#85: Amon Saga (1986)

From https://cdn-2.cinemaparadiso.co.uk/
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Director: Shunji Ōga

Screenplay: Noboru Shiroyama

Voice Cast: Kenyuu Horiuchi as Amon; Banjou Ginga as Ekuna; Ichirō Nagai as Mabo; Katsuji Mori as Alcan; Kiyoshi Kobayashi as Valhiss; Koji Toya as Ho; Kouji Totani as Ho; Mugihito as Gaius

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Synopsis: In a world far alien to ours, Amon is a wandering warrior who witnessed his mother being killed by marauding soldiers as a child. His quest for vengeance leads him to the army of the Valhiss, led by the evil Emperor (of the same name) whose army have kidnapped the princess of another nation of in hope of knowing the location of a city of gold.

From http://cartoonresearch.com/wp-content/
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In context of anime history, Amon Saga is pretty standard of its era, a piece probably more distinct in its original context as whilst fantasy stories have existed for a long while in anime, I'd obviously argue it's grown as a popular trend for television shows built off the back of their forefathers decades earlier. In terms of Manga Entertainment's The Collection DVD releases, it was a surprise. First because this actually had a Japanese dub track with subtitles, the one release with its own aesthetic style to the DVD menu; it's the kind of thing that'd cause the layperson to roll their eyes in disbelief of coveting an interactive screen on a video disc, but there's just the surprise to actually be able to hear the original Japanese cast rather than a potentially awful English dub only. It's also a production that, despite its averageness in the history of even just fantasy anime, was also a stand-out for just being watchable among some of the really generic material I've put up with within The Collection.

It had an immense advantage that, whilst it had to be interpreted out of his hands into a more conventional art style for the era, one of the most idiosyncratic figures from illustrative art design worked as a character and conceptual designer on the project, alongside being a main creator of the original premise, someone by the name of Yoshitaka Amano. Starting in the late sixties, working on anime series like Speed Racer when he was only a teenager, Amano has effectively transcended pop culture to become an artist by itself as a career, one which has left a mark in pop culture as he had a hand in the illustrations for the seminal Vampire Hunter D light novels and the Final Fantasy videogame series, alongside having enough of a reputation to work with the likes of Neil Gaiman in the West, created an illustrative adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Magic Flute, and live out a career where his work is shown in galleries.

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And as his work attests to, he is an incredible illustrator who justified the acclaim, someone who is imaginative which means even a semblance of involvement with Amon Saga is probably where the good visual ideas, rather than the generic ones, probably came from which decorate the conventional fantasy tropes. It's clear from the get-go, with some knowledge of Amano's style, that he didn't necessarily have a great deal of influence on this obscurer anime OVA, more so as he had worked by this point directly with Mamoru Oshii on Angel's Egg (1985), the only collaboration in anime where the art looks like his illustrations and is sumptuous as a result.

Arguably, the real detraction from Amon Saga is that it's conventional - between the archetype of the fair princess to be rescued to the tough side kick who, introduced in a bar full of scum and villainy shows a heart of gold after he fights Amon, it all plays out as you'd expect from the premise. This does raise the question whether Amon Saga is actually any good - in comparison between this interesting creator behind the production and the conventional storytelling, ultimately what little of Amano's original ideas appear onscreen win even in spite of this issue but it has to be considered that the material is average or just fun at least, nothing more.

From http://www.the-unknown-movies.com/
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Amon Saga, thankfully, has the creativity of Amano for its production so that even if this is the case, there's been enough here for me to appreciate hidden underneath it all and emphasising the stranger story it could've been. Stranger and more vivid in what does appear to, merely starting with having the villains fly around on dragons like horses or the protagonists being abruptly attacked by werewolves in the woodlands without context even for a fantasy world. Then you have to content with the main evil emperor looking like a giant golem robot in his full costume, whose entire empire if a moving landmass on the back of a giant turtle which travels around the world ransacking the local populaces. The anime even throws in an actual golem, a golden knight, who helps the heroes out briefly A facsimile of the elegance of Amano's work, which isn't perfect, what you get at least lets the curious touches be felt, all baring in mind it is within a conventional fantasy which has clearly defined villains and heroes.

