The Year is 2005, it was not the worst of years, but most certainly not the best either.
Anime releases such as Eureka Seven kept the hype for anime high, with alternate releases
like Noein and Blood+ In the mix for those with a more (mocking voice) “Refined Pallet”.
Added along of course with the big three in shounen going strong, Bleach had just started
the year before, One Piece goes into its 6th year and the original Naruto is only 2 years
out from having been rebooted with the release of Shuppuden.
This was a fairly low-key year, nothing big or gaming changing, but nothing too drastically
horrible…until of course the release of the anime we are going to be talking about today.
A single OAV production that not only is considered by some to be the worst anime they
have ever witnessed, but was so bad it ended the careers of many of the staff who worked on it.
It has a story so convoluted it was like trying to deliver the plot to an average 24 episode
mech anime in a mere 20 minutes
It is a production that is really only noteworthy for one thing, that it got animated in the
first place.
Thankfully it’s almost impossible to find, let alone watch.
Ladies, Gentlemen, and others my name is Arkada and today on Glass Reflection we have dived
deep into the bowels of anime history to bring you an anime so loathed, and so horrible,
I almost couldn’t find the footage to show you just how bad it really is.
Today is Mars of Destruction, God Help us all.
Let’s Jam.
So before we dive headfirst into this sh**fest allow me to explain upfront how this OAV is
one that you will thankfully never have to watch.
Mostly because of it’s availability.
It’s never been licensed in North America so no DVD’s and even no VHS copies are available,
because it is just barely old enough to qualify for that.
It’s not available on any legal streaming service, and in my research only one Fansub
group was ever brave enough to sub and release it online.
Even that release though is hard to find anywhere and comes in “beautiful 640x480 AVI format”.
Which I say in jest because it’s not even 640x480.
It’s more like 640x413 because there’s this suspicious black bar at the bottom.
There’s no other releases out that I could even find to compare, so I can’t confirm if this black
bar is in the original production or if it was just added by the subbers as a convenient
place to put subtitles.
Considering though how the shots are framed, I’m inclined to believe it’s actually
the anime that’s doing this, in which case WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR ASPECT RATIO.
I should also point out that this video will be spoiler-tastic, though honestly?
Do you really care in this case?
Like really?
Freakin Re-
Allow me to attempt to explain what exactly is going on in this show, because as
I mentioned the pacing is completely wacked in the head.
In the long far off year of 2010 some guys returning back from Mars and burn up upon
retry to earth's atmosphere due to some “mysterious malfunction” that is never explained.
Shortly afterwards many a bizarre event begins to happen on the streets of Tokyo, apparently
because of this Martian debris.
At least that’s what’s being assumed by the expletory text here.
Make sense so far? Good!
that won’t last.
Next we see some alien creature’s referred to as “ancients” attacking the city.
And it’s up to an elite taskforce of Moeblob girls with assault rifles to defend the city!
Why Young girls?
Why no Helmets?
WHO KNOWS!
I’d say that they forgoed the helmets to showcase the character designs but I’ve
seen fan work on Deviantart better than this.
Not that any of this matters because one of the girls gets her head blown off anyways,
as your reminder that this is a “serious” and “grounded" action series.
Eventually though the girls get outmatched, and are saved by our protagonist in a skin-tight
mech suit wielding a plasma sword.
Though I say ”saved” but our protagonist gets smacked down so hard I question why the
story didn’t just end there with all of their DEATHS.
We cut to him in the hospital being doted upon by the surviving female soldiers but
nowhere do we get an explanation on how they managed to escape.
The ancients just let them go I guess?
Ok.
Sure.
Because that makes sense.
There is a lot in this story that’s blatant hand waving for the sake of progressing…
what I assume to be the plot.
I don’t know if someone thought that this was good character development or what but
having our protagonist get the living shit kicked out of him is not a good start.
In fact it’s not a good end either.
Within 5 minutes we are in another fight scene where he once again gets shat on.
But eventually he’s able to save the day because, who I assume to be the main
female lead is in danger once again, but also because our big bad conveniently and very
politely stands still for the pre-requisite amount of time for our hero to line up a sniper
shot and slam it into his torso “SAVING THE WORLD”.
