Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - Tales from the Bottom Shelf
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Rakkan
Posts: 16 |
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Funny thing about Fandora, she appears in several episodes of the Saint Seiya anime. The stand out cameo is in episode five where she can be seen in the crowd.
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2697 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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I actually enjoyed Explorer Woman Ray. Yes, that second episode definitely was filled with animation errors, including an moment where someone's mouth continued animating after the seiyuu said her line (yeah, an anime Godzilla-ed itself!), but in the end I still had a fun time watching it. Maybe it was partially because of how bashed it was, including Mike's own AnimeJump review, so my expectations were really low, but I honestly, truly enjoyed Ray. Oh well.
As for some of my favorite "non-essential" 80s OVAs I have a few of them.: Salamander (I still find it to be one of the better anime based on a video game, at least in terms of OVAs) Prefectural Earth Defense Force (lots of silly fun to be had here) One Pound Gospel (definitely my favorite Rumiko Takahashi works) The Violence Jack OVAs (sure, they're unabashedly vile, but that's kind of the point) Baoh (JoJo's easily the better Araki work, but there's just a great sense of ultra-violence fun in Baoh) Crystal Triangle (my god... just oh my god is this OVA amazing... it has to truly be seen to be believed) |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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I also liked this and checked out the manga later, but I actually prefer the OVA because it doesn't finish the story. In the manga, the heroine is a novice (hasn't taken her final vows) and so it's possible for her to choose a relationship with the hero over being a nun. I don't recall this distinction being made in the OVA (but I could just be forgetting), and the only overt expression of attraction on the part of the hero earns a genuinely angry slap. Because of this, questions about the future (the old "will they, won't they?" routine) don't exist and the only thing that matters is how the characters are interacting at that particular moment. I found this quality really enhanced the interactions between the leads. As for "non-essential" OVAs, Vampire Wars (1990 makes the cut, right?) is pretty hilarious in terms of nonsensical plot twists and a wide-open ending followed by a huge THE END as any of it added up to anything. I even wonder if it's a deliberate cheese-fest, but maybe I underestimate the '80s. |
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No Comment
 Posts: 83 |
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I've seen a few mentioned in Dave's column, and in this article Judge, Cosmo Police Justy, Take The X Train, Space Family Carlvinson, Del Power X, and Grey: Digital Target have been simmering on my To Watch list for a while, and both articles definitely added a few titles to the list. It's easy to tell yourself that you'll watch a lot of these weird things since most of them don't crack an hour.
As for what I've seen, Ultimate Teacher is pretty awesome and I'd jump at a DVD of that. Call Me Tonight was moderately entertaining, I think I would've liked Dead Heat better as a TV series, Relic Armor Legacium has cool mech designs but a poorly explained plot and annoying VAs, and I really, really didn't like Cosmos Pink Shock. Other things not mentioned that I want to see are Tobira No Akete (not the Koji Morimoto one), Bride Of Deimos, Demon Hunter Makaryūdo, Dragon's Heaven, Gakuen Tokusō Hikaruon, Yajikita Gakuen Douchuuki, and D-1 Devastator. I didn't even have to look for most of these, I just watched a couple obscure things on Youtube and they started popping up in my recommendations. Last edited by No Comment on Sun Nov 17, 2013 3:13 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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I love old non-essential OVAs, and I've seen most of the ones Mike and Dave mentioned. Unlike the stuff Brad Jones will review for the Cinema Snob, or the Best of the Worst the RLM guys mock, one-shot and forgotten OVAs like these STILL requires vasts amounts of effort and talent to make anything at all. I think the most boring ones I'm come across were Roots Search and Dark Myth, but your Good Morning Altheas and Legaciams still have production budgets, as do most of these. Really, the only fault I can find is that they probably need remasters, and then they're wholly watchable just for being works of animation and short.
