Choujin Gakuen Gowcaizer: The Voltage Fighters

Let me remind you people, this is a anime out of the late '90s Let's begin with the story, our main protoganist is given a Caizer Stone. Armed with this mysterious crystal, Isato posseses a power to transform in the hero, Gowcaizer. But for the higher purpose, To save the earth, Gowcaizer and his partner in crime, Hellstinger must fight the evil Omni Exist, a manifestation of all negative desires, and of course the source/force after behind the recent disasters. It'...s a pretty cool story, they brought it well in this anime, actually nothing to say, except is is a good story. The art is from a lesserlevel, but hey, it's old. Aside that it's a pretty good style to draw, the animation is of the "90s" level too, but it's extremely good for that time. Same goes for the sound. The characters, not much to tell there, everythings standard, we have the standard hero with his friend as sidekick, the needed women to bring up the odds and the guy who we think is bad.. but is actually good. As far as the enemy's go, we've got some slime monsters with tentacle's, the mastermind who's all powerfull and the needed minions who match the good guys. And of course one character that gets possesed by the evil force and has to be rescued. Pretty standard right. But it's an enjoyable anime, if you like good animation of this time and quality, then it's not an anime for you, but if you don't give a shit if it's old or new, or don't care about quality, then this old anime is something good to see.

Masami Obari. Every time I revisit one of your works, I'm reminded of the time I got a second degree burn on my ring finger from touching an overheated lawnmower. I could reach my hand blindfolded in a bucket full of used needles and come out with something more full of substance than Obari's OAV vehicles. He works primarily in hentai now (and those that I've seen aren't good either, like Viper GTS), but before that, Obari spent the 90's wrecking one of my favorite fighting games with Fatal Fury The Motion Picture, a movie that is brazen proof video-based anime are ultimately badideas. And then there's Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer, a slightly below mediocre NEO*NEO fighting game so obscure and unaware of its own existence, it might mistake itself for World Heroes 2 Jet when questioned. STORY: So it's bad enough this fighting game that not a lot of people out side of hardcore SNK/NEO*GEO are aware of, Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer premises it's story with the tone of "none of your business". This is 90's anime at its worst, at least until the Tekken Animated Movie years later. Fighting game stories seldom matter, so as long as the gameplay is intense and satisfying, so when transitioning this subject matter to a different medium, i.e. an anime, it's important to add an element that relatable to the viewer not familiar with said product. Fatal Fury 2 The New Battle added Tony, an original character whose sole purpose is to be a plot device to give Terry a reason to rematch Krauser. Tony's wild ambition, stubbornness, and will to never give up reminded Terry of himself at that age. VFG (as its fans have NEVER called it) gives you no reason to care about whose fighting or why. It's a horrible hodgepodge of inane dialogue with another fight crammed in between to break up the monotony, which it fails to do. Things happen with no rhyme or reason, barely makes any sense, and nothing is explained in a manner that would have you want to invest interest. SCORE: 3 ART: Typical Masami Obari character designs at full force here; pencil-thin men with -14% body fat, yet somehow ripped to shreds with muscle. The anorexic, hook-nosed women with round, protruding eyes that take up a third of their heads, topped off with Obari's subtle respect for the female form, the grotesque, gravity-defying bouncing breasts that juggle for weeks if the ladies did as much as take a sip of coffee! This man actually made me sterile to breasts before I was 18, I didn't even think that could happen!! In short, the characters are all hideous, you could swap hairstyles and outfits and barely tell them apart. The costumes look as if you redesigned Saint Seiya armor into S&M bondage gear, which isn't all that much of a stretch. The only thing that I can salvage is that the animation isn't all that bad and the production values seem pretty good for its time period. SCORE: 4 SOUND: The English dub (which I'm not sure if it was done by Ocean Group or Laughing Dog) is mediocre, if not completely forgettable. This is still that period before Pokémon, when the quality of English dubbing, unless it came from one of the more established studios with their own in-house flavor. ADV, Manga Entertainment, for example) was so laughably bad it became good, or downright terrible. U.S. Manga Corps (Man, I really miss them) turned this inconsistency into an art form! You'll watch Dominion Tank Police or Project A-ko, two phenomenally dubbed anime, then you turn on Cyber City 0808 (or E0E8, I could never tell from the box art) and go, "What the f**k am I listening to!? Did he just say, "You wouldn't know a ghoddam vampire if it jumped up and bit you on the end of your f***ing dick."