It's usually standard protocol for anyone who writes about stuff on the internet that if you make a "best of" list then you have to follow it up with a "worst of" list, as a sort of karmic balance, I guess. Admittedly, I did first think of doing that, but the simple fact of the matter is that I don't actively aim to watch & review stuff that I know is bad, so the overall list was rather small & I didn't want to just put stuff that wasn't anywhere near as bad as what I already had listed so as to fill things out to twelve entries; Gin-Iro no Olynssis was bad, but not "the worst", for example. However, most of the stuff I had picked for a theoretical "worst of" list were also notable in that they had another similarity to them: They were all "interesting" in some notable fashion.
So, while there will be a bit of "the worst" to be found here, let's instead go over what I feel are easily the anime I've reviewed over the past decade that had the "most interesting" aspects to them, whether it was bizarre storytelling, a unique production history, or just something to it that you would have never expected at first glance.
While there are video game companies that predate it by way of originally working in non-video game industries, Nihon Falcom is one of the oldest game developers in the world that's still active, having been formed back in 1981. It wouldn't take too long for Falcom to start becoming a notable developer with Dragon Slayer in 1984, but it was Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu the following year that made Falcom a major name in RPGs. It sold over 400,000 copies in 1985 alone, which was just unheard of for Japanese PC games at the time, & in 1986 Falcom released Xanadu Scenario II, one of the earliest expansion packs ever (& the debut of an 18-year old Yuzo Koshiro). Then, in 1987, a manga interpretation titled Xanadu -Dragon Slayer Densetsu- came out, drawn by then-Falcom employee Kazuhiko Tsudzuki, and in 1988 Falcom finally saw its very first anime adaptation by way of a 50-minute OVA with the same name as the manga, though I don't know if it's actually an adaptation.
And, boy, is this OVA a trip to watch. Since Falcom's game was very lax on storytelling, the OVA just goes into its own wild story, one that truly has to be seen to be believed. It's an isekai anime, with main character Fieg Kamara being a soldier from our world who gets teleported to the world of Xanadu, but quickly gets anmesia, so the whole isekai aspect plays very little in the actual story. It's also surprisingly violent & bloody, as the small unit Fieg is teleported to the fantasy world with get brutally killed, leaving Fieg alone & scared, and when we see how the King of Xanadu was killed (which is the impetus for the main story), we see him violently bludgeoned with a giant spiked ball, literally exploding in a bloody heap! Not just that, but later Princess Rielle has a dream about her kingly father... only for the dream to end with him exploding into a bloody heap once again!! However, the Xanadu OVA isn't just a hyper-violent isekai anime, as it also often whiplashes between hyper-violence & silly comedy, resulting in it having just this insanely weird feel to it. It's truly something that you can't fully explain without seeing it yourself, but at least it's well animated... Which brings us to another reason why this is one of the most interesting anime I've ever reviewed.
You see, this Toei-animated OVA is similar to Dororo [1969] in that it's filled with a bit of a veritable "who's who" of notable future directors in its staff, namely the animators themselves. Namely, Hideki Hamasu, Keiji Gotoh, Junichi Hayama, Keiichi Satou, Michio Fukuda, Tomokazu Tokoro, Yasuchika Nagaoka, Hiroyuki Ochi, Masahiko Ohkura, Atsutoshi Umezawa, & Kouichi Arai all worked on the animation itself in some form (character designs, key animation, or in-betweening), resulting in the OVA looking rather good for its time. Unfortunately, the Xanadu OVA has seemingly never been given anything better than a VHS & later VCD (yes, you read that right!) release, there's no LD from what I can tell, so it's become rather forgotten with time. Still, for both its consistent whiplashing between hyper-violence & silly comedy, as well as its wild animation staff in retrospect, Xanadu -Dragon Slayer Densetsu- is something to hunt after & check out, if you're curious.
It almost goes without saying that someone's most "popular" work will almost always not be the one they hope or even expect it to be. In my case, that would translate to what the most viewed post on this blog actually is, and in that regard the answer is my review of Cipher the Video from 2014, with ~6,800 views in total (& counting, as it still often appears in the "Most Read of the Week" sidebar). Released in 1989, this OVA is ostensibly based on the shojo manga Cipher by Minako Narita, but do note that I didn't call this an "adaptation", because from what I can tell it really isn't. The manga is about a girl named Anise befriending her classmate Siva, only to find out that "Siva" is actually a pair of identical twins, Cipher & Siva, who are also actors/models who swap between who's on the job & who goes to school. In reality, though, the only thing you really need to know beforehand for this OVA is that "Siva" is an actor, because this OVA's entire intention is to simply be nothing more than "80s Americana" distilled into a half-hour... And it is truly beyond all comprehension.
