Not last night, but the night before (I forgot to post yesterday, I think I was still trying to formulate what I had just witnessed) I watched one of those old OVAs from the depths of YouTube. I’m really not sure why I like watching these, they’re all older than I am so it’s not nostalgia, oh well it’s fun so who knows.
This one was from '85, and was pretty typical of that era, it didn’t really stand out to me that much in animation, acting and all that, it was just pretty standard. Apart from one thing - it was a bit weird, it looked like it was going to be a historical action kind of jam, but ended up being a romance with surprise incest that you could totally see coming and just groan because why, why, why does this seem to be a common theme and pretty much a guaranteed square on your anime bingo card. But then surprise again because it wasn’t actual incest-incest, ha! … it was something a whole lot weirder.
Spoilers: Basically because of time magic space powers a girl is sent back in time via a magical bell (you know it’s a magical bell because when it chimes it chimes louder than anything you’ve ever heard and the camera zooms in on it so you know that this bell is pretty damn important) were she starts to fall for this guy who’s about her age. But this guy has a little sister (who wants to marry him, because of course she does, it had to have some real incestual suggestion in there) and the main girl has a younger neighbourhood boy who she looks after and is basically her little brother - turns out the little girl from the past is actually the main girl from the future and the little boy from the future is actually the main guy from the past, they got separated in the magical timewarp thingy and ended in different timezones (how this timewarp started in the first place I do not know).
By the halfway point this becomes pretty apparent, but by the time the main characters find out they both seem pretty chill and cool about it and end up getting married anyway. It never explained if they were actually related in the end, so it could have actually ended up being 4th dimensional incest.
I think I understood about 50%? I’m not sure, maybe 60%, it was hard to tell what with being distracted by so many questions I had about the plot.
I also think that the entire budget went into animating her hair because there were several scenes were it is is magnificently smooth hair animation. By comparison everyone else’s hair was as static as anything. Even in extreme high winds.
This anime also filled the relatively common old OVA bingo square of:
Huge 10ft bad guy who just appears out of nowhere who is impervious to damage and can lift buses and eats steel girders, but then ends up dying rather quickly from a fleshwound (bonus points if he has a punk hairstyle)
Noticed on my Watch Later list on YT there’s a live action period drama thing coming up, it looks like it’ll either be completely batpoop ridiculous or actually pretty good, with no room for anything in between, so I’m looking forward to that one.