Ranking the Terribad

61. Title: Red Hawk: Weapon of Death
What is it?: In the land of Chungwon, gangs rule the land and war to wrest control from the government. Hongylung is the daughter of a restaurant owner who is killed because he knows too much about a conspiracy to destroy the land’s economy. She turns to a wandering warrior, Lunyung, for help, and they are aided from the shadows by the enigmatic masked hero Red Hawk.
What?!: As you can see above, Red Hawk wears an incredibly dumb mask. It’s really stupid.
Anime?: Red Hawk is actually a Korean production. Whether that disqualifies it from being “anime” is up to you to decide. It doesn’t really look any better or worse than anything else on this list.

Red Hawk isn’t actually too bad as far as these things go. The story isn’t complicated, but at least it makes some semblance of sense most of the time. The action isn’t incredible, but it’s never really awful, either. The characters aren’t really interesting, but neither are they annoying or offensive. It’s a mostly adequate production. The main problem for me is that it’s almost impossible to take any of it seriously due to Red Hawk himself and the English dub. Let’s make no bones about it: Red Hawk looks like a fucking idiot. At least, say, Batman can be rendered in such a way that he looks cool or intimidating rather than some loon dressing like a bat. Red Hawk is always going to look idiotic. Then there’s the English dub. The problem isn’t with the acting; it’s mostly competent, as far as English dubs go. However, it’s sprinkled with swearing like a Manga UK Jr. production, and it makes no sense with the old time Korean setting. At one point, the main villain says something like, “As the saying goes, ‘You’re shit out of luck’” and I was like, “Yes, that is my favorite Korean proverb.” It’s incredibly silly, but it doesn’t go far enough to be memorably silly, sadly.

62. Karasu Tengu Kabuto: Ougon no Me no Kemono
What is it?: Kabuto is a warrior who saves a princess and her bodyguard from the clutches of an evil sorceress who spends most of her time lounging around in the nude. Also, Kabuto has wings because he’s part raven or something, I don’t know.
What?!: One of Kabuto’s enemies is a samurai mecha, and the mecha’s defeat begins a sort of running gag: the villains leaving the husks of their bodies behind to explode.
Buichi Terasawa: The man behind Cobra wrote the manga this OVA adapts.

I had somewhat high hopes for this OVA due to Terasawa’s name being attached to it. Let me clarify that rather than expecting something “good,” I expected something filled to the brim with weird fucking shit. And there is plenty of strange stuff here! But, much like with Crimson Wolf from earlier, that craziness isn’t quite enough to hold my attention. These ultraviolent OVAs are burning me out! It probably doesn’t help that I don’t give much of a shit about ancient Japan now, too, even when you fill it with samurai mecha and snake ladies. Sorry, Mr. Terasawa. We’ll always have Cobra, which is crazy awesome. Watch Cobra, everyone!

63. Baby Princess 3D
What is it?: There’s this high school kid who thinks he’s an only child until one day he learns he has 18 sisters ranging in age from a few months to 18 years old. The dad from Sister Princess has some catching up to do! No condoms ever!
What?!: I’m sure you’ll be surprised to know that more than one sister has the hots for their new brother.
Butts: At one point one of the youngest sisters sticks her finger in a hole that developed on the rear of another sister’s school swimsuit. Just thought I’d point it out.

At first glance you’d think this is Sister Princess in miniature, and that is sort of correct. The premise is about as ridiculous. It does differ in some key ways, though. Whatever my opinion on incest storylines, I can at least commend this for having the balls to have characters actually act (to a certain degree) on their incestual attractions rather than teasing them just for fap fodder. The situations are such are basic and cliche, but they are not mind-crushingly dull like spending an entire episode shopping for a light bulb in Sister Princess. And there’s actually something intentionally amusing in this — the scene in the hot springs (like you didn’t see that coming) where the main dude tries to slip out without his sisters seeing, and it plays out like a submarine thriller. Not hilarious, but it got a chuckle out of me. Anyway, don’t watch this, it’s stupid.

64. Capricorn
What is it?: A high school student is transported to a world where furries rule the land and evil furries are trying to destroy the world and the good furries are trying to stop them. I’m pretty sure this is the plot of Garzey’s Wing but with more animals.
What?!: The main character turns into a dragon at one point. I was really bored during this OVA, so I totally missed how this happened. All I know is that I looked back at the screen and suddenly fat dragon.
Yappie: Half anime cute girl-half dragon, ALL LOVE MACHINE. (OK, not really.)

Ugh. These things are really the worst to watch. It’s utterly mediocre, and the only thing of note that happens is that the main character turns into a sad, fat dragon with no friends. That’s it. There is otherwise nothing remarkable about this. It exists. It can, presumably, be watched from start to finish. It has a bland story that it tells blandly with bland animation that is neither good nor bad. It’s there. It’s all just there.

65. The Epic of Zektbach
What is it?: One country invades another, as countries are wont to do. At home, one country’s defense is led by a female warrior, Shamshir, who has a sword that allows her to use the power of mathematics and chemistry (or maybe Assassin’s Creed) to slice and dice people good.
What?!: The sword is one of those asshole swords that actively corrupts those who use it, unless they’re The One.
Terrible CG: And lots of it!