Instead of telling any sort of proper story, Cipher the Video is instead a series of vignettes showing stuff like Cipher, Siva, & Anise hanging out together (Anise, despite being the POV character for the manga, is barely in this OVA), Siva getting interviewed about his lead role in a football movie called "Winning Tough", Cipher & Siva having to deal with life as a (singular) celebrity, etc. What truly makes this OVA so notoriously interesting, though, is the fact that there isn't a single bit of Japanese to be heard, minus the "Making of" feature that accompanies the OVA (& even THAT is at least narrated in English!). Yes, every single character in Cipher the Video speaks full English, the quality of which varying wildly, though the star of it all is Jay Kabira as Cipher & Siva; you might know of Kabira as the outstanding narrator for Mr. Tonegawa: Middle Management Blues. Not just content with being spoken in complete English, though, Cipher the Video also has each & every vignette be set to a cover of some sort of notable English song of the time, performed by the group Wag's, resulting in this OVA literally featuring versions of "Against All Odds" by Phil Collins, "Let's Hear it For the Boy" by Deniece Williams, & "Footloose" by Kenny Loggins (the last of which makes all complaints null & void), all unique to this OVA! There are even three licensed songs, "Living in the Dark" by Army Call Up Test, "I Don't Like" by Mescaline Drive, & "Kamikaze" by Thompson Twins, which when combined with the various covers by Wag's literally makes Cipher the Video absolutely impossible to even re-release in Japan, let alone license for international release.
At the time of my review, the best anyone could easily find was a VHS rip, but since then a rip of the rare laserdisc release has come to be, and said rip was done at 720p (the file is over 8 GBs!), all to help preserve Cipher the Video in the best quality possible, because it's likely to never see a proper remaster. The only way it could be done better is if a Domesday Duplicator rip of the LD was to ever happen. I have absolutely no problem with my review of this quintessential example of the 80s OVA boom being the most viewed post on the blog, because everyone needs to know of Cipher the Video.
This anime is honestly a perfect example of the kind of stuff I created this entire blog for: Anime that absolutely no one, not even myself, had ever heard of before, yet one that has a truly interesting story to it. As a half-hour OVA taken on its own, 1992's Star Dust is not really all that special. It's plot about a group of space garbage men being attacked by an outlaw soldier, only for everything to be resolved through pacifism & good will, is honestly pretty bland, though the pacifist theme around it is neat, and the animation itself isn't really anything all that special, minus some exceptions, and you can definitely see some of the ways it cut corners. For example, a item floating from one person to another is obviously just the cel being moved in real-time in front of the camera, and this is especially easy to see here because the cel wasn't properly cleaned before filming, so you also see the dust moving with the item. However, when you start looking at the staff behind Star Dust, and the time it came out in, you realize what this OVA really is, and how its very existence is honestly kind of baffling.
You see, Star Dust is one of only a handful of anime that legendary animator/director Ichiro Itano (the name behind the popular "Itano Circus" animation flourish) ever worked on during the 90s, and it's the only one he was the main director for. The reason for Itano's relative absense in the anime industry during that entire decade was because he was working as a teacher at Yoyogi Animation Academy, which often has its students participate in anime productions for stuff like in-between animation, so as to help them get ready to work in the anime industry itself. For Star Dust, Yoyogi is credited as the primary animation studio, which when combined with the 13 people credited for key animation (again, this is only 30 minutes long) & the 130 people credited for in-betweens, it becomes obvious that this OVA is, quite literally, a giant collaborative student film lead by their teacher, Ichiro Itano; also, it being about pacifism is insane, considering how Itano is legendary for his use of hyper-violence. Still, the character designs, music (which includes a song by MIQ!), and voice cast all come from experienced talent in the anime industry, so it's literally just the visuals that come from the inexperienced students. Still, then you consider the fact that Star Dust, a literal student film, was actually sold as a commercial release on VHS (where it was advertised alongside Gundam 0083!), had its OST released on CD, & released to a home video market that was effectively just exiting the OVA boom, which is simply mind blowing; the ad also called this Yoyogi's first anime production, though it'd become its only. I get wanting to give those soon-to-be graduates of Yoyogi some sort of commercial release they could put on their resume immediately, and it's not a terrible OVA by any means, but not even Ichiro Itano could make a diamond out the inexperienced pieces of coal he was given.
In the end, is Star Dust worth watching? Honestly, unless you're just immensely curious about what a student film about pacifism winning the day as directed by a man known for hyper-violence is like... no, not really; there's good reason why no one remembers this OVA. That being said, it's by far one of the most interesting anime I've ever written about here, and it's very existence still confounds me.
