Explorer Woman Ray · review
If you're a fan of Indiana Jones like I am, you will absolutely love this weird little OVA. The plot is essentially the same as Raiders of the Lost Ark and alot of the sequences and music are copyright-infringingly similar, Ray goes around chasing an conspicuously evil German and treasure while being followed by 2 twins. There's a good amount of action scenes, but the start is definitely the highlight. Ray sortof takes a back-seat at first but we start to get there later on. Both episodes of the OVA take place in different places and feel a bit more serialised, but the plot doesresolve itself.
Animation wise it's solid. The faces are a bit more 90s than what you typically get of OVAs from this time period, and the fact it was made by AIC really helps it stand out a bit more in terms of quality. One thing I especially have to commend is the animation of the vehicles, there's some really detailed shots and you can definitely feel the Megazone in alot of the scenes. It definitely feels like alot more effort was made where they could have cheaped out.
The music is a little poor, there's alot of recycled tracks and the main theme nearly outright copies the Indiana Jones theme, with a little restraint. Voice actors are all pretty standard for the time period, nothing too memorable though.
The biggest downside though, is that there was only a LaserDisc release and the transfer really isn't that great even for the time, so the visual quality is quite poor in alot of places. It's a real shame because alot of work clearly went into the action cuts like the train scene in the beginning, but that's just how it is with old OVAs alot of the time.