Onikirimaru is your archetypal gory ultraviolent 90s OVA, complete with completely gratuitous scenes of death, tragedy, nudity, and overall chaos. However, putting all of that aside, one reveals a title with a unique visual style and a strong grasp on how to capture motion and color in a given scene to paint a tale of mythical revenge, one orgre's genocidal quest to wipe out his evil race in order to one day become a human being. The story is very straightforward, the four episodes at hand largely captured as monster-of-the-week type confrontations, with Onikirimaru, the ogre that looks just like a man, stumbling upon unholyactivity and thus using his sacred sword to promptly kill the ogres at hand. That basically covers the story, with each episode rather predictably following that same basic pattern. This isn't to say it's bad, just that it's not necessarily groundbreaking, and for what it's going for, it doesn't really need to be.

The art is definitely the strongest aspect of this anime, as it embodies this gritty badassery that this type of title is known for, while also exhibiting a unique and compelling art style that is present in the expressive faces of the characters, the infernal bodies of the ogres, and the glint of swords against the sunlight. It is a little overexposed, but in the end it's not that big of a deal, especially if watched on a CRT screen or with a CRT filter, which definitely softens some of the scenes with especially harsh brightness.

The sound is solid, with voice work that meets the basic standards of the time, a powerful soundtrack that combines synth with traditional Japanese instrumentation, and sounds of life that are downright visceral, from the splintering of bone, to the squelching of flesh, and all the way down to the quiet creak of a floorboard.

As for the characters, most of them are fleeting save for the main character himself, Onikirimaru. However, the characters in Episode 3, the one with the child curse temple, stand out as being better written than the surrounding characters in other episodes.

Overall, Onikirimaru is a fun, badass time, provided you're into this sort of thing. It is especially gross at times, which makes it difficult to broadly recommend, but if you like gritty 90s OVAs and understand what you're in for, this one is worth checking out.