At the end of my review of the Panzer Dragoon OVA last year, I had mentioned that it was originally intended to be Review #250, but wound up getting replaced with Mach Go Go Go: Restart, becoming #249 instead. Well, I must admit that I told only a partial truth there, as Panzer Dragoon was actually originally planned to be Review #200, only to get replaced with something before that! What wound up becoming the fourth milestone review on the blog was 1985's Twinkle Nora Rock Me!, which has since gone on to become a bit of a minor internet meme a few years after my 2016 review when anime YouTuber (or "AniTuber", as they say) Kenny Lauderdale put up clips & later a review on his own channel. However, at the time of my review, which I even made a video version of, this was nowhere near as known online, and I only had found out about it earlier that same year after seeing Mike Toole show it off at AnimeNext in one of his panels. In all honesty, though, I am more than happy to see Twinkle Nora Rock Me! turning into the meme it now is, because this is, by far, one of the absolute worst anime I have ever seen.
The second of two OVAs based on the Nora manga series by Satomi Mikuriya, whose hands were all over these adaptations (especially this one, in particular!), the actual plot in this OVA is honestly kind of irrelevant, though it's honestly nothing special, detailing how the titular Nora Scholar (now inexplicably an ESP-powered space bounty hunter) goes after a notorious interstellar bounty. No, what makes this OVA so bad is the utterly terrible animation for two specific (& lengthy) scenes. The opening sequence is seemingly only animated via key frames, resulting in embarrassingly stiff & stuttered animation (if it can even be called that), while a scene in the middle is meant to be a dance number, only for said dancing to be so ineptly animated (with some moments of only using key frames) that the end result is more of a chore than anything. Beyond those scenes, though, is a plot that does nothing interesting, starring a lead who seemingly has whatever powers the plot deems necessary at the moment (making her intensely boring), a sidekick character who's literally stated in the OVA itself to be absolutely pointless, and it even comes with a "Making of" documentary (so as to pad out the overall length) that is almost as poorly made & irrelevant as the OVA itself; all that being said, the music is good.
In the "best anime" list I included Fantastic Children, the creation of a single man who seemingly had little to no obstacles in creating the work he wanted, and it was so good that "fantastic" isn't enough of a descriptor. In comparison, Twinkle Nora Rock Me! is the same exact concept, only lead by a mangaka who obviously didn't have the talent to properly lead even a half-hour anime, resulting in an absolute mess. Is this "the worst anime ever made"? Quite possibly so, though I'd still give Gundoh Musashi that moniker (if only because it went on for 26 episodes), but there's certainly nothing wrong with being #2.
And speaking of one of the absolute worst anime I've ever reviewed, we have this little treat! Today, in the year 2021, one can watch any sort of video on their smartphone, allowing access to (some form of) HD-quality visuals on a device that they can hold in their hands, and this also applies to anime; in short, you can watch anime in better quality today than even digital fansubs from the mid-00s. However, the same could not be said in, let's say, the year 2004. At the time, the most popular form of mobile cell phone was possibly some form of Blackberry, and in Japan the old "flip phone" stayed around for a rather long time after the rest of the world started transitioning to modern smartphones. Therefore, the idea of watching anime on a mobile phone in the mid-00s was kind of unheard of, but it's not like people didn't try. Take, for example, Mobanimation, which is obviously just a portmanteau meaning "mobile animation", and in 2007 would be merged with anime studio Radix to become Radix Mobanimation. With a name like that, it's easy to come the conclusion that Mobanimation's focus was on making anime that could be watched on mobile phones of the time, which is honestly the only conclusion I can come to after having watched 2004/2005's Legend of DUO, which absolutely feels as though it was made for mobile phones... Yet actually aired on Japanese TV, specifically as part of Kids Station's Anime Tengoku block.
I say this because Legend of DUO can barely be categorized as "animation", simply because barely anything actually animates. Sure, there will be the occasional moment when a character makes a move that requires actually animating said action, but for the most part you have nothing but still frames & pans; even Twinkle Nora Rock Me!'s infamous two sections arguably have more animation to them! However, unlike Violinist of Hameln's "slideshows", the lack of animation isn't backed up with excellent artistry, Dezaki-esque Postcard Memories, or well conceived placement. Instead, Legend of DUO is filled with a lot of "talking heads", resulting in a very boring watch for each of the twelve episodes; the only mercy is that each episode is only 5 minutes long, so the entire show barely runs a full hour. If this show was indeed made to be watched on mobile phones of the era, then the lack of animation makes perfect sense, since the tech of that time wouldn't have been able to display things well if there was a lot of actual animation. That being said, it still makes no sense why it got aired on TV, as that just makes its flaws all the more obvious. However, Legend of DUO is also just not a good story at all, taking a plot about a vampire who's been sent to kill the vampire who turned him, because he's offering humanity a possible rescue from a "Disease of Death", and turning it into an absolute slog of an hour that's simply a chore to watch. None of the characters are interesting (most of them never showing any real emotion also doesn't help), the plot is razor thin & has little to no momentum, the music isn't memorable in the least, the "Disease of Death" is defined so poorly that the anime actually contradicts itself in terms of how it works a few times, and the last episode actually dares to end on a minor stinger for a second season that never came to be.
