Urda

The 6th review in my series of Shitty Anime reviews: Urda.

Hold the front page, this might be one of the funniest, most nonsensical shows with Nazis in it I've ever seen.

Story: 6/10, I'm not going to go too into detail about this so as to not spoil the whole ***30 minutes*** of fun you need to experience first hand. However, essentially you're introduced to Erna an ex-Nazi turned traitor... the ONA revolves around her trying to get a girl called "Clis/Chris" back home (to the future). As far as historical/WW2 media goes, this is absolutely fucking hilarious. Right up there with Nazi Zombies... as I ... mentioned, the goal is to send "Chris/Clis" back to the future. Yeah, the plot revolves around a NASA spacecraft from the year 2112 that the Nazis are trying to get their hands on, whilst Erna attempts to use it to send "Chris/Clis" home.

Animation: 2/10, and here we have it. The reason to watch this ONA in the flesh... the animation. It's so laughably bad that some of these scenes are more comedic than tense 9 times out of 10. Yes... it is that bad, no there really isn't much going for it here... however, this benefits the show greatly! After all the animation is so god awful that I 100% recommend watching this so you can laugh your head off at some of these scenes.

Characters: 3/10, not much to say, you have Erna, "Chris/Clis", a nazi officer, some more rebels/allies and obviously more random nazis. They're fine... not worth discussing at all, this ONA is literally hilarious and I refuse to take any of these people seriously.

Sound: 5/10, the music was pretty good IMO. No further comment.

Ending: 10/10, this shit is so wild and random you have to watch it to understand the score.

Overall: 4/10, no the ending score did *not* bump this up. From a quality perspective, this ONA is shit... from a "let's review trash" perspective, this is unironically hilarious and worth watching... it's only 30 minutes and to be frank, better than a couple of the other shitty anime I've seen so far in this series of reviews.

I'm noticing a pattern in my reviews. I seem to watch a lot of things that could be pretty good if they had more time to work with. Urda is no exception.

For some reason it's broken into episodes. No need really, it's shorter and could just be reedited into a one shot. The story is interesting to me; femme fatale uber soldiers, futuristic scifi plot twists (the ending is very Marvel, I gotta say). It's hard to say if it's rushed or just too fast paced for something so short, but either way it feels incomplete. If ... you've ever read a Matt Rielly novel, imagine your copy is missing pages at random.

The animation is video game-ish, cell shaded and detailed, but action sequences are animated too quickly and feel unnaturally puppet-like. It is right there with Galerians: Rion as far as CG era just with a brighter contrast.

Concept: I'm sold. Execution: not impressed. Verdict: Definitely a niche experience.

Urda is a 1-man project (barring voices and sound design), and I can respect that. Whle overall subpar, there are a lot of places that show that the creator does have the sensibilities for direction and scene composition.

- Animation: Mediocre but praiseworthy
The 3D CGI is definitely subpar in terms of its quality, dating it as a product of the early 2000s. Yet, animation-wise the creator's diligence absolutely shown through for me. Given what was available, he absolutely did as much as he could, and did not slack in the least, with many interesting set pieces strewn throughout what is ultimately just a 30 minute ... ONA.

- Direction: Strong
Kind of a extension of the above, but I just wanted to state it clearly. I think it is only hindered by the technology used.

- Story: Mediocre
Story is nothing special at all. By today's standards it's absolutely mediocre. There are interesting ideas and twists, but only so on paper. Execution needed to be better to carry it.

- Voice Acting: Mediocre to poor
On to voice acting, I actually liked the english dub slightly more that the japanese dub. The japanese voice actors seem amateurish, at least that's how I felt about it. Voices for the leads are good (for japanese), but it breaks apart with the background characters. Not that the english dub is amazing, but I personally prefer it, due to a mix of the overt russian accents plus some so-bad-its-funny moments with the character Janet specifically.

- Sound: Poor
Sound desgin is definitely weak throughout, nothing to be expanded here. Music is also basic, but nothing terrible or distracting here.

- Conclusion:
I would rate it a 4 (below average, but not outright terrible) from my own enjoyment, but under a objective lense it's absolutely a 3 within the grander landscape.