- Evil Dragon War Chronicles (1987-1989: AIC) 3/3 eps.
Demons, evil businessmen, copious amounts of violence, and reach around boob gropes. Yep, this sure is a late 80s OAV! Evil Dragon War Chronicles was originally part of AIC’s Pink Noise series, a set of four edgy OAVs that for the most part weren’t particularly good. Two years later Bandai Visual came along and decided two more episodes needed to be made, I would love to know why they decided this. Interestingly they managed to get Hiroaki Oogami back to direct the two latter episodes, usually in this sort of situation I’d expect it to be a mostly new staff.
This might be the most average and generic late 80s OAV in existence. Over the generations the White Tiger and the Green Dragon have fought over a woman known as the Chee Shek. Cut to the modern day and the Green Dragon is a ruthless businessman whilst the White Tiger is a monk, I think. The White Tiger is friends with Chee Shek, though she doesn’t know her true identity, and so when the Green Dragon abducts Chee Shek, after killing numerous other women, the White Tiger heads in to save her. There is barely a story here and it is all just an excuse for numerous fight scenes, all mentions of deeper lore and deeper story go absolutely nowhere. None of the characters are interesting whatsoever, indeed I am using their titles rather than their names because I can’t actually remember what their names were nor can I work it out from looking at MAL/ANN. Oh I lie, there was one fun character. There is this monk who just pushes around a dirt bike for the entire show for reasons unknown to mankind, though this being the highlight isn’t a good sign. Unfortunately it is in that zone between legit interesting and the so bonkers it is interesting zone. It is just dull from a narrative and characters perspective.
The visual side of things are a bit weird because it does a Megazone 23 in that the character designs and general look of episode 1 is entirely different from the latter two. Neither art styles are bad but neither are particularly good either, much like the rest of the production it is squarely mediocre. The animation isn’t all that terrible, in the action scenes anyway, and there are some fun little bits of action and gore. Unfortunately the majority of the show is kind of dull looking, with an entirely uninteresting colour palette being the cherry on the top of this cardboard sandwich. As for the music well…this is one of those situations where I have absolutely no memory of it so it can’t have been all that good, or bad.
This is just one big bundle of dull mediocrity. In fact I’m not sure it is even mediocre, I think it has reached that level just below mediocrity where it isn’t even acceptable mediocrity…if that makes sense. Urgh, this was just so dull, it is the type of show I hate having to write about because there just isn’t anything to say. There are way more fun versions of this, mainly ones that are just bananas, so go watch one of those instead.
Final score: 4E
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