Not surprisingly, the main hero is a blank next to everyone else, surrounded by funnier sidekicks and whose briefly witnessed mentor has a surprisingly similar appearance to the protagonist D from the Vampire Hunter D franchise, unpleased by his own decision to even train Amon in the first place. The evil minions also has a scene stealer in their diminutive evil wizard, whose eyes distort into a bird's when he makes an incantation, the sorcerers versus magician fight with him against three pits magical snakes versus magical rings a step above Amon's own final fight despite being off at the entrance of the city of gold. There's also the odd and hilarious fact that, whilst he is our protagonist and does prove himself in a battle by numerous mercenaries to climb up one of nine rope ladders which turns into a fatal battle royal, he has a living deux ex machina who is a lizardman archer, someone who saves his backside twice even in the climax out of nowhere. Moments and details like this are utterly ridiculous, but having feasted on some many anime productions like this particular, I am able to find a lot to still admire in Amon Saga even if I suggest caution except to someone who wants to dig into obscure fantasy anime before viewing this one.

From https://66.media.tumblr.com/b3ccc2d730c5c45a5656bcdbc
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#84: Abunai Sisters: Koko & Mika (2009)

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Director: Hiroyuki Nakao

Screenplay: Hiroyuki Nakao

Voice Acting: ???

Viewed in English

Synopsis: The Abunai sisters Mika and Koko are two female secret agents who must protect the "Booby Stone" [sic] from Paparazzi Matsumoto and his evil boss Madam Hokuroda.

Urgh...if, after Gunbuster (1988-1989) and the myriad of good anime I've covered, this is my decision to surf the drain downwards further than even the M.D. Geist double bill. Even by my standards, this is a low bar, practically on the floor, and with the added menace that even Japan didn't want it in the end. The story goes that Production I.G., who are famous from great productions like Ghost in the Shell (1995), worked on a project with the Kano Sisters, who had the desire to have a production that would be of international interest starring them, at least in the sense that the pair even travelled to the 2008 Otakon anime convention in Baltimore USA to promote the project.

The Kano Sisters, before the reader asks who exactly they area, are the half sisters Kyoko and Miko who are professional celebrities, in the exact same way for Japan at that time that Paris Hilton and the Kardashians are in the USA. Unfortunately, the Abunai Sisters series never had any success and only two episodes were ever aired in Japan on channel AT-X, the rest of the eight mini-episodes seemingly lost to a void even obscurer anime of better regard survived from thanks to bit torrent. Thankfully, or unthankfully depending on your viewpoint, Abunai Sisters resurfaced or hence this review wouldn't have even existed.

From https://www.watchcartoononline.io/thumbs/
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Consisting of ten x three minute episodes, it's not a surprise who it's been covered up as it's a garish CGI animated series with an utterly lobotomised sense of humour and probably more filthier to sit through than ecchi anime. The premise, just because of the series McGuffin being literally a Booby Stone, is enough of a warning alongside the minimal quality of the animation. The Kano sisters, openly using plastic surgery in real life, are unflatteringly depicted as two lewd caricatures made of plastic and treated at times as being air headed; surprisingly dubbed in English in squeaky voices (though that is likely a change from the original pitch of the recording), with no Japanese VA track in existence, they're in a vague position of being celebrities but clearly having licences to kill as they pack pistols.

In terms of super abilities, the noticeable buoyancy of our leads is a deliberate theme as, designed like Jessica Rabbit in portions, (I kid you not) not only do their well endowed chests vibrate at any sign of danger like Spider Senses tingling but can expand in size as a literal pair of personal air bags or a nice super punch. The last episode even ends with their secret super weapon being the fact their own nipples are detachable grenades, just adding to this weirdness. In comparison, their enemies are just as odd, an older woman who surprisingly looks like Yubaba from Hayao Miyazaki's Yubabawith her geeky bespectacled male henchman dubbed Paparazzi, constantly doomed to his mistress's displeasure to be distracted by the sisters' figures rather than complete his goals. These villains, the ten episodes set around the same recycled beach house, are doomed like Hanna Barbara cartoon villains to constantly try to capture the Booby Stone and fail.

From https://www.watchcartoononline.io/thumbs/abunai-
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They even follow the Hanna Barbara style of having ridiculous plans, starting the series off with a giant mechanical shark which fires machine gun bullets from its maw. Eventually it gets to Paparazzi wearing a handsome masseuse mask or dressed as a Chinese food vendor with a stereotypical accent trying to lure the sisters to eat a pair of poisoned meatballs that get used in an improvised table tennis game. This would actually be funny or at least compellingly weird weren't it not for the fact that, like a lame Saturday morning cartoon with blatant sexual references, it's the most generic of slapstick that's awkward and sluggish, these figures drawn ugly and cheaply animated, in generic slapstick scenes that usually would be pandered to five year olds against their wishes.