!?. Gowcaizer falls in the middle........no dick biting...or depending on what floats your boat, I'm sorry there's no dick biting here for you. SCORE: 5 REWATCH VALUE: Because I'm like flies attracted to dog poop for 90's anime, this has enough silliness and its flee-flowing, don't care attitude makes it easy to watch if you happen to have an anime club or something. I miss OAVs like this because they don't require a lot of input on your end just to stay invested. With today's anime writing style, I feel I have to make a commitment to watch just a handful of episodes of something and really pay attention to it, otherwise, I'll be lost by episode 4. There are significantly better 90's OAVs I can recommend that make great background noise, like Cleopatra D.C., Elf Princess Rane, or Saber Marionette. At three episodes, running 90 minutes total, it feels like it goes on forever and the lack of substance will probably mean turning it off after one episode, unless by some miracle, a viewer leeched sympathy for these clods and WANTS to know what happens. SCORE 4 OVERALL: Dumb OAV. Dumb director. I will continue to despise his works. Go play Garou: The Mark of the Wolves. FINAL SCORE 3/10

I don't drink alcohol, but I want to pretend I was drunk to counter the fact that I was like "No, this actually isn't that bad, and you just don't appreciate classic '90s OVA anime with unique character design and occasionally very good animation. It's a short action piece and you have to confront it similar to how you would look at a kung fu film. Quit being a whiner and go watch your stiff as a board seasonal anime with 3D backgrounds, generic MC, and characters who all look the same other than their swappable rainbow hair." Okay, it actually just sucks. I'll admitit. A rating of 3-4 seems doable if you really appreciate certain aspects, but the pacing and writing are atrocious enough that this does get boring, and boring is not something you want for even a second with a brainless fighting game adaptation. Typical of those, it's too short for the characters to have any depth or for there to be anything but a compressed story, but it's just long enough to drag. The story is generic. It's something about a bad boy principal at a school and stones they can use to turn into like half-naked bondage soldiers. They basically get big shoulder pads, spikes, gems, and random bits of armor, and it gives them superhuman strength and they can say words to do attacks from an old NeoGeo game. Kast takes the basic dumb-dumb good vs evil story and tries to turn it into some more vague and complex dualism, but it's long-winded and doesn't really work—the staff winks at the audience by having the female character fall asleep during his tedious explanation. There's a similar scene in Tamala 2010, a much better film, where I thought that worked as a joke. Here, it feels more like an apology: "Sorry, guys, I know this sucked. I was too busy drawing weird, messy character designs from an alternate dimension to bother with scripting." The writing is the junk food equivalent of post-modern philosophy, which is filled with trite, stupid, society-destroying ideas, but wrapped up in fancy dancing and clunky language to instill depth that isn't really there. This is similar, only everyone knows this is stupid because it's a Masami Obari freakshow. Seriously, it's a freak show. These are like garbled malformed meat men with bodies that shift into new meaty forms every frame. Obari has created hentai, and he definitely is known for low-brow trashy anime with plenty of fanservice, scantily clad females, bouncing breasts, visible nipples through fabric, and very revealing butt shots (they are usually more than panty shots because of the silly thonged-up costumes) from creative angles. He actually does a pretty good job with some of the selected shots, if you're into that kind of thing. The problem is... um... look at the COVER! Obari has a hard enough time with proportions and not creating warped abominations, and the faces are especially ugly. You can tell the women are just there to be sexy (they're not necessary to the plot at all other than dog woman, I guess), but the faces are so distorted sometimes these might as well be the nurses from Silent Hill. The manly men suffer from the same problems, but at least Obari isn't trying to make them look sexy! Just look at pink-haired Mr. Tumblr's funnily shaped head. I'd say the same about the main character, but I feel like we never get a clear idea of what he looks like because he looks