I haven't watched an anime OVA in a long, long, loooong time. So, the other day it was the moment and I searched through some tags and
filters to try and find some OVAs and short animes that appealed to me, since I don't have the attention span to sit through
100 episodes of an anime within a week so I can write a weird lil thing about it afterwards.
In the end, I ended up finding Twilight of the Dark Master on Tumblr. A gif I found intrigued me and to be honest, late 90s anime is cool af bro.
Even though I mistook it for an 80s OVA at first, it really has that sort of atmosphere. It looked cyberpunky, dark, atmospheric and intriguing, so I decided to dive in.
About
This 45 minute OVA is based on a manga from 1991 which is listed to have only 1 volume and was created by Saki Okuse, their most popular work being a manga called Teizokurei Daydream, a Drama/Horror/Erotic BDSM manga that ran from 2000 to 2007.
The Twilight of the Dark Master OVA was directed by Akiyuki Shimbo, who also worked on March Comes in Like a Lion, Arakawa Under the Bridge, Bakemonogari and Maria Holic. As someone who has watched maybe, 2-3 animes in the last 2-3 years, the fact that I know all of these and a handful of others by name is an incredible feat. Other staff includes Keishi Urata for Music (who also did the music for Texhnolyze), Hisashi Abe for Character Design (Chobits, the Devil May Cry anime from 2007, and Final Fantasy VII: Last Order.) So there's some interesting connections here. I did do some extra searching for fun because I just got intrigued like that, and I found this album from Keishi Urata which I think is super cool, and it's from 1989. If you like late 80s ambient music then give it a listen: Final Frontier 1989 - Keishi Urata
The studio for this OVA was Madhouse, a company which has created and produced many popular shows, here's some examples: Trigun, Perfect Blue, Wolf Children, Death Note, Black Lagoon. The company was founded 50 years ago so it's no surprise they have some popular titles to their name. Interestingly enough, this OVA was actually released in America before it was released in Japan. I assume this was because they thought the style, story and content of the OVA was likely to appeal more to Western audiences. I'm not sure how it performed in either country, but I can't find much that spawned after the OVA, so maybe it fell under the radar, or it got mixed in with all the other sci-fi horror at the time.
Summary
This is a gritty, dark 80s/90s-style anime with a chunk of sci-fi and horror and supernatural stuff thrown in - it also got quite intense at parts. There were some moments of emotion that were built up fairly well for a 45 minute OVA in my opinion.
To be fair though, I haven't watched much (or any) anime that revolves around demons and demon hunting, so I don't have much to compare it to either. With that being said, I could see this being something you would
watch if you are into the genre. But it certainly has that 90s OVA feel, so if you seek out that sort of thing, then this falls into that category easily.
The composition, design, colours, lighting - all of these were the strongest parts to me. There were some great shots with cool colour choices, which I think suited the atmosphere well and I got a sense of the world even from a few of the beginning shots.
Watching the OVA
Let's talk through a bit of the OVA itself. The plot revolves around demons vs guardians - demons wanting to take over the Earth (nothing unusual there) and guardians wanting to stop that from happening. The OVA follows a point in the future where companies are experimenting with drugs to try and make humans into demons (which really can't be a good idea in my humble opinion.) One of the victims of this is a man named Eiji, and lets just say, he gets quite violent. The earth's last guardian/demon fighter, Tsunami, is out to confront the whole situation and wants to stop this whole weird ordeal from escalating and eradicating Earth. Shizuka Tachibana, Eiji's fiance, joins him, as she is completely focused on getting revenge for whoever did this to her fiance. That's kind of the basics here. I'm not going to explain the OVA minute by minute, but there will be some minor spoilers in the next section:
The OVA starts off with Eiji and Shizuka sharing a nice kiss before suddenly there are FLAAAAAMES and then the TITLE SCREEN. And honestly that's what I love stumbling upon in anime and media in general, just how extreme it can be with the FIRE and effects and bang TITLE SCREEEEN. You can see the title screen on the left of this page. From the start there are already some great visuals that are very reminiscent of 90s anime. The sharp stylised faces, the big detailed overarching buildings, the dark blues and grey hues contrasting with the lighting… the dingy atmosphere is very much appreciated here. One part of the OVA I thought was a little weird was the appearance of Chen and Huang Long - a brother and sister. One of them looked a little like Spok in my opinion but I'm not gonna judge. They mainly seemed interested in trying to stop Tsunami from winning, so I assumed they were on the demons grr evil side.
But that's all there is I have to say without going too deep into the story and spoiling everything! I also have to mention this moment around 8:20 where the animation of the shooter is suuuuuper cool. I just love animation like that. Fuck it, I'll make a gif:
Another personal part I liked was the mention of a demon mask collection, even though it was brief, I really liked the masks and reminds me a lot of Asian folklore I like.
Extras
Also to finish off, here are a few more things relating to the OVA. First, a screenshot of the internet archive website 2004:
Some cool production art that I found posted on Tumblr: Link
And a magazine ad: Link
I also reccommend listening to 'The Anime Nostalgia Podcast' Ep 104 if you want to know even more! It goes into much more detail than I did, and it was a really interesting listen! I'll be sticking around and listening to more of this podscast from time to time :)
To conclude, I had a great time finding out more about this random, dark OVA from the late 90s. The dusty drawer in my brain labelled '90s OVAs' has been reopened!
Thank you for reading!
✰Written by Iris Lyoko✰