A strange growth on a mysterious old woman leads the brilliant surgeon Ukyo Retsu into a 5,000-year-old battle for the fate of Japan, as he travels through time to fulfill his destiny by defending the future from invasion by a race of demons bent on subjugating humankind. Um, so another reviewer is describing the storyline of this movie as "fairly straightforward". Actually it is fairly ridiculous. The lead character is a doctor who randomly gets a prophecy that he is the Chosen One to fight off demons who have been sleeping (?) for 5,000 years. Then he goes back in the past 5,000 years to kill the demons who were around then too. When he comes back to the future, I guess he just missed some demons or something because they're still around. A lot of demon battles happen. The only notable scene in the movie is when he punches a demon in the nuts and it hops around hooting and hollering. However, this is the only joke in the entire OVA. The rest of the OVA is completely deadpan and horribly bad. I'm giving it 1 extra star because it has high camp value, but you probably have to get drunk first. If you took a rather long book and crammed it into 51 minutes of plot and action, you'd probably get this. A OVA released through Manga Video in the early 00s that was really something from the early 90s and something that only got a VHS release in it's native country of Japan. There is beautiful animation done that is extremely well done, if not extremely quick too. This OVA moves quite fast with things, which is a similar problem one reviewer on here noted and I can tell, if they had slowed down and developed the OVA out more than 51 minutes, it would have been better. It's interesting still to watch, it's no Wicked City or Ninja Scroll though. But it's interesting to say the least, and I can tell that possibly the English translation on the subtitles is a little daft but anyway. Some of the plot elements are confusing based on cultural (I guess) reasons. Also, the nasty habit of the editor to start switching back and forth in scenes sometimes not revealing bits til later after the fact. Very weirdly edited. Plus, not to spoil anything but the Doctor has lousy luck with women. And is able to punch through things with his laughable magic powers.
Opalrad replied
365 weeks ago