And honestly, that's the real issue with these ten episodes, in which they have the bad animation and tone of a bad children's show but also have completely inappropriate to show to such an audience due to the sex humour. Also as Gdgd Fairies (2011-13) proves, "bad" animation is subjective if you can use it to humorous advantage, but that's not the case here; the sexual humour itself is crass as much because it's as asinine, marvelling over the ample figures of the heroines (or showing one using a special butt attack to break open a locked door of a shack) but with the tone of adolescents writing it, without actual explicit sexual content or maturity to it. The repetition, closer to children's television than the view western anime fans have that anime has an ongoing narrative, is that these characters will be doomed to an endless cycle of trying to acquire a McGuffin, an overlarge pink diamond, until someone loses the will to live or when in real life the production gave up after ten episodes.

From https://www.watchcartoononline.io/thumbs/abunai-sisters-
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Arguable why the series vanished even in Japan is that it was just a job for Production I.G. and not one to be particularly proud of; the anime industry is an industry, where even animation companies known for incredible artistic work have to pay for its company and have profit, so they'll work. Many will work other mediums, such as Studio 4°C being known for a lot of commercials and music videos, but other times they're probably forced to churn out rubbish to without enough time to construct it into gold. Neither should one expect all anime to be available, only because of the internet and anime fandom why even a lost title like Abunai Sisters gets out of the animated necropolis.

Irony is once and a while a factor to these mistakes getting another chance (in the West, Chargeman Ken! (1974) getting a Discotek licence after it already developed an infamy in its homeland for example) but if it never gets a cult or a real release, there's the likes of Abunai Sisters which will sink through the cracks until someone is mad enough to put it online and someone else (i.e. myself) to watch it all and review it. Just another job that reminds you the anime industry is one that creates product like any business market especially in the 2000s onwards where more produce was being made to an alarmingly growing extent, not all of it meant to be archived anyway. Now Abunai Sisters has (through bootlegged form) achieved god like form of all things, you still have to deal with the fact the entire series, at less than thirty minutes long, is still more insufferable than a sole episode of one bad anime series because of how bland it is.

The Kanno sisters themselves? As of 2018 cosplaying between them, especially as a lot of female characters whose proportions they themselves can credibly portray, going to anime and manga conventions like AnimeJapan 2018 with the likes of Go Nagai. And in 2017 Mika Kano was even searching for love by way of very provocative Instagram uploads. Honestly, whilst I dismiss the Abunai Sisters anime, I'd never demean myself to cheap attacks at anyone even when it comes to the world of professional celebrities and tabloids, so I'm actually glad they have more interesting things to do; as long as they're happy giving otaku nosebleeds, all the power in the world to the pair and hopefully this series will be a comical side note.

From https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/
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#83: M.D. Geist II - Death Force (1996)

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Director: Koichi Ohata

Screenplay: Koichi Ohata

Based on the original script by Riku Sanjo

Voice Cast: Jason Beck as M.D. Geist, John Hollywood as M.D. Krauser, David Fuhrer as Eagle, Greg Stuhr as Breston, Joan Baker as Vaiya, Vincent Bagnall as the Major

Viewed in the English Dub

Part 3 of the Koichi Ohata Power Hour

Rather than write the usual synopsis, let us combine the synopsis of the sequel to the infamous M.D. Geist (1986) and the real life story of its creation together. Ten years after M.D. Geist was made and became a successful release for Central Park Media in the US, head John O'Donnell alongside being a huge fan of the original helped both a Director's Cut of the original to be funded, fixing major animation and plot hole flaws with questionable success, and allowing Koichi Ohata to make a sequel. Obviously, spoilers come ahead now as for the sequel itself, but as a viscous sociopath with an erratic behaviour spectrum, super soldier M.D. Geist set off a Death Force of robo centaurs to destroy the world of Jerra in the prequel, and everything's worse than before.

Now robo centipedes which eat human beings for an unknown sustenance reason exist, and the last vestige of humanity is a fortress ran by M.D. Krauser, a blue skinned former super soldier whose nobility is unfortunately matched by a God-like ego. Things are already signposted to get very silly and actually worse in quality from the first anime just from the first scene - a car fleeing from robo centipedes, messily animated with the set-up exposition in the English dub a words-per-second stream of consciousness from a character we never see again. This first sequence alone enforces just how this can top any incompetence and hilarity of the first anime completely.

