Oh, OVA, what a memorable word for every Otaku, it is a milestone they can’t avoid in their journey. Since November 1983, OVA has always represented high quality, experimental imagination, and, of course, naked Bishōjo. Though over time, as a publishing format, OVA has evolved and no longer consistently embodies these features. However, the shine of previous masterpieces has merely been covered by dust. In this new column, I want to discuss those valuable OVAs. These are great works created by the best masters; they led the trends of their era and remain impressive even when compared with the latest anime. This column will not just going to introduce them; I will delve into their history, background, staff, plot, and anything related to the work, so be mindful of spoilers.
History of OVAs
OVA is short for Original Video Animation, for OVAs from the 1980s to the 2000s, this term refers to animated works released exclusively in boxed videotape/disc format. The advantage of this format was mainly due to this limited publish policy: since the public had limited access to the content of these videos, restrictions from sponsors, PTA, and censorship were minimal. This allowed production companies to depict naked sexy girls and blood violence scenes without complaints from parents; they can also create a pure science-fiction story without those toy-based robots. The rise of teenage and adult audiences, the popularity of home video equipment in families, and the economic boom brought by the bubble economy also pushed OVA to become one of the strongest trends from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s. As the first article in this column, and as a fan of Oshii Mamoru, we have to discuss this work: the first OVA of the world: Dallos
Cancelled TV Project, Reborn as the First OVA
First, let’s talk about the history of Dallos, why people designed OVA in this format, and what makes Dallos the first OVA.
In late 1982, the toy company Popy was planning a new TV project to take over their Magical Princess Minky Momo (魔法のプリンセス ミンキーモモ) will end soon. As the legendary toy company that created Kamen Rider belts, Chogokin full metal robots, and soft vinyl/Sofubi toys, Popy wanted a robot animation. After meeting with four anime studios, Studio Pierrot was chosen to take charge of this work, with Toriumi Hisayuki, Oshii Mamoru, and Itō Kazunori as the main staff team. The aim was to replicate the earlier success of Mobile Suit Gundam, so we can see Shuuichi Ikeda (Char) and Ukai Rumiko (Frau Bow) in this OVA.
Minky Momo pushed the second time popular of magical girl genre with Perrot’s Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel, they also made the name of this genren change from Majokko to Magical girl
Inspired by Stallone’s First Blood, production team wanted the protagonist to assemble his robot from wreckage on the battlefield and keep improving it as the story progressed. The background was set around the conflict between Earth and a lunar colony, clearly influenced by Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Unfortunately, this TV version of Dallos was cancelled in the end. The people at Popy believed the mechanical design wouldn’t be popular and chose to make another season of Minky Momo instead.
Time moved on to 1983, and this year Bandai began merging its subsidiaries, including Popy. At the same time, Bandai’s Antenna shop (アンテナショップ)1 in Roppongi was keep losing money. Shigeru Watanabe (渡辺 繁) was transferred from Popy to take over a new video brand, ‘Emotion,’ to create something that could support the Antenna shop’s business. He said the reason for this transfer was that managers heard him “knew film.” 80’s Japan’s business operating were more casual then I thought. Anyway, Shigeru was also in the team of TV Dallos when he was at Popy, so when he started working at Emotion and needed to create something to attract customers on a low budget, he chose to revive this project as a three-episode short animation series. Each episode was designed to be independent, and to support the Antenna shop, customers could only buy the video at the Roppongi shop.
Emotion’s Icon, currently it is a publish department of Bandai Visual.
Studio Pierrot returned to production, with Toriumi Hisayuki creating the world setting, Itō Kazunori writing the script, and Oshii Mamoru directing. However, at this time (winter 1982-1983 spring), Oshii was also working on his first original work, Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer, so communication between him and his teacher Toriumi was not done well. There were some conflicts, like Oshii secretly changing the storyboard while Toriumi was in the bathroom. He’s always that brave with anyone. The result of this conflict was that Oshii mainly directed the action parts of Dallos, and Toriumi took charge of the drama parts.
On November 21, 1983, Bandai started selling Dallos, but they released the second episode, The Order to Destroy Dallos! (ダロス破壊指令!)first. The actual first episode, Remember Bartholomew (リメンバー・バーソロミュー), was released one month later on January 28, 1984. This was mainly because the second episodeThe Order to Destroy Dallos! focused more on action scenes and could attract more customers. The third and fourth episodes were initially supposed to be one episode, but because Oshii finished Beautiful Dreamer at that time (and lost his job as Urusei Yatsura’s TV director), the last episode Raising in the Sea of Nostalgia (望郷の海に起つ)was too long and had to be divided into two episodes. They were released on April 28 and June 28 of 1984. There was also a 90-minute one-episode recut version released on August 5th, 1985, but the only new addition to this version was several hand-drawn images at the beginning of the film to describe the background story.
