Idol battling anime are everywhere. They represent the anime industry's worst tendencies towards commercial, consumable fanservice, in both the sexual and non-sexual senses. Prayers attempts to decommercialize the music battling concept as much as possible. The result: a bizarre anime that was never going to sell well and, as such, is only available in a half-finished, cancelled state. There is a novelization that (allegedly) has the full story, but there's not a chance it will ever be translated. Prayers ends up deconstructing many tropes of 2010s anime before the entire anime industry was beholden to these tropes; it's more relevant now than when it wasmade. A world with few or no adults wouldn't be a setting for great adventures and hijinks, but a wasteland only attained after lots of social upheaval and disaster. Music battles wouldn't be fun, hype, and cute; they'd be horrific death battles. Furthermore, Prayers features only one song from a real-life idol throughout its runtime (its ED). The rest of the songs are rock versions of classical pieces with scat vocals. This was possibly done to save money: production company Softgarage mainly makes hentai (through its infamous production label Pink Pineapple), so this was never going to be a high budget show. This shows in the art: it is unrefined and, at times, off model. This ends up adding to the dark, downbeat atmosphere of the OVA; sakuga fights and polished animation would make the show feel like cheap junk, indistinguishable for the millions of other 2000s anime with those things.

Prayers is full of disparate elements and mysteries that, due to the anime's cancellation at 2 out of 4 episodes, will never be resolved on screen. Cults, zombies, and political revolution all play major roles in the story. This is the turnoff for many: Prayers comes across as an overly ambitious, gory B movie. The actual story, in addition, is generic anime fare. Jesus Yamato refuses to kill, but shockingly, his sweet demure waifu Mary Sue Lucy can (and does) kill due to her connection with the shady organizations in the background! Prayers becomes more than its core plot suggests because, due to its decommercialized and downbeat nature, it has none of the otaku escapism shows like Gundam SEED or Elfen Lied provide. It's a cool story, and it's also a look at the reality of young adult life: filled with dangerous pasttimes, self-destructive, and susceptible to outside influences from infantilized, maladjusted adults that can only be overcome with the will to survive and grow. No, Yoshiyuki Tomino did not write this!

Prayers is a swansong of the bitter end of the OVA era: hyperviolent and dark, yet well-constructed, realistic, and not nihilistic edgelord porn. Nothing like it will ever be made again, for better or worse.