Dragon's Heaven - 1988
Dragon's Heaven is a little known 35 minute OVA from 1988. This was produced by the once adored Artmic who brought us more well known classics like Bubblegum Crisis and Riding Bean. Dragon's Heaven starts off by startling the viewer with a rather unexpected live action sequence using models. At 5 minutes long, it's a unique introduction and invitation into this delightfully quaint anime. It's only real relevance to the content of the show is that it provides a nice visual comparison to the animation that follows it. The creators did a great job rendering the models and landscapes that we later see in the anime.
The story is about a blonde girl called Ikooru who is a traveller who crosses the sandy desersts on her trusty bird. However this all changes when one day she meets Shaian, a self aware combat robo that has finally awoken. Shaian went into hibernation over a thousand years ago when his pilot, needed to maintain his system, died during a massive war between the humans and sentient robots. Since then Shaian has patiently waiting for a new pilot. With peace once again being threatened, Ikooru agrees to help Shaian face an old enemy.
Despite being made in 1988, the cute character design for Ikooru is something you'd usually see from a show made in 1985. However design wise, she is the only part of the show that was contemporary and conventional during it's time of production. The dusty landscapes and clunky mechanical designs are a true sight to behold. Drawn with a thick, sketchy and grainy styl.e, it's unlike anything ever made before and since. This style complements the setting very well and the show does looks as it could have been dug up from ancient times.
The end credits offer a nice suprise with the fabolous vocal track 'Dancing with a Heartache', which plays while showing you snippets of the production work that helped make the short live action sequence possible for the opening. It's impressive to see all the hours and parts it took to make something so big, standing in at just over 5ft. There is also a full behind the scenes documentry at 12 minutes long but unfortunately this part wasn't subtitled.
Dragon's Heaven is a visual spectacle, it's unconventional yet beautifully crafted animation is a decent reason alone to watch. The fact that it's story is so endearing, while not pushing any boundaries, makes this a really interesting watch. It's works like these that easily reinforce the wonders and excitment the one shot OVA brings to the screen since it's always offering something new and different.
Download Here - Dragon's Heaven
Overall Grade/Rating: B+
Commercial Availability: VHS (Japan), Laserdisc (Japan), DVD (Japan)
10 comments:
I remember this OVA. Still have an old VHS fansub of it. How the end credits morph into the making of the live action segment was jarring. I wonder if show was a tie-in with Hobby Japan or another model magazine due to the live action stuff.
I remember seeing this some years ago and mostly only heard of it due to the Makoto Kobayashi designs; some of them familiar to... one of which is Gampe, which looks a lot like ZG's "Bound Doc" and the other being Neo-Geo, which looks a lot like ZG's "The O", the more like "The O Special" which was a variant that looks nearly identical to Neo-Geo in Dragon's Heaven.
Dragon's Heaven is a classic. Although I saw it years ago I'll never forget it. I'd love to get the mecha designs on paper for scanning.
WOW - Cool : )
Any chance to get the 1986 release of MD Geist, maybe?
Finnaly! I thought id never see this one. Keep up the good work!
I found the 5 minute long opening sequence using models instead of animation quite awful. I grant them some credit for being creative and experimenting with different presentation forms. I dislike it in many ways though. It's too long, it's boring and unimpressive, it lacks any interesting visual details and it's overall very pointless. It comes off as amteurish.
The animation following looks very unusual for anime. At first I couldn't decide whether it looks cheap or whether it looks good. However, after they drop the noise effect and the visuals become clean and sharp, I started to like it more and more. The style is very flat most of the time with no sense of depth. They use hatching instead of shading which is normally more suitable for printed content like comics/manga. This works quite well though giving it a rather unique look and style. Occasionally, they use strong shadows and parallax effects, especially during action scenes. Those scenes look incredibly fluid and almost three-dimensional. Aside from the soundtrack, the cute female main character is almost the only hint that this is anime. The mecha designs are rather unconventional for anime and don't look like anything you've seen in Gundam or some super-robot anime. In fact, if I didn't know better, I would have thought this is a French production.
The flat comic-like visuals reminded me of an animated classic called
"Time Masters" (French: "Les Maitres du Temps").
The main story is only 25 minute and it felt even shorter. It certainly left me with a desire for more and it seems more like an introduction than a short story.
The ending spoils it a bit by showing a making of the modelled intro scene which goes on for almost 15 minutes. The only remotely interesting about this was seeing that the model was much bigger than expected because the lack of details make it look like some tiny toy in the intro video.
sry. if this is wrong place but i didnt find "home" or "general"...
Im interested read more about anime TO_Y (OVA) from 1987, Studio Gallop.
I tried search about it in net but found only very little and dry summary.
hi, thx for all this great movies, could someone pls reseed ?
This is one of my favorites from your awesome oldskool collection!! So unique!!
I accidently found out what was up with the model stuff in this OVA. Looks like in part it was a vehicle for Makoto Kobayashi who was pretty famous in the 1980's for designing scratch built kits for magazines like Hobby Japan and B-Club. In fact he's credited for the manga version of this OVA. He also does a lot of mecha designs for anime.
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