Mars (OVA): All of the Imagawa-Crushing Ambition, But With None of the Corporate Support

Previously on the Mars 45th Anniversary Retrospective:

"In the end, it's really easy to see why Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Mars wound up being a manga that would see interpretations over the course of three different decades. It's a high-concept idea at its heart, but as the story advances it doles out both frenetic action sequences that mix things up with each encounter as well as new tidbits of plot that introduce new details, revealing just enough of a multi-faceted story that the reader can chew on."

Four years after Mars' shocking final chapter appeared in Weekly Shonen Champion in early 1977, TMS would debut an anime titled Rokushin Gattai God Mars in late 1981. However, rather than simply adapt Mitsuteru Yokoyama's five-volume manga, God Mars only took the basic concept & instead told a completely original story, with Yokoyama himself giving the staff free reign. While new lead Takeru Myojin was similar to Mars in that he was sent to earth to destroy it with Gaia, the main difference is that he was sent down by Emperor Zuul of the planet Gishin as a baby, so he grew up loving humanity & decided to protect it with Gaia. Also, the titular "Six Gods" were changed into being five giant robots built by Takeru's father in order to protect his son, and now they can combine with Gaia to form the God Mars; Uraeus wasn't invited to the party. Finally, Takeru/Mars was given a sibling named Marg, who often fought his brother in battle for the side of Gishin, which in turn would help lead to the show's success, as women just loved shipping Takeru & Marg together in fan fiction; I mean, it's not like the horribly bland-looking giant robots were encouraging toy sales. After 64 episodes finishing at the tail end of 1982, as well as a feature-length recap/alternate telling film, God Mars would remain the sole anime adaptation of Yokoyama's Mars for over a decade, as loosely interpreted as it was, and today remains the most well known take of them all, manga or otherwise, even appearing a handful of times in the Super Robot Wars franchise. There was also a single-episode OVA in 1988 that put the focus on Marg, due to sustained popularity.

Six years after the God Mars OVA came out, though, Yokoyama's short manga would see new life, and this time in its original form... Somewhat.

Originally founded in 1988, Kamakura Super Station started making moves into co-producing anime around 1989, with the 12-episode OVA adaptation of Guyver: The Bio-Boosted Armor. In 1993, though, the now renamed KSS, Inc. started producing OVAs (& even some video games) on its own, starting with Mask of Zeguy, & before eventually going bankrupt in 2004 it was responsible for stuff like Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, Mighty Space Miners, Tattoon Master, Ogre Slayer, Golden Boy, Iczer Girl Iczelion, Maps (1994), Dangazier 3, Dragoon/Ryuki Densho, & Phantom the Animation, as well as numerous hentai under its Pink Pineapple label. Shockingly enough, a good majority of KSS' catalog did see release in North America during the 90s & 00s, especially during the VHS & early DVD days, and today Softgarage owns the rights to KSS' entire catalog. However, KSS apparently had a very strict policy when it came to OVAs, which was that only the first two episodes would be guaranteed to see release from the start, with more episodes only happening should sales warrant them. To be fair, this is understandable, since the OVA boom was over by this point & the market was much smaller & less lucrative. However, this didn't mean that KSS actually designed its OVAs to be only two episodes long, with potential for more, but rather KSS would simply leave stories unfinished if they undersold. For example, Mighty Space Miners was written for six episodes, and even had episode titles for all of them, but poor sales resulted in it being left unfinished after only the first two.

This is what would befall KSS' OVA adaptation of Mars in mid-1994, one of the rare KSS titles to NOT see English release, as only two episodes ever saw release on VHS & LD, despite plans to adapt the entire manga. However, unlike Mighty Space Miners, this take on Mars did see a two-volume novelization, subtitled Silent Crisis & Silent Harmageddon, that came out not long afterwards, and that apparently does tell the entire intended story. In fact, according to a conversation between director Junji Nishimura & writer Masashi Sogo recorded in these novelizations, they were hoping to create something that would even surpass Yasuhiro Imagawa's Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still, which by that point was four episodes through its (eventual) seven-episode run; talk about aiming high. Softgarage would eventually re-release the Mars OVA across two DVDs in 2002 & still offers it via streaming on its website as a digital rental; you can watch the first episode for free & it's not even region locked! So while I can't really judge this OVA on the merits as a full adaptation, I can at least see if there was potential in it, and if it truly had the possibility of even matching up with Imagawa's magnum opus, let alone come close to surpassing it.

