Dragon's Heaven

AbsoluteTheory★ 7

If you love that style of gritty, garage, 80's mecha anime, this lost, unpolished gem might be right up your alley. It's clear that they only had the production budget for a short one-shot, so the story seems to be very condensed. Still, I love this kind of stuff. The live-action opening breaks the animation fourth wall, but years later it still sticks in my mind.

jadedXotaku★ 8

Here we have an anime that only saw a vhs release in Japan. And that's really unfortunate. Released in 1988, Dragon's Heaven is but a brief 40 minute OVA based on Makoto Kobayashi’s manga of the same name. With such a short running time, it's unsurprisingly light on plot, but gives you just the right amount of character for you to care, and more than anything, has a aesthetic style unlike what's ever seen in anime. Developed by design studio ARTMIC (who also produced such OVAs as Genocyber, Bubblegum Crisis, and the anime the kicked off the OVA boom, Megazone 23), the art style veryaccurately mimics that of mangaka Kobayashi’s, which has a gritty and rough style that's reminiscent of French artist Moebius. Something of which gives it a visual flare more akin to the 1981 animated film Heavy Metal than in an anime, giving it a look that's truly unique in the medium, and much like California Crisis two years prior, has a visual style that hasn't been seen in anime before or since. In the very far future, a young woman and a sentient combat mech battle robots in the desert of Brazil. Like I said, there isn't much plot, but the characters aren't poorly handled either. Make no mistakes though, this is almost purely about the artistic style. And despite being made during the mecha boom of the '80s and creator Kobayashi having worked on two Gundam series, the mechs don't look quite like what one would expect from the time. Like the art style itself, they too look unique. Speaking of unique, the OVA very surprisingly begins with a live action segment featuring the hero and villain robots in the form of remote controlled models. It's an interesting way to start an anime for sure. Dragon's Heaven was easily one of my favorite "obscure" anime I'd seen some years back, and I truly wish it was given a blu-ray release. I've heard anime fans talk about how expensive new series on blu-ray can be, but it's even worse with some of the older stuff. As mentioned in the beginning, it was only released on vhs in Japan, so getting a physical copy will cost you some dough if you find one. Last time I saw one for sale, it was going for over $80, and art books of the anime (also only released in Japan) run from $49 - $94. Luckily there are funsubs, and it can be easily viewed on youtube, but an anime with such a unique artistic aesthetic really needs to see an official release on blu-ray, and simply doesn't deserve to be forgotten.