Fandora is one I want fully subbed simply because it fits in with the girls in bikini armor convention of the day, with Leda and Dream Hunter Rem. I have the raws downloaded, but haven't gotten around to watching them yet. I haven't gotten around to Garaga yet either, mainly because it's feature length and I'll probably need a drink to get through it. Also, I don't get why everyone thinks the Crusher Joe OVAs were the epitome of the medium. I just saw them, they're "bretty gud 5/5", but they're nowhere near as awesome as the film, and I find it hard to judge how good it really is visually until a BD comes out.
That's how I found out about Kennel Tokorozawa, which is basically a story about a horny dog wanting to screw everything. Then there's this one called Itoshi no Betty Monogatari, which I just can't make sense of, but both of these remind me of all the borderline hentai OVAs of the day as well, like Minna Agechau and 1+2=Paradise. Last edited by walw6pK4Alo on Sun Nov 17, 2013 2:27 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Giant_Robo_28
 Posts: 52 Location: Chicago |
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There are a few OVA's that I remember fondly that helped pass the time.
1. Shamanic Princess - Mitsuru Hongo's brief OVA is a entertaining magical ride. 2. Ninja Cadets - The Proto-Naruto OVA provides some fun action and has some solid character designs from Eiji Suganuma. 3. Ninja Resurrection - I was never an idiot and believed that this was a sequel to Ninja Scroll, but only enjoyed it due to Kenji Hayama's character designs and animation work, since I'm a huge Giant Robo fan. |
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Anime World Order
 Posts: 390 Location: Florida |
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The German suplex is so named because it was pioneered by a gentleman named Karl Gotch, an Olympic amateur catch wrestler turned pro who was instrumental in popularizing professional wrestling in Japan, where they refer to him as the "God of wrestling." Before his death in 2007, he trained several of the top Japanese wrestlers such as the original Tiger Mask, and his students both in Japan and elsewhere were in turn instrumental in popularizing MMA. The topic of extraneous OAVs is so weird. Part of me wants to relish the opportunity to mention Scoopers and California Crisis, but then I realize anyone having this discussion is sick of hearing about those two by now. So I'll pick the 1992 one-shot 45 minute OAV for Raven Tengu Kabuto, an LA Hero release (wasn't CPM, don't believe Wikipedia's lies!) which was one of the earliest anime titles I rented from a video store when I was about 13 or 14. I never was even going to bother with it, but my dad saw the "warning: contains nudity and violence" sticker and said "get THIS one!" At the time I remember not liking it and thinking it was stupid for reasons like "he just flies straight past 50 guys and they all die" and "this level of cybernetic technology is anachronistic to the time period." Today, now that the name "Buichi Terasawa" means something to me, I'm enlightened enough to know that is why it is AWESOME. It's still not well-animated or lurid enough to not be utterly nonessential, but at least I "get" it. I know they made a 26-episode TV series, but it feels like a 1980s Ruby-Spears cartoon. I'm not so far gone to think THOSE were awesome...yet. |
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zawa113
 Posts: 7358 |
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I enjoyed Justy well enough, though when I try to remember it, I just remember the far superior Locke too.
My choice for unnecessary 80s OVA has got to be Cipher. This never came out in the US, but it didn't even need to be fansubbed because they decided to put English dialogue in it. It's actually not that bad considering, but there's spots where you go "that just sounds wrong". Of course, because it is now the year 2013 and not 1989, it's on youtube. So, the manga for this is definitely hardcore 80s. It has a tendency to be waaaay too excited to take place in the 80s something. It's a great series though with good characters. But if you thought the manga was too 80s, the OVA turns it up to 11. It's basically just covers of 80s music set with some football thing thrown in and a bunch of random scenes from the manga. Now, as someone who has read the manga (and enjoyed it a lot), I could barely follow what was clearly something for the manga fans to look at and go "omg! NYC in the 80s is so cool! Hey, I recognize that scene from the manga!", I couldn't even follow it. On its own, it's just simply hilarious that such a cheesy thing exists, so if you have a half hour, I definitely recommend checking it out, because the level of cheese is barely comprehensible. |
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GTO Neko
 Posts: 94 |
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There were so many on shots that it's hard to keep track on which ones were really the "best" ones to mention.
