I don't drink alcohol, but I want to pretend I was drunk to counter the fact that I was like "No, this actually isn't that bad, and you just don't appreciate classic '90s OVA anime with unique character design and occasionally very good animation. It's a short action piece and you have to confront it similar to how you would look at a kung fu film. Quit being a whiner and go watch your stiff as a board seasonal anime with 3D backgrounds, generic MC, and characters who all look the same other than their swappable rainbow hair." Okay, it actually just sucks. I'll admitit. A rating of 3-4 seems doable if you really appreciate certain aspects, but the pacing and writing are atrocious enough that this does get boring, and boring is not something you want for even a second with a brainless fighting game adaptation. Typical of those, it's too short for the characters to have any depth or for there to be anything but a compressed story, but it's just long enough to drag.

The story is generic. It's something about a bad boy principal at a school and stones they can use to turn into like half-naked bondage soldiers. They basically get big shoulder pads, spikes, gems, and random bits of armor, and it gives them superhuman strength and they can say words to do attacks from an old NeoGeo game. Kast takes the basic dumb-dumb good vs evil story and tries to turn it into some more vague and complex dualism, but it's long-winded and doesn't really work—the staff winks at the audience by having the female character fall asleep during his tedious explanation. There's a similar scene in Tamala 2010, a much better film, where I thought that worked as a joke. Here, it feels more like an apology: "Sorry, guys, I know this sucked. I was too busy drawing weird, messy character designs from an alternate dimension to bother with scripting." The writing is the junk food equivalent of post-modern philosophy, which is filled with trite, stupid, society-destroying ideas, but wrapped up in fancy dancing and clunky language to instill depth that isn't really there. This is similar, only everyone knows this is stupid because it's a Masami Obari freakshow.

Seriously, it's a freak show. These are like garbled malformed meat men with bodies that shift into new meaty forms every frame. Obari has created hentai, and he definitely is known for low-brow trashy anime with plenty of fanservice, scantily clad females, bouncing breasts, visible nipples through fabric, and very revealing butt shots (they are usually more than panty shots because of the silly thonged-up costumes) from creative angles. He actually does a pretty good job with some of the selected shots, if you're into that kind of thing. The problem is... um... look at the COVER! Obari has a hard enough time with proportions and not creating warped abominations, and the faces are especially ugly. You can tell the women are just there to be sexy (they're not necessary to the plot at all other than dog woman, I guess), but the faces are so distorted sometimes these might as well be the nurses from Silent Hill. The manly men suffer from the same problems, but at least Obari isn't trying to make them look sexy! Just look at pink-haired Mr. Tumblr's funnily shaped head. I'd say the same about the main character, but I feel like we never get a clear idea of what he looks like because he looks different in every frame!

I'm of the opinion that Obari's talent was squandered during the '90s OVA boom. The main villain in this is such a massive, creepy, malevolent entity. Just look at the villain for this, which actually does have a freakish design and tone, suggestive of a legitimate horror film. Imagine this guy making Lovecraftian cosmic horror, Edgar Allan Poe, or even Edogawa Rampo! His constantly off-model character design would work better then. He's got the design work down already for cosmic space aliens and slumbering sea demons and grinning evil bastards. Just let Obari work his magic. We'd have instant classics for sure, except for Obari's consistently terrible writing.

On the bright side, this production sometimes has pretty decent backdrops for the art and creative cinematography, and there is a certain stylization to Obari's direction that is often overlooked due to the focus on bad writing and ugly character designs. The animation is fairly consistent and fluid and is very interesting in light of the design work, and there's a lot of great sequences from Yoh and Kou Yoshinari. Kazuto Nakazawa also worked on this, and while I don't know all of the names responsible for key animation, there's some obvious talent here. You'll see anime staples like Kanada dragon and Itano circus to fair effect as well. All the best scenes are on Sakugabooru, so there's really not much of a good excuse to watch this anymore.