different in every frame! I'm of the opinion that Obari's talent was squandered during the '90s OVA boom. The main villain in this is such a massive, creepy, malevolent entity. Just look at the villain for this, which actually does have a freakish design and tone, suggestive of a legitimate horror film. Imagine this guy making Lovecraftian cosmic horror, Edgar Allan Poe, or even Edogawa Rampo! His constantly off-model character design would work better then. He's got the design work down already for cosmic space aliens and slumbering sea demons and grinning evil bastards. Just let Obari work his magic. We'd have instant classics for sure, except for Obari's consistently terrible writing. On the bright side, this production sometimes has pretty decent backdrops for the art and creative cinematography, and there is a certain stylization to Obari's direction that is often overlooked due to the focus on bad writing and ugly character designs. The animation is fairly consistent and fluid and is very interesting in light of the design work, and there's a lot of great sequences from Yoh and Kou Yoshinari. Kazuto Nakazawa also worked on this, and while I don't know all of the names responsible for key animation, there's some obvious talent here. You'll see anime staples like Kanada dragon and Itano circus to fair effect as well. All the best scenes are on Sakugabooru, so there's really not much of a good excuse to watch this anymore.

Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer is a 1997 3 episode OVA, that later got made into a whole movie. It was produced by J.C. Staff and directed by Obari Masami, who really doesn't have any major work besides this and quite a good amount of Hentai! Story: The basic premise of Gowcaizer is about Isato, an ordinary highschool student that one day receives something called a Caizer stone from one of his classmates with whom he now has to fight the evil power called Omni Exist who basically represents all bad emotions of humanity and threatens to destroy earth. This already showed through several catastrophes that point out thatapocalypse is about to happen. This setting already is where the first huge flaws are to be found! Why you ask? Because the viewer basically doesn't have any idea about it! The movie does a terrible job at explaining itself and the viewer is basically left alone to find out what the heck is going on, which is almost impossible by watching the movie in itself! Personally, I went into the movie without having read the Synopsis and if I wouldn't have read it half way through it, I probably still wouldn't have any idea what it is about! However, even if the viewer does know what the movie is about, it really doesn't help a lot in understanding what is going on! The pacing for the movie is absolutely horrible in every way! It often seems to be dragging on for ages and if it doesn't, it feels rushed to the point where it's hard to determine what exactly is happening! Every plotpoint feels completely out of context and none of them get any explanation at all! They're simply left as they are and as it stands make absolutely no sense! And that pretty much summarizes the whole plot: Nonsense! There's not a single thing in the show that seems to make any sense, ranging from the physics, to the random Mahou Shounen transformation scenes, to the character interactions and what's left and actually understandable is absolutely generic! Any plotpoint that actually doea get somewhat clear is part of the typical Genre cliches! From the Shounen Power-ups, to the pseudo-philosophical themes of how humanity are the ones being evil, that get touched once and never again, to the character archetypes used! There's absolutely nothing that we haven't seen before and gets boring incredibly fast! Of course the movie is from 1997 and as such from a time where all that may not have been all that overused, but for today's standards, there's nothing original about it! Characters: The characters suffer from exactly the same problems as the story! They often enough act incredibly illogical and it at times is really hard to follow their thoughts. Not only that but every single one of them is extremely one-dimensional and have nothing to them but a single character trait! There's the typical Shounen Main Character that actually doesn't want to kill anyone, but occasionally does grow a backbone and ends up doing so, the typical clumsy moe love interest that in this specific case actually is able to fight and isn't all too moe...the antihero kind of character that seems to be evil at the beginning but in the end turns out to actually be the good guy and so on and so on, you get the idea! In general I really don't have a problem with Anime archetypes as long as they are used well, but in this case they just really aren't! The character interactions are painfully bad and there's not a single case of dialogue that is