From https://oavwatch.files.wordpress.com/2018/
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If the first M.D. Geist represented the notorious anime OVAs of the eighties, then befittingly its sequel is the representative of trashy poor taste nineties equivalents, where it belongs to the kind of gruel and absurdity that would get replaced in the 2000s onwards by fetishes and the OVA market being phased out. The English dub arguably adds a great deal, especially as Krauser has all his lines e m o t e d as to reach the back of the theatre. Of the pair of M.D. Geist anime, Death Force is the more entertainingly bad anime. It has the convoluted plot trajectory of whatever Geist himself is meant to be, the villain destroying everything in the end yet at times presented as meant to be an anti-hero, alongside M.D. Krauser in contrast, who has erected the last bastion of hope for humanity, a moving fortress, but is doomed for the hubris of believing himself to be a God alongside hiring a scientist who unfortunately wants to capture Geist to experiment on. Vaiya is still useless as the lead heroine too, now with amnesia and with a sense of more rudimentary existence despite having a lot more to do with her romantic relationship with Krauser than she did last time.

Death Force, with its jarring plot twists, is the true epic of the awful pair for unlike the expected rules of sequels this feels the more ambitious, with a larger plot by Ohata yet more magnificently awful in comparison. More vivid characters populate the environment (such as an evil scientist or his henchmen, a mere torso who uses robotic limbs that can be attached and detached to him), and just more gruesome in lieu of Ohata's reputation. It does thankfully return with a score that (sincerely) is good in its jazz epicness too; it wasn't necessarily the sax that lead to M.D. Geist getting a sequel ten years later, but the music is still the strongest aspect of the entirely lot and thankfully returned too.

From http://i.imgur.com/bS9EV5l.png

Death Force even does a Gunbuster (1988-9), its last act abruptly cutting to black-and-white animation as M.D. Geist and M.D. Krauser have their final fight. It's significantly worse than the prequel - ending in an abrupt child impalement that shouldn't be funny weren't it not for the voice performance in the English dub, followed by an even more abrupt death as the animation budget is even less existent, all of it is completely bad but compelling, this sense of trying to force out excitement when, from the first shots, its already doomed. The sense of struggle in production is as much visible here but without the context of before of the prequel; however unlike the first M.D. Geist, the ramshackle nature feels far more interesting here. Certainly it has the bright, gaudy colour of the era, not comparable in the slightest to the original's eighties production even if the character designs and world hasn't changed drastically. The irony is how far later the production was funded, not because it was ten years exactly after or so, but because by the late nineties OVAs were past the boom of them during the bubble economy of eighties Japan and were about to see the righting on the wall the decade soon after.

As much of it is a sympathy for its weird history too why I liked this sequel over the other - some of it has to be derision from my part by in an affectionate way, wondering how the hell the original M.D. Geist got a wider legacy than better or schlockier OVAs, even without John O'Donnell's involvement still selling tapes. Even if O'Donnell's the reason the sequel even exists alongside the Director's Cut, the prequel even if it was the sole release of a non-existent franchise still sold well in the USA. Some of it is admiring the car crash as a whole; all with a bad taste as its childish nihilism with an anti-hero whose morality is entirely absent barring about killing people, who makes Violence Jack look positively chivalrous of all people. And it's ridiculous - so silly, amazing to think Ohata made bad anime like this when Genocyber (1994) (for most of it) succeeded, and that even now Central Park Media is gone their more infamous catalogue titles like this even without a Discotek re-release yet are still known and could actually get one.

From https://positroniko.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/m-d-geistii-02.png

#82: M.D. Geist (1986)

From https://www.dvdplanetstore.pk/wp-content/uploads/
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Directors: Hayato Ikeda and Koichi Ohata

Screenplay: Riku Sanjo

Voice Actor: Jason Beck as M.D. Geist, Dave Couch as Colonel Kurtz, Joan Baker as Vaiya, Kip Kaplan as Marsh

Viewed in the English Dub

Part 2 of the Koichi Ohata Power Hour

Synopsis: On the futuristic planet of Jerra, a member of an experimental super soldier project, christened M.D. Geist, reappears on the lands in the midst of a full blown war between the Nexrum Army and the Regular Army, alongside the threat of a robotic doomsday weapon called the Death Force being unleashed.

Ah, this is as momentous to cover as a Studio Ghibli production, only in the spectrum of suck. And I speak of this as a fan of Koichi Ohata's Genocyber (1994), but M.D. Geist is infamous for a reason. In fact one of the biggest surprises with the original M.D. Geist, bearing in mind its complicated production history, is how slight it actually is when seen by some anime fans as one of the worst anime ever made, or how it was a very successful release from Central Park Media in the videotape era.

