#82: M.D. Geist (1986)

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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.