somewhat well written or interesting! This only gets worse through how out of character some of the characters act at times! They suddenly say something that doesn't fit the character at all only for the sake of advancing the plot and at times they don't even do it for that, but just to have that one certain moment that every Shounen needs to have! The character development feels the same way! It is incredibly rushed and there is nothing static but characters just take a 180 turn from one second to the other, making them feel like a plot device and impossible tofollow! This leads to them getting even more boring as they originally were already thanks to the stereotypes they all fulfill and don't step away from. I do give the show credit for at trying to develope the characters, which a lot of shows don't even attempt to do, but it just doesn't work having them be completely different this suddenly! Another point that makes this shows characters just absolutely awful is just how unsignificant they seem to be! Some of the characters literally don't seem to have any purpose and only exist for the purpose of showing their skin and crotch and bouncing their boobs! Sound: The Sound for Gowcaizer may or may not be the only redeemable thing about the show! While both the Opening and Ending is a rather standard for the 90s the Soundtrack is surprisingly enough not all that bad! Some of the tracks even wouldn't sound all that bad if listened to outside of the show and often enough they fit the scenes really well! However often enough, kind of isn't enough! The show has places where it horribly misuses tracks in parts where they really shouldn't be used! One of the character entrances uses a harmonica right within one of the most intense fights of the show and completely destroys the mood of the scene! Often enough, the show doesn't use any track at all, when it clearly should! While the OST itself isn't even half bad, it's the placement that ruined it in total! Gowcaizer Character Designs Those character designs actually hurt my eyes.... Animation: The Animation for Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer was done by J.C. Staff and let's say it that way....it isn't all too glorious! The OVA was rather Low-Budget and for that and considering it is from the late 90s, it doesn't look all too bad, but it really isn't good either! There are a ton of scenes in the show where the animation itself isn't fluent at all and while the fight-scenes are actually animated somewhat decent, the rest is filled with still-screens and so on and it really doesn't contribute to the quality of the show overall! In fact if that actually were possible it'd make the show even worse! However something else takes that job over already! The character designs: OH GOD ARE THEY AWFUL! I have to be completely honest here and say I have rarely seen character designs that looks worse than this! They are often enough absolutely irritating and honestly probably were one of the worst parts of the show! Art style usually doesn't concern me too much...I mean I sat through the entirety of Aku no Hana and ended up enjoying that BUT THIS? NO THANKS! The chins are way too long, the eyes either incredibly huge or horribly misplaced, sometimes even both! The other part that made the show even worse was the fanservice! Looking at the Opening I already got to see what I was getting into, giving me more boob bounces, crotch, ass and panty shots than all of Highschool of the Dead. Throughout the whole OVA, women in skin tight clothes were walking around hitting people while sneaking in more panty, crotch, ass and boob shots. It's incredibly irritating to see all that fanservice shoved into your face like they didn't even try to make it an actual good thing, but just a silly excuse to get some quick money for giving some guys a good time and that's what it ended up being! In the end Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer is a bad excuse for an OVA and has nothing going for it at all! The plot is nonsensical and generic at the same time, a combination of bad things that I didn't even know was possible but the amazingness of this show has apparently proven it is very much possible to do it! There is no connection between any of the plot points and the pacing is absolutely awful! The same is for the characters they fall completely flat (Altho the characters certainly aren't flat at all if you know what I mean) due to generic sterotypes and some of the most sudden and nonsensical development in all of Anime history! There is nothing good about this OVA series and as long as you are not a masochist that feels like experiencing 90 minutes of pure pain I definitely would not recommend this to anyone! It's an abomination and I really don't see anyone liking this....STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM IT!

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