Truthfully, the head of CPM John O'Donnell LOVED M.D Geist and used his influence to push the OVA, even turning the titular Geist as the company's mascot. It's a sympathetic thing - we all have favourites that baffle others or you'd be cold blooded - but O'Donnell had a company which he used to fund a director's cut, fund a 1996 sequel and create the equivalent of a Criterion Collection DVD release even when many (including actual CPM staff) thought it was garbage¹. And, personally, M.D. Geist is really nihilistic, dumb trash. Now, it has to be established that I viewed the Director's Cut, the original version from Japan Ohata's debut with a co-director (Hayato Ikeda) arguably included in the credits to contrast the perceived inexperience of Ohata. The original version was haphazardly put together with screenwriter Riku Sanjo to the complaints of the animators themselves, and also had some notorious animation faults, all of which the Director's Cut was meant to pad over.

From http://www.otakuusamagazine.com/uploads/
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The Director's Cut draws out an actual plot and corrects the animation mistakes, but with jarring changes in the type of animation, adding to the fact that M.D. Geist originates from the vast production line of 80s OVAs that this was another half delirious, scribbled mess where there was enough money around to allow them to be made. Arguably, though, even with explanation to what's happening it's not one of the most entertaining from that category at all. It's, at only forty seven minutes, not a long OVA and barely covers a lot, and barely really rises to the level of truly wonderfully bad anime let alone anything good. It's instead a generic post apocalypse tale, openly riffing on what the Mad Max films and Fist of the North Star brought to the table earlier in the eighties, but trying to justify a bland blond grunt named Geist as a badass. We'll get to the murkiness of his characterisation when I cover the sequel in another review, but tough macho figures are common throughout this era, Geist a cipher, but he's not even interesting in terms of absurd stoicism either barring the American football-like body armour.

More underserved, and an unfortunate to be honest in the entire franchise, is Vaiya who is a female leader of a gang who becomes enamoured to Geist for some unexplained reason, trying to seduce him only for this to be the rare chauvinistic anime to not have a male character with a libido and sex scenes. Her character, through both parts, is one of the most trodden on in terms of how visibly useless she's made, her monologue of the idiocy of war and soldiers as hyenas not exactly touching Toshiro Mifune's rant against the samurai in Seven Samurai (1954) no matter how hard it tries. At this point, it's worth emphasising that the English dub, though it gets funnier and worse in the sequel, is dreadful and ridiculous as well which just adds to the absurd lack of seriousness to the material no matter how it tries to be cool. It of course leads to the infamous "Brain Palace" moniker, where the Death Squad hides and launched a thousand memes out to sea on the internet, the dub probably adding a lot more to the material itself in terms of infamy amongst other things.

M.D. Geist itself only gets interesting with its action scenes, which are a little competent as they're also a mess too, especially when you get to the finale becoming utterly shambolic, the sole plot drive inevitably the Regular Army (sic) attempting to stop their own doomsday device of killer robots (who look like robo centaurs) from wiping out the planet. All, as documented, from the context the creators came up with cool scenes without any particular sense of logic at all, especially in the ending where, for the hell of it, Geist turns the Death Force back on for an abrupt twist. I don't want to bother with a spoiler tag for it either; it'll not rob the context for how absurd it is and an almost deadpan comedy to the scene in the English dub.

Viewed in lieu of its reputation, M.D. Geist is pretty average even in the annuals of badness. As I'll get to in the review for the sequel another time, its far more glorious a car crash whilst the original prequel feels like a generic OVA that were dime-a-dozen back in the eighties, only standing out because of O'Donnell's obsession with the title got it a wider reputation. One legitimate piece of praise, however, is the music. The songs by Hironobu Kageyama, famous for the Cha-La Head-Cha-La theme from the first Dragonball series and throughout that franchise, are bombastic, especially in the one solidly entertaining scene of Geist fighting the robotic death machine equivalent of a Russian stacking doll. I didn't expect though, in the one real surprise of M.D. Geist, is legitimately interesting synth jazz in the score, graphic moments of intestines being split and robots exploding being set to eighties saxophone and a nicely dense, odd score that is better and more original than anything else here. It probably wasn't that however that led to the sequel in 1996 however...

From http://www.rq87.flyingomelette.com/RQ/C/MD/2/60.jpg

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1) As documented Justin Sevakis - Anime News Network founder, a former employee of Central Park Media, and founder of video/DVD/Blu-ray production company MediaOCD - about M.D. Geist's reltation in the company HERE.