Episode 1: Remember Bartholomew (リメンバー・バーソロミュー)
It’s kindly difficult to comment on this episode. Considering it as the first episode of this OVA series, it feels boring. Four scenes generally introduce the main characters but do not develop them. There is a lot of background information explaining the complex conflict between the moon and Earth, but we can’t see how Earth is pressuring Lunar people. Bartholomew is the title of this episode, but what is the Bartholomew event? We don’t know. It seems like it could be a train accident, and we can only learn some details through the characters’ dialogue.
However, if you watch this episode after episode 2, the whole experience is much better. Episode 2 begins with a high-violence fight between the guerrilla and police, and watching episode 1 afterward could explain many things in episode 2, and it has a much better rhythm.
The mechanical design in this episode is quite imaginative. There’s a fly-two leg walking car/spaceship used by the police, real Mobile Suit built from mining machinery, and the giant face Dallos on the far side of the moon. The art of these designs is clearly influenced by Alien’s art design. In fact, the entire Japanese anime industry was heavily influenced by American horror films in the 80s. Toriumi later also directed a space horror OVA, Lily C.A.T. (1987), which is basically a fusion of Alien and The Thing.
They are petty cool design, but I won’t ask my parents buy the toy of this for me when I was 10, Popy was right.
Episode 2: The Order to Destroy Dallos! (ダロス破壊指令!)
The experience brought by the second episode is completely different. While the first episode feels like the beginning of a year-long TV animation, the second episode is more like watching a film animation in a theater, with a fast rhythm and more action scenes.
This episode is a great example of how Oshii gives his animation a film-like texture. For instance, the first scene:
notice how detailed the shooting has been drown, the smoke’s movement, the classic cold shadow favored by Oshii, and the dropping bullets among the stairs.
One specific feature of Oshii’s work is his ability to design frames in animation as if a camera exists. This part was primarily done by ‘overdrive’ animator Yamashita Masahito (山下 将仁), a disciple of Kanada Yoshinori (金田 伊功). He also created this famous scene in Urusei Yatsura, see how excellent he’s able to arrange the all moving projects in frame and shifting in a real 3D space:
Kaneda‘s sakuga style emphasize the impact of frame rather than authenticity. The most famous animator of this style now is the founder of Trigger, Hiroyuki Imaishi.
Sakuga (high-quality animation) is not directly related to Oshii since he is not an animator; he mainly draws storyboards and designs layouts. However, genius animators have always been by Oshii’s side, especially Utsunomiya Satoru (宇都 宮理), the Einstein of Sakuga2. This might be because realistic animation must be built on high-level sakuga.
If you’re familiar with the Italian New Wave in film, you might notice that this episode references La battaglia di Algeri (1966) in many scenes, such as the guerrilla man taking a gun from a woman’s bag to shoot the police. The police in the first episode also call Level 3 “Kasbah,” which is the name of those houses built by stairs going downward.
The scene of people getting downstairs is the essence of this episode, Oshii keep repeat this scene in the whole series to emphasize the life on the Moon.
However, this doesn’t mean Oshii is merely making an animated version of La battaglia di Algeri. The core of Dallos focuses more on the generational conflict on Earth rather than the nationalism in La battaglia di Algeri. I’ll delve into this more in episodes 3 and 4, as episodes 1 and 2 avoid revealing the true attitudes of the people on the moon towards Earth.
One more thing to mention is the cyber dog that appears in the middle of this episode. The cyber armor with red glasses is obviously the precursor to the exoskeletons Protect Gears in Oshii’s Kerberos Saga series.
The red shinning eye is the most noticeable feature of this gear, the more funny thing is these police wear this gear is also called watch dog(番犬). Hiroyuki Okiura (沖浦啓之)’s Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade as the thir work of Kerberos Saga series could be more famous as the last LD work published by Bandai; The Red Spectacles (紅い眼鏡) as the first work, recenlt just released 4K remastared plan.
Episode 3: Raising in the Sea of Nostalgia (望郷の海に起つ)
The third episode was released three months after Remember Bartholomew on April 28, around the time Oshii left Pierrot following the controversy stirred by Beautiful Dreamer, which angered both Urusei Yatsura fans and Takahashi Rumiko. This might explain why the story skips how Shun and others escape from the earthquake ruins.
