Whoa, radical dude! Look at all the explosions, bad ass mecha and the totally naked girl that’s running around! Is what I would like to say as an 80′s Sci-Fi fan, to make it sound, like this OVA is any good. But it’s not. Actually, it’s pretty bad. Not cheesy bad, just bad. In fact, they’ve really trashed it over at the Colony Drop website. Nevertheless, there is some good stuff in the details. Althea sets out quite ambitiously, as a hardcore action packed mecha, but gets destroyed by the awful direction. The story is all over the place, and it’s obvious that the creators wanted tocram in too much in such a short OVA. That’s not the biggest problem though.
I don’t know what the production team was smoking, but some scenes look like they were glued together by an amateur. You’ll get a scene, where Althea is talking to Galory, which suddenly gets interrupted by a scene where she is staring off and then a scene cuts in with the end of the dialog, interrupted by some other event. Uh, it’s quite obvious that some stuff is missing here, people!

Every now and then though, you get a scene that’s actually fluid, and those are kinda nice. For example, when Nikolai’s friends get blown up and he falls into a bad ass frenzy. Spidy-insectoid enemy mecha designs sure make for some interesting fights.
On the softer side, you have a Macross-like singing moment or two, a dab of romance and even a message of interracial friendship. And let’s not forget the bare naked scene with Althea, which is probably the longest one in the anime history. Yep, she just stands there, flashing her boobs.

Don’t get your hopes up though, because the animation isn’t really all that good. Sorry to disappoint you, but any decent quality image you might find on the net is probably from an animation cell and not actually from the video source. Most of the scenes are very dark and badly directed anyway, and because there’s only a poor VHS-rip available, you’ll have to struggle a bit to decipher the pixels. I really wish some of these older titles could get a remaster, if not for anything else than for the artistic value it presents to the lovers of 80′s animation.

Bad animation and production aside – the music score: it’s awesome! Seriously, I’ve only been able to find one OST CD (out of supposedly three), with 9 songs, and I’ve been listening to it all day. Yeah, the music consists of 80′s electronic tunes, but it has a general appeal and it would sound so grand, had it been done with real instruments instead.
There’s a wide variety of different melodies. Some are serene and tranquil, like you’re just cruising trough a solar system and enjoying the view. Others are adventurous and all hyped up, suited to accommodate an ace mecha pilot in a heated fight. And some are just plain grandiose, painting the story of a war that rages over galactic proportions.

If for nothing else, I’ll remember Althea for the few nice scenes and definitely for the music. Oh god, that music!