This is of course after “twist” where the bad guy reveals that they were REALLY
earthlings all along, awakened by the Martian debris, and Humanity itself is the villain!
Because that makes sense.
*sigh* ooook.
We have a lot to unpack here, so let’s start simple.
There is no reason to care about any of the characters in this story because there is
no character development.
Yes there’s only 20 minutes long and that’s not a lot of time to work with, sure, but
deal with that by cutting away all of the extra characters and just focus on one maybe two of them.
Let’s not spend several minutes of our limited time talking about these 4 female soldiers
and how specialized and badass they are, only for them to be of no use whatsoever.
The development of our main character Takeru consists of two fight scenes where he get’s
beat up showing how inept he is at what he’s supposed to be good at.
There’s an overly long suit up sequence where he gets seemingly crushed by the suit
as he attempts to put it on. Oh yeah and their's this scene of him talking to a disembodied voice telling
him to get into the damn mech suit because if we can’t give him his own character development
we can just pretend he’s shinji ikari and he’ll get development via osmosis or something.
#BECAUSETHATMAKESSENSE
The animation is not much better than the story.
It is not only poorly drawn, it is not just stiff, it is something I’d use on someone
if I wanted to attempt to cause blindness that’s how bad I found it.
To be fair this was 2005, the industry is just starting to get a leg to stand on
in this new era of digital animation.
For a lot of productions your mileage did vary, but for a time where we had such
samey bland digital character designs, these feel like they came out of the bottom of the
bargain bin.
They consist of every bad stereotype from the time, the action scenes could be recreated
by a student and 30 minutes in an editing program moving characters from one side of
the frame to the other.
Saying nothing about the musical score for the show which somehow I found somehow to
be an even more of an outrageous offence.
There is little original music in this production, what exists I feel like was created on a $5
synthesizer someone found in a back alley in Akihabara.
The worst though is the out of context bastardization of classical music.
Seemingly thrown into the mix because its free to use and someone thought “well there
has to be music right”?
Is a bunch of well-known pieces by classical composers. There for no reason.
No thought however was put into how this music is supposed to complement the rest of the production,
because it doesn’t complement AT ALL.
It’s there to have music playing. That’s it.
It enrages me because I now cannot listen to these pieces without remembering this sh**fest
I now attach them too.
And don’t get me started on that “Twist” shamalan-esk ending by saying “Oh the ancients
are the real earthlings and it’s the humans who are the invaders.”
That is such a copout ending with no buildup whatsoever.
It would have been fine to end with that if there was anything before it to lead us to
believe it was even remotely a possibility, or you know if we had any reason to care about
the plot in the first place.
Really though by the time the twist came about I’d already tapped out and was trying to
figure out if I would die via alcohol poisoning if I tried to turn watching this into a drinking game.
The answer to that is yes by the way.
Every single aspect of this production, from the story, the characters, the animation,
the sound are all devoid of any creativity or possible enjoyment.
Everything is so bad that if even one of these aspects was in any other production they
would have dragged down a 10/10 show down into 1 or 2 out of 10 territory at best.
No one in their right mind should watch this.
I’m obviously not in my right mind because I watched it THREE TIMES to try and figure
this s**t out, trying to find some “Deeper Meaning” but there is none.
Don’t watch this.
Don’t buy it, not that you can.
Don’t download it, it’s an insult to your bandwidth.
I’d rather marathon both SAO and School Days back to back without a bathroom break,
because at least then I’d have some semblance of a satisfying ending to trick me into believeing
that it was worth it in the end, but this?
There's nothing.
no payoff, no reason to watch at all!
Go and watch paint dry, at least
that's entertaining on a microscopic level.
I’m legitimately pissed right now, you know what I’m not even going to dignify this
with a proper ending, I have three more horrible anime to review and need to
keep my fortitude up so I’m going to go watch something good and this video can just
finish on its own.
Ok? Stay Frosty everyone. Bye.
*Door Opening*
*PS3 startup beep*
*PS3 startup sound*
*PS3 resume sound*
*Off-key singing of STAND PROUD*