If I could get away with just using, “zzzzz” as the entry for this, then I would. There’s zero reason to give a shit about anything that happens here: the kingdoms are utterly bland, the conflict is barely existent, and the individual soldiers are lifeless. Shamshir may as well be slicing up cardboard cutouts rigged to spray blood when they’re hit. I’m not even one of those people who is totally against mindless violence. I just need a reason to give a shit. Is Shamshir as cool or interesting as any other random warrior in anime? Not really. Bleh.

66. Urda
What is it?: During World War II, the Nazis have a plan involving future technology they have snagged. Two agents, Erna and Janet, team up to save two people who were sent back into the past along with the technology. However, they are opposed by notorious one-eyed Nazi Glimhild Kurtz.
What?!: Mona Marshall gives Glimhild perhaps the most absurd German accent I’ve heard in anime.
From the makers of Catblue Dynamite: Except not nearly as enjoyable.

Urda‘s greatest problem is that it takes itself far too seriously. You wouldn’t think this would be a problem for a series about time travel technology and a one-eyed Nazi as its main villain, but there you go. It’s cut from much the same cloth as Catblue: A plot that feels like it’s cobbled together from video game cutscenes, lots of loud set pieces, etc., but that sense of self-seriousness casts a pall over the story. It would help if the story were interesting rather than just audacious, but no. I suppose the twist at the end is OK; not really a game changer, though. It’s worth watching for that ridiculous German accent, though.

67. Gundress
What is it?: The Angel Arms Company protects Japan from terrorists, but they find themselves guarding an evil crime lord in the hopes that he will give up information leading to the downfall of an international terrorism ring. And they spaz out while eating dinner.
What?!: I can’t think of anything crazy to put here, because this is boring.
Zzzzz: zzzzz

If every vaguely cyberpunk anime movie where characters kick ass against ultracorporations/evil governments/terrorist rings were arranged into a Bell Curve, Gundress would be smack dab in the middle. It has all the normal beats and none of the style of the really good ones, but it’s not so terrible that it’s among the worst. (The version I watched must have been cleaned up at some point, because that spazzy animation was not present during that scene.) Unfortunately, unmemorable terribad is no terribad at all.

68. Hanappe Bazooka
What is it?: Horny demons visit a school boy and grant him the power to drive women into frenzies of lust in exchange for doing it with the kid’s mother and sister whenever they want. He is not happy about this.
What?!: It’s Go Nagai. There’s too much I could put in here.
Way too much: Way, way too much.

Hanappe Bazooka is one of those Go Nagai titles I could have seen myself actually digging if it were executed a bit better. It’s so dumb and juvenile and ridiculous that it should be sort of fun for its own sake, but there’s such an overload of insanity and sexy times that my mind broke. I can sort of admire Go Nagai for daring to put the most puerile stuff to page and running with it for a career that has lasted for decades, buuuuuut this I just could not get into, though I didn’t hate it quite as much as some of my terribad comrades.

69. Iron Virgin Jun
What is it?: Jun is to be married on her 18th birthday, but she’s not going to stand for that, and instead defies tradition by running the hell away from all this. Her psychotic mother sends deviant, bloodthirsty goons after her precious daughter, but Jun beats the crap out of them all.
What?!: Penises are power tools.
Final boss: The spirit of Jun’s grandmother.

This might seem weird after what I just wrote, but this is a Go Nagai work I couldn’t get into because I found it too boring. The normal Go Nagai antics seem relatively tame compared to what he usually throws into the ether. The overall story isn’t nuts enough to make up for that, either. It’s just characters you don’t really care about beating a conflict that doesn’t really matter. Yawn.

70. Prayers
What is it?: In 2014, Shibuya becomes an independent nation, but it is cut off from many necessities, and the youth of Shibuya struggle to live. People called Prayers pass the time by engaging in deadly musical games where sound waves are converted to electricity and connected to the brain — whoever survives, wins.
What?!: It’s not just instrumental music, either — singing also kills.
Faux Ranka Lee: She proves what would happen if Ranka were to release an album: People would listen to it, their brains would turn to mush and they would die horrible deaths.

Prayers was conceived as a four-episode OVA but was canceled after two episodes, and boy does it show. There’s clearly some sort of path the OVA intends to trod, with the shadowy figures lurking in the background while the kids in Shibuya work through their silly personal dramas and whatnot. You don’t get Norio Wakamoto to voice a villainous figure if you don’t intend to go somewhere with it, after all! But because there’s no real conclusion to this story, all that stuff looks like nonsense, and thus we’re left with the story of dumb kids who engage in dumb, murderous games for dumb reasons. I guess this Prayers stuff is what replaces Chicken and the like since teenagers need to be self-destructive. The first episode is mostly introduction, and the second tries to build an emotional story with a childhood friend of some sort who is so obviously going to be the opponent in the concert at the end that she may as well have carried a sign with “Faux Ranka’s singing is going to make my head explode” in big, bold letters.

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