A new land form has risen from the ocean off the coast of Japan, with the government calling it "New Autumn Island", sending JMSDF flagship Kongou out to investigate it, & having military analyst Reiko Yamaguchi be on-board to report the findings. What they come across is a mysterious giant robot that destroys two of the submarines accompanying the Kongou, so they attack back & eventually destroy the robot, followed by them seeing a mysterious young man all alone on the still lava-flowing island. Meanwhile, in New York, a group of six people remark at how "Mars" has awakened earlier than expected & sends one of them, Ra, to Tokyo to meet with him. Reiko has the young man under her watch at a hotel, having her niece Harumi try to see if he can even talk at all, but when no one's watching the young man disappears, due to Ra having killed his security & whisking him away. Ra tries to communicate with "Mars", only to receive no response whatsoever, so Ra attacks him for proof. After seeing Mars survive the attack, Ra deems Mars as needing to be killed, starting a series of attacks on the young man with robots, the "Six Gods", operated by the six people. To fight back, though, Mars has under his command a giant robot of his own, the powerful Gaia. However, should Mars be killed, Gaia will self-destruct with a force powerful enough to obliterate the entire Earth, as his very presence on the planet was intended for.

Comparing to Mitsuteru Yokoyama's original manga, it immediately becomes obvious that KSS' OVA isn't trying to be a strict 1:1 adaptation. The biggest difference, by far, is the completely removal of Iwakura, the news reporter who first discovered Mars on Autumn Island. In his place, we technically have two characters, though only one really gets any sort of focus in what was produced for animation. Reiko Yamaguchi takes place of Iwakura in terms of being the other primary focal point of the plot, as she's made the person in charge of finding out who Mars is and how he relates to the eventual turmoil regarding him. She also gives Harumi more of a major character status by having her stay with Mars as much as possible, with the two looking to become possibly more romantically involved, which is a stark improvement over manga Harumi only appearing for the first two volumes & then is never seen from again; her hospital director father, & therefore Reiko's brother, is also seen in the OVA, but only once. The other Iwakura replacement is Ogaki, a system engineer for the Defense Agency that Reiko works for, but he literally doesn't first appear until the last third of Episode 2, coming from pretty much out of nowhere to rescue Mars during the battle with the second God, the Sphinx. While not seen directly in the OVA itself, Ogaki apparently goes on to take the place of Iwakura in terms of doing the actual research into Mars, Gaia, & the Six Gods, now only told via the novels. While it does suck to see Iwakura completely removed, though Ogaki's face does look similar, I completely understand why it was done, because it matches the general tone of the OVA.

In short, there's a much heavier focus on the Japanese military here, with the production apparently even talking with both the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force & the Japan Coast Guard in order to maintain accuracy. While the military did play a role in the manga, it was mainly either simply for the sake of convenience, like helping Mars go from one place to another to fight the Six Gods, or it was for thematic relevance, especially regarding the ending. For the OVA, however, the military takes a much stronger focus, even trying to help fight the Sphinx in Episode 2, and replacing Iwakura with two literal military employees really was a necessity. That being said, it does make me curious about how the novels handle the ending, as from what little I can find this entire production was meant to feature the same ending as the manga, only with a new reasoning behind it; my guess is that it directly involves Harumi, in some way. Coincidentally enough, the OVA is also much more direct in going straight into the action ASAP than the manga was. The entire first volume of the manga was all set up & intrigue, with the only real action being the destruction of the giant reconnaissance robot Titan at the hands of the American military via underwater nuke, and even then Titan only ever directly attack a single ship (in isolation) in self-defense. In comparison, the OVA literally starts off with the Kongou coming across Titan, which is never actually named here, but in this case it's much more vague as to whether or not Titan actually initiated combat first. It swims through the subs, which can be interpreted as it doing so accidentally (ala the tanks in the manga), but when it surfaces in the ocean it's very blatantly grasping the remains of one of the subs, which can definitely be taken as a combative gesture & inviting the JMSDF to attack it.