One other thing too about a lot of the OVA's were the fact that so many of them surprisingly had some good opening and closing songs in them as well. MAPS in particular had the cool opener of "The Wind Rides on Wings" and the first OVA of Appleseed had "Crystal Celebration" for it's closer. |
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FLCLGainax
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Levitz9
 Posts: 1022 Location: Puerto Rico |
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I can only imagine that the OVA adaptation of Johji Manabe's Outlanders counts as an extraneous OVA. It's a poor retelling of the first half of the manga, and not even Tatsunoko wants to admit to making it (they don't list it on their website).
Then Central Park Media gave it a 20th Anniversary Edition, featuring Sean Schlemmel in two starring roles. |
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ly000001
 Posts: 76 |
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My favorite non-essential OVA is "Ryokunohara Labyrinth - Sparkling Phantom" (which counts as an 80's OVA depending if you count years divisible by 10 as the end of a decade instead of the beginning
 ). Most, if not all, of my fascination with it is due to it being aimed at an audience familiar with the manga it was based on, leaving me (who, 20 years after first seeing it, still knows next to nothing about the original source material) with many "WTF?" moments. When a few of my fellow anime club members wanted to try their hand at fansubbing, I volunteered to do the timing for "Ryokunohara Labyrinth" just so I could get my hands on the English translation, which did very little to clear up the plot for me  A few years ago, I bought the LD release of it off of Yahoo! Japan Auctions, just to have a decent copy of the thing that drove me nuts back in the day
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walw6pK4Alo
Posts: 9322 |
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It may not be a great OVA, but it is more middle-shelf material because it's enjoyed at least some amount of recognition over the years. Manabe's other OVA, Capricorn, would definitely be the obscure one. |
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vanfanel
 Posts: 1261 |
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Oh, ho, ho, you're speakin' my language with this column!
Here's a few of mine: -Dragon's Heaven (Moebius-style art in a decent SF-mecha one-shot) -Glass Mask OVAs 1-3 (very pretty, with melodrama cranked to 11) -Dark Sea, Moon Shadow (3-part adaptation of Shinohara Chie's horror manga (18 volumes, so don't expect a great ending)) -Urban Square (generic 80's action movie with Akemi Takada character designs) -Baby Love (one-shot shoujo OVA; promoting a longer comic, as usual) -Business Commando Yamazaki (businessman dies from overwork, and is resurrected as an unstoppable business cyborg) -Kimagure Orange Road and Child's Toy OVAs (two alternate looks at how two famous TV series could have been) -Shonan Bakusozoku (AnimEigo, hurry up and release the other 9 episodes of this, already!  )
-Harbor Light Story - From Fashion Lala (covered in Pile of Shame; must see to believe) "Take the X Train" comes from a novella (not a full novel, btw) by Koichi Yamano, one of the more influential (and new wave) writers of early Japanese SF. One of his stories is out in English ("Where Do The Birds Cry Now?" in "Speculative Japan 1"). |
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Zhou-BR
Posts: 1463 |
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Thank you, man! I knew I had seen her before, but for the life of me I couldn't remember where. I just wasn't aware that she appeared in other episodes than the fifth one, which features some really funky, off-model animation direction by a guy named Hisashi Takai. Maybe he worked on Fandora too, but his only other credit I'm aware of, thanks to ANN's Encyclopedia, was as an animation director on Plawres Sanshiro. Edit: after doing some research, I found out that Norimoto Tokura, one of the key animators on the fifth and ninth episodes of Saint Seiya, also worked on Fandora. I guess episode 9 is the other one where she makes a cameo. Edit 2: all right, did some more research, and it turns out episodes 5 and 9 had their animation entirely outsourced to Kaname Pro, the studio that produced Plawres Sanshiro, Fandora and many OVAs in the '80s. That explains why they look so drastically different from the usual Saint Seiya episodes, and we're talking about a show where the animation quality and the art style fluctuated a lot, especially throughout the Sanctuary arc. Last edited by Zhou-BR on Thu Dec 26, 2013 12:23 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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