The budget must have been blown on episode 1, because the animation is shoddy and stilted. The characters even appear to have been drawn from different stylesheet. Gone are the civilization-ending hackers. Instead our trio of protagonists get mixed up with a couple computer programs playing cat and mouse. Who cares? Frankly, it feels like a filler episode, even though it's 50% of the saga.

Feeling nostalgic for a time when the internet was best understood by the movie "The Lawnmower Man"? Want to groove on a vaporwave soundtrack while three anime girls swing swords and dive past numerals? Then this might be for you. If none of that interests you, skip this and head for greener pastures.

For an OVA about a guy with a magic earlobe, this anime is woefully mediocre.

A young man has inherited the power of "The Dragon's Ear" which gives him superpowers. Every time he removes his earring, he goes from cute fop to wild-haired Lothario, able to use the superpowers of incredible luck, weather control, hyper-seduction kisses, super agility, and the ability to see the future. These he uses to conquer an evil clan of women and save the girl he loves.

The series starts out pretty tame, but by the end of the finale, the show devolves into bonkers. One would assume that a story ... about a man with a magical earlobe would be bonkers from the start, but it isn't until the last half of the second (and last) episode that all suspension of disbelief demands to be put aside. Villains emerge from layers of disguises, venomous moths attack in clouds, needle spitting becomes a fighting technique, and a skinless Goliath learns the value of human camaraderie.

Is the animation good? Reader, it is not. How's the music? A fan of vaporwave might enjoy it, but to the average viewer, the synths provide nothing special. Character designs? They're okay, but nothing a regular anime-watcher hasn't seen before. All in all, this is a middle-of-the-road effort.

Being just a scant 2 episodes, those curious about it can consume the whole series in half a lazy afternoon, but might walk away wishing they'd watched something else.

Solidly mediocre 80s sci-fi anime.

Reporter Yoko and her unique photographer Beat are on the prowl, seeking answers about the mysterious Mr. X, a terrorist who has been making a name for himself by blowing things up. Along the way there are robots, mechs, and monsters to stop them.

It's standard stuff—so standard that I'm a bit surprised that there was only one OVA made. It seems like the kind of thing that would have really found an audience back in '87. There's just enough blood and bare skin to lure those who need that flavor in their anime, and for the others there's the draw ... of the playful friendship between Yoko and Beat.

The character and mechanical designs are fine. The animation is serviceable. There's not a lot to dazzle the viewer, though there is an act that takes place inside a computer with primitive CGI shapes and lots of hand-drawn grids. I'm surprised the sequence hasn't been mined for GIFs to accompany synthwave mixes on YouTube.

If you're in need of a one-off OVA, long for the "future tech" 80s anime predicted, want to see some androids kicking butt, and don't really need every loose thread tied up, well, you might want to spend an hour with these two Scoopers.

This is a sumptuous little film, albeit a bit vague on the story. Magic using characters and creatures meet in a verdant little alcove—but beyond that broad description, I'd have trouble pinning down any other details about the story. Birds, leaves, magic, phantoms, water, wood. The film is maybe more of a poem than anything else.

However, because it is short (15 minutes) I think it's worth watching for the backgrounds alone. Gorgeous stuff. Lush and living, I felt like I could reach out and touch the damp leaves and water-logged wooden huts. The simplified style of the characters' design played well against the watercolor-esque ... world they travelled through.

Elegant, enigmatic, and enchanting.

This is pretty dire.

Watching the protagonist slip from one group of horrible people to another, witnessing brutal acts of sick violence and desperate vengeance, starts to feel a little nihilistic. Suicide, murder, torture, sexual assault, racism—this OVA plumbs the depths of the worst things humans can do to each other, so much so that our karate champ often wonders why humans can be so depraved. As a viewer, I started to wonder what the moviemakers were trying to get at. Why tell this story in this way? It's certainly not subtle. In some ways the OVA seemed to bump against the edge of exploitation, ... as if the viewer should get some perverse thrill from watching a naked, screaming woman roast inside a cage perched on a burning tree.

Story and themes aside, the animation is pretty crude. The characters are dully designed and the animators did not work too hard to maintain any faithfulness to the style sheet. Music is forgettable and the sound effects are from the standard anime bank of sound effects heard a thousand times over. There were several false brand names and logos to avoid copyright infringement (e.g. PanNam airlines), but the novelty of spotting those did not make up for the OVA's other shortcomings.

Honestly, I only finished it so I could feel legitimate when writing this negative review.