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Jan 28, 2026
This 7-part OVA looks fantastic. The backgrounds specifically are extremely good. The music is also above average, as are the character designs. The animation quality is high: ambitious and well-crafted. The worldbuilding is way better than I expected it to be. The alternate world of El-Hazard (terrible name as many have already mentioned) is intriguing and 'believable' with inspired creative design elements throughout. (The one exception being the kind-of gross cat armor which really looks bad and is quite distracting on screen.) I really enjoyed getting to see the world unfold more and more each episode. Ancient buried technology is almost always a winning
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ingredient, as are massive looming doomsday devices.
The plot and the characters are the stumbling blocks for my enjoyment. Some of the characters are fantastic, others are mixed, and a few are just annoying/cringe the whole time. It's the attempted mix of goofy humor with serious interdimensional plot contrivances which both helps and hurts the final product. The story overall is so close to being good, and with a few small tweaks and adjustments it could be much more special.
I have zero nostalgia for this property, have never heard a single thing about it before watching, but do feel like it was a worthwhile watch for me. Despite the absolutely incredible visual style, I hesitate to emphatically recommend it because of the uneven tone and character work, and the slightly unsatisfying story.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jan 13, 2026
This 4-part OVA has excellent reviews here, and an overall good reputation online. I have never seen any Rurouni Kenshin, but I'm always willing to give something new a try. Imagine my surprise then when I actually watched this and discovered some very mediocre animation quality, and very weak storytelling. The style is also very fugly at points, with strangely drawn faces, and genuinely not-excellent atmospheric nature shots. The plot is extremely dramatic and somewhat cringe-worthy, but more importantly it's just poorly crafted and poorly-paced. Even accepting that we are seeing things through Kenshin's (an immature and socially challenged character) POV there is zero weight
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or meaning to almost anything that is said, and little relation between the dialogue and what actually happens in the story. There are long stretches of pseudo-philosophical monologue, but the concepts exposed on only serve as artificially added drama and tension for characters who ignore in deed everything they've just said or been told about the nature of killing or duty.
Far from the worst plot or animation style I've seen, but not at all what I was hoping for given the overall high ratings this series has. I found the whole thing to be average in animation quality, below average in style, and poor in story. The music is skillfully scored to the visuals with dramatic silences used well. For me the soundtrack was the strongest element, and was absolutely at its best in the moments when traditional Japanese flutes and percussion are incorporated into the score.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jan 13, 2026
Record of Lodoss War looks, sounds, and feels amazing. What it is (direly) lacking in pacing, character dialogue, and plot cohesion it absolutely makes up for with fantastic atmosphere. There is an earnest generic fantasy nature to this, but when it came out it was actually quite different and unique. What feels today like well-worn trope, was actually once fairly fresh and it's very cool too see one of Japan's first 'serious' non-comedy Fantasy anime properties. I love the way the music and the character designs do serious heavy lifting for the storytelling here. If I had my wish, the content would be a little
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more evenly paced, drawn out, and slowly revealed, because there are just too many sudden gear shifts and character introductions for most people to manage. Besides just basic dialogue explaining what is happening, it would be nice to have Indiana Jones-style travel montages over a map to give some sense of the scale of what's happening and who is going where. It's pretty clear the creators anticipated the audience to already have read the manga and/or light novels, because sometimes they don't even say the names of certain characters until halfway into an episode. If you're willing to really focus and pay close attention to character and place names you shouldn't be too lost on the first watch even if this is your first exposure to this media. It's quite good, but certainly not for everyone.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jan 13, 2026
Young Hayao Miyazaki with ample room to explore and experiment. Very much "for kids" but still made with extreme care and thoughtfulness. There are classic Miyazaki elements like unusual flying machines, strong female characters, and a pro-environmental message, but also a cartoonish whimsy and freedom which feels youthful and endearing. The classic late 70's cartoon soundtrack features a groovin' electric bass and some fantastically of-its-era music and sounds. It's not "good" by modern standards, but absolutely contributes to the charm of the whole thing, and I wouldn't want it any other way. It's wonderful to see the proto-elements of future beloved Ghibli films scattered all
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throughout the 10 hours of this show. The show starts slowish but really does step it up in the 2nd half. Highly recommended watching for any Ghibli/Takahata/Miyazaki fan.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jan 13, 2026
Full disclosure, I did not make it to the end.