This also applies to the Observers who operate the Six Gods (they're not directly called that here, either, but it's how they're now referred to in retrospect). In the manga, they were very eager to acclimate Mars to his early awakening, with the Ra equivalent even showing Mars the heightened abilities he has (though in the OVA all we ever see is Mars leaping high to avoid attacks), and when Mars asks for 10 days to come to a decision after doing his own research into human history they gladly acquiesce, hoping he'll come to their side & destroy humanity; the Observers only start attacking once the 10 days end & Earth hasn't blown up. In the OVA, however, the Observers have no such patience, taking Mars' early awakening & lack of communication with Ra in person as an error in the procedure, so they start attacking ASAP. This is also reflected with the introduction of the Six Gods (well, three of them, at least), as there is absolutely no set up for any of them. No mysterious indication as to where on Earth they were hiding, except for a short bit showing the Sphinx in Egypt, no slow build to their reveals in front of Mars, and no initial attempt at combating them directly by Mars. Instead, we have Ra's initial encounter with Mars, the attack to test if it's really him, and then Ra saying that it's up to the first God, Uranus, which immediately attacks & destroys Tokyo's Rainbow Bridge, which did not exist when the manga was originally serialized, and in fact had just opened the year prior; the Mars OVA might even be the first time it got destroyed in a work of fiction. Not just that, but where Yokoyama specifically stated that Sphinx was incapable of travelling to Japan to fight Mars, hence why it literally melted all of Egypt in order goad him, the OVA goes in the exact opposite direction & shows the Sphinx swimming it's way from Egypt to Japan!

Now he REALLY looks like Alberto the Impact!

The end result of all of this is that, where the original manga was more of a fun sci-fi/action/adventure story for the majority of its run before shifting more towards the dramatic, the Mars OVA instead goes for a highly dramatic feel & mood right from the get-go. This is shown from the very beginning by having the Kongou be the first thing shown on screen, followed by moving the order of events slightly by having the attack on Titan (ha!) happen first, instead of the discovery of Mars, establishing a feeling of unsure dread instantly, rather than starting off with a more general mystery, like the manga did. There's also a lot of imagery meant to make things more dour & dramatic, too, like having Ra & Mars' conversation happen at night on the roof of a building under construction, instead of the more casual feel that it had in the manga. Finally, the entire musical score by the venerable Kaoru Wada (InuYasha, Princess Tutu) is highly orchestral, giving everything a much stronger & booming sound to it, making things feel even more "heavy". That's not to say that I don't appreciate what the OVA goes for, though, because while it all adds up to being a rather different experience from the manga, it is no less effective in execution. While the idea of this surpassing Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still is definitely a bit preposterous, you can definitely tell that the people behind the Mars OVA definitely tried their hardest to nail a similarly dramatic & interesting feel as what Imagawa did, and had KSS allowed it to continue beyond two episodes this might have actually wound up being a cult classic for its time. The talent was there & they knew exactly what they wanted to deliver, but as it is we sadly end off with Mars jumping out of a plane with Harumi in tow, all while Mars' body is decomposing after an attack by the Sphinx, in an effort to escape with the lives after being attacked by the third God.

Finally, before we get to the staff & cast, I just want to mention some of the more minor changes from the manga, just for the fun of it. First off, Mars is given an altered look, with his white blazer/blue shirt look now flipped to a blue blazer/white shirt outfit, while his hair is now colored black, even though his original red hair is shown on screen when he's first discovered on Autumn Island; this doesn't seem like an animation mistake, but rather would've played more into the plot later.  Second, we have numerous name changes & introductions (since Yokoyama was pretty light on naming in the manga), precisely in regards to the Six Gods & the Observers; understandably, most of these come from the novels. For the Six Gods, Uranus kept it's name, the Sphnix is now given a proper name with Orthos, the unnamed third God is now Helios, Sin becomes Oedipus, Uraeus stays the same, & Ra becomes Chaos. Meanwhile, the Observers are now all given names, specifically (in order of their respective Gods) Al, Miro (which was maintained from the manga), Gill, Sin (taking his God's original name), Nike, & Ra (same as Sin). Interestingly enough, the fifth Observer was gender flipped into a woman for Nike, though the OVA shows nothing to indicate why that was done, as Nike has literally just a single spoken line. While in terms of what we got these changes make little to no sense, beyond simply giving all of the Observers actual names, I'm sure that there was actual thought & reason behind them, and it's a shame that, outside of the novels, those ideas weren't allowed to be fully realized. Also of minor note is that Gaia is much more limber in this OVA, moving its arms around more & feeling much more Tetsujin or Giant Robo-esque; it even has a "Gao!" of its own to roar out.