That being said, Legend of DUO is bizarrely intriguing to me, because what Mobanimation helped produce is just such a thing of its time, yet few really know of it, despite having been fansubbed into English a few years after it aired. Because of that, though, it can be a pain to actually watch, since episode is so short. Therefore, I actually created a supercut of all 12 episodes, removing all but the first episode's Mobanimation intro & the last episode's Mobanimation outro, turning the series into a 58-minute short film, in essence, and I decided to upload it to YouTube via my channel. To be honest, I don't expect Zero-G Inc., the current owner of Radix's (&, by association, Mobanimation's) catalog, to really care enough to copyright claim Legend of DUO, of all things.
Finally, we end Part 1 with an OVA that made me ask a simple question while watching it for the first time back in 2012: What the hell am I watching?!
The OVA boom of the 80s is sometimes referred to as the "Golden Age of Anime", if only because it was a time where seemingly anyone could produce a direct-to-video anime release, as long as they had an idea & money (& in Japan's "Bubble Economy" of the time, people seemingly had the latter). Sure, a lot of it may not be "good", but it was certainly the closest equivalent to the glut of anime that gets produced today because of late-night infomercial slots & online streaming; the only difference is that the OVA boom resulted in (generally) much shorter end products. While there were plenty of adaptations, like the earlier-mentioned Cipher the Video, a lot of these OVAs were original concepts. But while I think a title like 1986's California Crisis: Gun Salvo is a perfect example of seemingly unbridled creative juices going right, there's no doubt that 1987's Crystal Triangle: The Forbidden Revelation is the more interesting anime for me to pick for this list, simply because it's the direct opposite, i.e. unbridled creative juices going so wild that you wonder about the sanity of the people who came up with it.
A MOVIC/Animate-Film/Sony Music Entertainment production (i.e. it now belongs to Aniplex), & animated by Studio Live, this feature-length OVA tells the story of Koichiro Kamishiro, an archaeologist on the search for the the "Message of God", the supposed missing 11th Commandment that will save the Earth from calamity. While the first half feels like your standard Indiana Jones-inspired adventure, though with plenty of over-the-top "ANIME" elements (especially once the Soviets & Americans get involved), it's at the halfway point when things go straight into a never-ending downward spiral of insanity. The mysterious Hih Tribe everyone's been looking for get revealed to be completely supernatural & follow the Nemesis theory which now says that the Earth will be destroyed in the year 1999, Kamishiro suddenly is revealed to have mystical powers that were never hinted at before, World War III nearly comes to pass when everyone converges at Hokkaido in search of an ancient spaceship that's been buried underneath for ages, and the phrase "God is Dead" is taken to a literal extreme; plus, you just have to see for yourself what God actually is, because I dare not spoil it. The entire second half of Crystal Triangle is, simply put, absolute madness that essentially throws everything at you, starting with the kitchen sink, and the end result is one of the most bat**** insane things I have ever watched... And I absolutely love it. This piece of anime cacophony comes to us from a bunch of the people who helped Ashi Pro make Dancouga not long before, including director Seiji Okuda (who was one of the "future all-star staff" involved in Dororo [1969]), and I wish I could shake their hands, because this is Grade-A dumb anime that I wish was more readily available legally today.
Unfortunately, seeing as this is now in the hands of Aniplex, it may never be given a second chance outside of Japan, which at least did get the OVA on DVD; the best we ever got was VHS & LD. Maybe one day that will change, but until then I still say find yourself Crystal Triangle & give it a watch, because you definitely won't regret it.
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Thus ends Part 1 of this look at the "most interesting" anime I made myself review in the past ten years. Check back next week as we finish the month with Part 2, where we look at some more good anime with interesting backstories, some infamous anime that's honestly better than you expected, some more just plain bad anime... and even "The Worst Anime of the Century".
Xanadu -Dragon Slayer Densetsu- © 1988 Nihon Falcom・Kadokawa Shoten・MBS
Cipher the Video © 1990 Victor Musical Industries, Inc.
Star Dust © Yoyogi Animation Academy・D.A.S.T.
Twinkle Nora Rock Me! © Filmlink/Mickmac Pro
Legend of DUO © 2004 DUO Project/mobanimation
Crystal Triangle: The Forbidden Revelation © 1987 MOVIC/Sony Video Software International Corp. (now Aniplex)
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