Despite this, the episode is still quite good, displaying a fusion of detailed storytelling and high-quality action scenes. Oshii (or Toriumi) successfully portrays the different attitudes of various colonial forces towards the revolution in just one episode. The core of the story isn’t about nationalism on the moon but the generational attitude change within the colony.
The first generation views Earth as home and came to the moon to save their homeland. The second generation also hails from Earth but came for better opportunities and work. The third generation, born on the moon, has no memory of Earth and perceives Earth’s policies as oppressive. This design pairs so well with Shun as a confused teenager, but the rush of the whole story didn’t express the concept of “Shun experiencing all generations’ ideas of Earth and then making his own decision” perfectly.
In contrast, the Luna government was not shaped as well. Toriumi clearly designed a complex colonial government with power struggles, but there wasn’t enough time to show the details. Like how Shun’s experience in the story didn’t bind with the three generations’ idea of revolution, the lack of government exposure highlights the main problem of the script of Dallos: the background, characters, and most designs were prepared for a TV show project. When they were placed into a much smaller project, the gaps became so obvious.
We can see these gaps in various places, including the broken connections between events. For example, the riot happened in this episode. The dropping headband presents the contempt of the police towards lunar people, the cruel identity policy from Earth, and the people who died in the bomb strike so well, making the riot scene full of emotion. But that’s all; there’s no response from the government. The next scene is them finding the guerrilla gathering at Dallos and preparing an assault.
The riot was described so well, but the problem is the story move to the final fight at next scene, I thought shun’s father was stomped to death in this scene.
This is a general issue with most 80s-90s OVAs: there’s super great sakuga, but the whole story is just simple. Most customers cared more about the visual experience than the story. Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01 is the best example of this trend, as it has almost no plot but just presents 40 minutes of mecha fights at the highest level of sakuga.
The same goes for Dallos itself. Despite the series being named after it and everyone being focused on it, we still don’t understand what it is. It keeps drifting around the core of the story and then flashes into the swirl to change the story, making it a real deus ex machina.
Episode 4: Raising in the Sea of Nostalgia, Act 2 (望郷の海に起つ: ACT2)
This could be the best episode in the entire series, featuring an imaginative combat scene in the first half and compelling drama in the second half.
The new mobile suits/mecha (it’s unclear what they really are due to some confusing scaling issues) were inspired by the ski ballet at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics. This scene is done exceptionally well, showcasing Oshii’s mastery in choreographing battle sequences. He successfully builds a hardcore battlefield: Alex sends a bait unit into the canyon with an escort to attract the guerrilla; the guerrilla’s machines are covered by camouflage cloth and use laser communication between each group; then the main army, led by Alex, jumps into the canyon like skiers. The violence is depicted in a direct manner: heads turn into blood mist inside helmets after being shot, severed hands still move as they fall to the ground, which is one of my favorite cut.
The second half contains my favorite scene, the trip to the Sea of Nostalgia. The previous three episodes consistently emphasize the harshness of life on the moon, but this was not fully conveyed until this episode. The earlier scenes even have a scene shows Shun and Rachel dating in a fancy park in the city center, which doesn’t seem harsh at all. However, Oshii perfectly answers this question with the Sea of Nostalgia. As Shun and his grandfather travel through the wasteland ruins and arrive at the Sea of Nostalgia, we see endless tombs leading up to the Earth looming in the sky. At that moment, I can understand the complex emotions the people on the moon have towards Earth, all those sacrifices and the will to return to Earth, to keep building on the Moon. These emotions are perfectly expressed solely through imagery and music. The only pity here is that Oshii shows us that what happened was just the first phase of a much larger epic story that we may never be able to see.
As the first OVA in history, Dallos has several obvious shortcomings, but we can’t deny it is a remarkable work filled with classic Shōwa-era science fiction imagination. Oshii Mamoru has used revolution as a narrative subject throughout his career, but these works always give way to the contradiction between reality and illusion—an almost inevitable manifestation of his experiences during the Zenkyōto movement. However, Dallos presents a detailed depiction of a violent revolution in the post-colonial era from a broad perspective, which is rare in Oshii’s work. For legacy lovers, fans of Oshii Mamoru, or those wanting to delve deeper into becoming a real Otaku, Dallos is a work worth watching—just stick to the OVA, not the film.
- Antenna shop does not sell antennas; it is the name of a type of store that sells all products of a brand. This Bandai store in Roppongi mainly sold multimedia products. ↩︎
- He get this reward with another OVA also directed by Oshii Mamoru: Gosenzo-sama Banbanzai!(御先祖様万々歳！), could be the best work of Oshii ever. ↩︎
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