Anyway, moving on the talent behind the scenes, we have Junji Nishimura handling both the direction & storyboarding; coincidentally enough, Nishimura was episode director for 14 episodes of God Mars. With titles like The Violinist of Hameln (TV), Windy Tales, & Basilisk in his resume, there's no doubt that Nishimura knows how to deliver dramatic storytelling, and in the case of Windy Tales knows how to deliver striking visuals, and that certainly applies to the Mars OVA. Even with Softgarage's DVD release & online stream looking a bit too soft for its own good, & showcasing some unfortunate color banding, the strength of Mars' animation comes through, trading in constantly fluid animation for a very strong & consistent visual style; even a flawed transfer can't prevent the overall strong visuals from delivering well. Similarly, the writing by Masashi Sogo (Great Teacher Onizuka, the first half of Bleach) is strong & takes some interesting risks for the sake of dramatic storytelling. For example, Mars doesn't say a single word until the end of Episode 1, and even then it's nothing more than his own name, yet the story told in that episode is well done, and Mars is arguably given even more of a mysterious aura behind him now. I honestly wish I could read the novelization, because I'm curious where exactly Sogo went. Meanwhile, the character designs by Hideyuki Motohashi (B't X, Fushigi Yugi) are very good, updating Mitsuteru Yokoyama's visual style for the 90s, but without radically changing them much, though I question giving Ra a "butt chin"; Motohashi was also animation director. Meanwhile, the mechs also receive updated looks, with Gaia now looking a bit more angular & detailed, while the Six Gods (or at least Uranus, Orthos, & Helios) also saw some updates to their looks, like Uranus' giant face being evenly split into two unique halves. Respected designer Yasuhiro Moriki is credited for the Gods, but not Gaia, while Chiharu Sato & Toshiyuki Horii are credited for one episode each, so it's hard to tell who exactly handled Gaia's new look.

As for the cast, it's actually kind of tricky to really judge, partially due to the short length the OVA wound up having, and partially because there's a lot of notable seiyuu who really don't get to do much, because it wasn't finished. For example, technically the lead actor would be the legendary Nozomu Sasaki, as he voices Mars, but he winds up only really saying much of anything in Episode 2, though he does a decent job with the little he's given; at least he got to scream out "Gaiaaaa!" a couple of times. The Observers feature the likes of Norio Wakamoto (Gill), Yumi Touma (Nike), & Shigeru Chiba (Sin), but they barely say anything, though we at least get to see Wakamoto screaming his head off at the very end of Episode 2. Similarly, Ogaki is voiced by Toshihiko Seki, but since he debuts so late he likewise barely gets to say anything. In regards to who actually get "full" performances, Emi Shinohara does a good job as the serious but still caring Reiko, Akiko Hiramatsu does a great job with Harumi by showing a lot of different emotions (especially in regards to Mars & his plight), & both Kiyoshi Kawakubo & Ryusei Nakao deliver appropriately villainous performances as Al & Miro; Yoshito Yasuhara also is a good pick for Ra's early usage, but also doesn't get the chance to truly shine. Again, you can see the intention of having this OVA feel special by bringing in a cast of talented seiyuu, but most of them sadly don't really get the opportunity to truly deliver.

Tossing in the novel covers,
if only for variety & more detail.

The history of the "Original Video Animation" (the order of the latter two words is your choice) is one filled with many a production that, to put it bluntly, failed to deliver a complete story. More often than not this was simply because of poor sales, but one should never equate low sales with the actual quality of a product, and the Mars OVA is a good example of that. Unlike some other OVAs, this was an adaptation of a short manga by an iconic mangaka that itself was previously the inspiration for an iconic mech anime a decade prior. As I said in the review for the manga, Yokoyama created a story with themes that still ring true to this very day, and could easily be retold over & over with only minimal changes needed to be done to reflect modern society. While this version does feature more changes than I would have expected, they were ones that either made sense with the change in tone or at least had potential to do something interesting with the storytelling.

Simply put, the Mars OVA went into production with all of the best intentions, and the director & writer certainly had grand ambitions with it, as you don't claim to surpass Yasuhiro Imagawa's magnum opus without actually intending to do so. However, where the likes of Bandai Visual, Phoenix Entertainment, & Toshiba were willing to show extreme leniency to Imagawa, resulting in a 7-episode OVA that took six years to see completion, KSS couldn't even show enough leniency to allow for more than just two episodes of Mars. What we got is extremely solid & shows a lot of potential, but it's all completely unfulfilled. Next time, we finish up the 45th Anniversary retrospective by jumping ahead to late 2002, where Mars was chosen to be part of a larger series of productions, but now with an entire season of episodes planned is given the chance to be fully adapted to animation... And yet the shadow of God Mars still rears its head a little.

Anime © 1994 Mitsuteru Yokoyama/Softgarage