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[HEADING=1]Anime Review[/HEADING]
[HEADING=2]Mars of Destruction[/HEADING]
Director: Yoshiteru SatouStudio: Idea Factory
Original Run: July 8, 2005
Episodes: 1
Genre: Scifi, Action, Psychological (?)
Rating: 16+
Where do I even begin...
First off, this is my first review for a while now. I've actually seen this one a long while ago, but seeing as the reviews I've written so far has been mostly positive, I feel as though I should write some more negative review to even it out a bit, and boy, did I pick a winner. Honestly, I'm not a negative or cynical person. I tend to enjoy a lot of the stuff I watch, and avoid the series I might not like, unless it really catches my attention. And when I do find a show that I think is horrible, it makes it all the more meaningful. Anyways, on to the review...
Mars of Destruction is a 2005 OVA based on the Japan-only video game by Idea Factory, and it is, by far, the worst, most god-awful, astonishingly bad anime I have ever seen. I am just in awe at just how bad this thing is. I can't tell if it's serious, a joke, or even real. Yeah, it doesn't even seem real to me. It fails on every level. The animation is shit, The characters are shit, the voice work is shit, the story and plot is ripped from a much better anime... and is also shit.
So with that, lets dive in.
Story
So the story revolves around a group known as AAST, who primary duty is to fight alien creatures known as Ancients. This "special task force" is NOT made up of highly trained super soldiers, but is instead mainly comprised of a couple of young girls who, honestly, sucks at their job. They are "supposedly" well-trained in close combat and use of firearms, but all they ever do is shoot their stupid little guns (they're terrible shots, too, by the way) and gets their asses kicked. Also on their team is a boy named Takeru, the only character whose name I can remember as the other characters always scream it. He's forced by his abusive father to where that MARS suit, which gives him superhuman abilities. He uses it protect mankind from the Angels-- I mean, Ancients... wait... something's not right here...
If you haven't guessed, let me bold it for you to illustrate my frustration; This is a complete and total rip-off of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Special group fights alien-like creatures, young teens fighting said monsters, angsty main lead forced by his father to fight against his will, and is up to him to save mankind. Hell, there's even some so-called "symbolism" sprinkled in. In case you're wondering, yes, I'm a big Evangelion fan. All you bitter anime fans can take it or leave it. Out of all the terrible, terrible things about this anime, this is the one thing that fascinates me the most. And it's not just something like "Oh, the story just 'coincidently' happen to be similar" (Even though it's exactly the same), no, even the poster's a rip-off.
It's as if The Asylum decided to make an anime. Maybe if this was a parody I would forgive it, but no, this is suppose to be serious. There was even a video game made by the same company. Anyways, that's just my inner EVA fan speaking out. But seriously, I'm just in great shock that someone can honestly be this stupid to write this, and that someone actually wrote this. This would be insulting if it weren't so fucking hilarious. Even totally disregarding the fact that it borrows heavily from Evangelion, it still sucks hard. Everything it steals it fucks-up spectacularly. The characters are less interesting than cardboard, and the writing leaves me rolling on the floor. Also, this has probably the funiest, most pathetic attempt at a twist ending I've ever seen. And what makes it more pathetic is that there's no more episodes. Just one 20-min long anime. And seeing that they've never established this plot point earlier renders it entirely useless, and just leaves you laughing at the screen.
Art/ Animation
I feel that I need to remind you again that this was made in 2005, because honestly, if you didn't know that, you'd think that this was made in the early 90s. Character designs are bland and boring, the monsters wouldn't even make it as half-assed Power Ranger villains, the animation is stiff and inconsistent, and the fight scenes are some of the worst you'll ever see. I've seen some low-budget animes, but this beats them all, and the fact that this was made in 2000-fucking-5 is even more astounding. There is this one famous scene of animation that's was so unintentionally hilarious that I wouldn't dare spoil it (If you have seen this, you'd probably know what I mean.)
[sub]You make this too easy, anime.[/sub]
Sound
Hey, if you think that they couldn't rip-off Evangelion even more, even the soundtrack it mostly comprised of classical music, like Beethoven, and yes, they've even failed at that. The music is so poorly placed and edited together that at one point I heard the damn thing skip and switch to another track. On top of that, the classical music is hilariously misplaced.
The voice work isn't much better, either. On the contrary, it's horrible. Even if you have no ear for good Japanese voice acting, you can still agree that the voice work here is crap. The man who voice Takeru has one of the least intimidating voices I've ever heard. He makes Shinji sound butch, and he's voiced by a woman. The monsters sound even funnier, like guys in suits trying to imitate monster sounds. I'd honestly love to hear an English dub to this. The most surprising thing though is that some of the voice actresses here went on to having successful careers afterwords (except for the Takeru guy, I have no idea where he is.)
Overall
What else can I say about this thing. It is by far the single worst anime ever made. It gets nothing right, it's a complete failure of an anime, and I encourage all of you to see it. Yeah, that's right. Watch it. If your an anime fan, you need to watch this, just to see what a truly, truly terrible anime looks like. It's one of those so-bad-it's-good type of things. Like I mentioned earlier, it's so bad I still can't believe that this thing is real. It's level of badness is like that of a different planet, and it's absolutely beautiful. I guess that might just be one thing this piece of shit got right.
So yeah, from a technical viewpoint, it's pretty much the worst anime ever. But as for actual content, outside of a couple scenes of violence maybe, it's by no means on the same level as some other terrible shows. You'll most likely find a show you'll hate and find more atrocious than this one. Even I have a show I hate more than this (It's Eikens, by the way, which I'll get to some other time.). So if you have 20 minutes to spare, and want to see something truly awful, check this one out and prepare to be amazed.