Surprisingly solid designs and style for something so renowned for being a terrible anime. Likewise, the animation quality was not nearly as bad as I expected, much closer to mediocre than poor in terms of visuals alone.
The story, characters, plot, and dialogue are all truly a special grade of terrible, as expected. The pacing is so bizarrely truncated and rushed it feels like you've experienced an entire season of a TV show by the time 30 minutes have passed. The dialogue is a jumbled mess of strange character names and odd remarks. None of the
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characters interact or react in any meaningful way to anything that happens. The main character has wings sprout from his ankles sometimes and never remarks on it. It baffles the mind that this was released in this form at all - this has to be a tax evasion or money laundering thing right? Almost worth watching for a laugh, but I couldn't bring myself to see it through to the end - there are better ways to live life, and much funnier things to see.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Jan 9, 2026
5 episodes at 30 minutes each clocking in a confusing but uniquely entertaining 2.5 hours. Without even knowing that these OVAs are religious in origin, you'd be able to tell pretty quickly that something is not quite normal with the vibe here. The opening credits are a lot to take in but so incredibly specific and wonderful. The whole thing sits somewhere in a mix of He-Man, Space Ghost, and Religious Educational Programming. It's taking itself quite seriously but it's absolutely filled with moments of humor unintentionally. The "religious leader" who bankrolled this entire anime is also the singer for the opening and closing music,
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and if you read up on this guy its entirely possible he commissioned this entire thing just so he could sing those songs.
The animation throughout is average, with a few unexpectedly good moments, and several quite weak ones too. The style is stiff and odd, but it works for what they're doing. A true internet-age media find. I applaud digital archivists and conservationists! Watched on YouTube with Japanese Audio, no subs available at this time (you mostly don't need them anyway).
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jan 9, 2026
This 7-part OVA series is deeply, almost disgustingly disrespectful to the viewer with its horrible disjointed plot and characters. Most of the characters don't even need to be in the story at all, but the plot keeps hinting at the potential for something important to happen which will involve everyone. There is no given motivation for anyone to be doing any of what happens here, until a quite late reveal of a misinterpreted dying wish, which is such an extremely WEAK reason for the entire story to have happened. Truly, the entire plot of the whole 7-part OVA would have been solved with a single
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conversation and/or Press Conference. Literally everything that happens is pointless, and you FEEL that the whole time. The crowning moment of this time-wasting lack of meaning is the end-of-series final hour "big reveal" of Big Fire's grand motivation for why they have been doing what they do: Their motivation for terrorism is... "it's all part of the plan which will be eventually be revealed at a later time." Nothing is ever revealed of course, because there was no actual motivation or plan, just bullshit jerking the viewer around for caring. Even the character you were led to believe was in charge is fake and not real. There are so many low-quality, shameless instances of bad writing and disrespect to the viewer. It's all so very insulting, with pathetic laziness from the writer/director masquerading as mysterious depth. Absolute garbage, the creators should be ashamed of this plot work.
The music is full of very impressive epic stirring symphonic bombast which is often completely inappropriate for the scenes it accompanies. The tonal disconnect extends to the character designs as well. The characters should absolutely be the highlight of this, but even that creative element struggles due to odd choices. In a better planned and executed project the whimsy and fun of the characters could be showcased and appreciated, with a plot that matches their silly retro look and over-the-top anime power scaling shenanigans. The plot given chokes the life out these characters by removing any meaning from their actions. The animation likewise is quite good, but with many moments of terrible direction and vision which are confusing and hard to watch. So much bad judgement is on display constantly.
Overall, this is unfortunately just a disjointed flashing lightshow occasionally interrupted by terrible dialogue which does not advance, clarify or reinforce the plot or the character motivations. More than anything, I cannot emphasize enough that watching this is a waste of time because of how extremely stupid, nonsensical, and disjointed the plot and characters are. If you must watch, limit yourself to the first episode to soak in some fun characters and character design and then walk away. Do not commit 7 hours to this garbage.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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