ヴィナス戦記 / Venus Wars

The future sucks.

New year, new me! happy 2019 fellow readers! While some silly government has been shut down for even sillier purposes, here  the Sleazy Pictures Muggy Archive will still be opened to connoisseurs, thus bringing  the latest in forgotten and/or old Animé. However, we did go to the movies last year to enjoy Aquaman (a fucking masterpiece made with hairy manly sweaty balls that no Marvel flick will ever have) and Bumblebee (a very entertaining prequel and true to the original G1 nostalgia) We won't be reviewing those very soon because we're busy with Animé that needs room in the internet world.

Today's entry is about an OVA that is very popular in Italy! mamma mia! 

Background

Venus Wars (ヴイナス戦記 Vinasu Senki) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. It was serialized in the Gakken magazine Nora Comics from 1987 to 1990. In 1989, The Venus Wars was adapted into an anime film directed by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, and co-written by Yuichi Sasamoto and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, and produced by Bandai Visual, Gakken, and Shochiku. 

Who'd have thought there'd be War on Venus?

Shopping malls are no longer what they used to be.

International Release

The Venus Wars film was localized in the United Kingdom and the United States by Manga Entertainment and Central Park Media respectively, gaining recognition when it aired in heavy rotation on the Sci-Fi Channel "Saturday Anime" movie block in the late 1990s. The movie was licensed by Central Park Media was released on VHS on October, 20th 1993 in North America. It was later released on DVD on November 3, 1998, and again on DVD on January 28, 2003. In Australia and New Zealand, it was distributed by Madman Entertainment. Discotek Media later licensed the film and released it on DVD in 2012 from a new film print which has anamorphic widescreen, a significant upgrade over the old Central Park Media release, which was letterboxed and from a grainy, stretched source. Discotek later released the film on Blu-ray on December 15, 2015 (we made the review based on this edition)

8 Bit War

Based on the movie, Venus Senki is a Nintendo FAMICOM  strategy game with an innovative battle system that is used to this very day by very similar war strategy games. The story is about eight Hound Combat Bikers fighting against the invading Ishtar Empire forces in an effort to liberate the city of Io and driving Ishtar out of their homeland of Aphrodia.  

Here's a quick look at the FAMICOM game:

Susan Summers.

Hiro Seno.

The Review

If you want a gritty another war anime full of tanks, look no further! This sci fi OVA embodies the charm of 80's anime; though very flawed, the aesthetics and love put into its making is enough for an enjoyable watch. Specially if you were one of the many 80's kids discovering Animé for the first time, and getting their hands on anything that looked like it came from Japan.
The premise is sound if not a bit basic. Humans have colonized Venus (out of all the planets in the solar system) but due to ecological disasters, it is a backwater hellhole far from the supposed utopia of this world's Earth. Its people have a reckless, fatalistic and at times apathetic view towards life and peace (the ridiculously deadly bike racing games they have!). The nation Ishtar launches a surprise attack on Aphrodian's capital, Io and conquer it in one day. The anime then chronicles a bike racing gang's involvement in the war to recapture Io. The simple plot is made up for by a sense of scale. There is a huge array of futuristic armored fighting vehicles with the combined arms firepower that lays waste to the massive industrial complex of Io. Rarely in anime will you see such gratuitous scenes of warfare! There is more attention to detail than you'd think. The only aircraft are all prop driven as jet aircraft do not work in Venuses' atmosphere.

Not this war thing again!

No time for beauty advice.

At the same time, while one and a half hours is enough to craft a rich geopolitical thriller and a dose of history on top of the basic story, we only get a couple of basic anti war and totalitarian messages. The government is pretty corrupt and incompetent; that's always fun!

Instead, the run time focuses on the biker gang. While there are no problems with good character development, there's much left to be desired on this area. A lot of the dialogue is unnatural as hell, the characters' interactions do not reveal as much about themselves and the world around them as it could have and a lot of the movie seriously lacks a sense of direction. The beginning could have been condensed to half the amount of time without much difference. Definitely the weakest aspect of the anime!

The old get older, the young get stronger.

Pew! pew!

The characters are decent to poor. Most of the biker gang are the standard kids transitioning to adults type characters. There is no development for most of them save the main character and the alpha male and even then it is poor. It is quite probable that you'd make no real emotional connection to any of them! This is nothing compared to the Susan Summers character; she takes the blondes are dumb stereotype to the max and is easily the dumbest character in anime I've ever seen. She contributes almost nothing to the anime and her only redeeming feature is that she has more balls (or is it ignorance?) than most of the male cast! Literally just a dumb pretty face. Likewise, Hiro Seno is the stereotyped teenager that is forced to care about the war, thus accidentally becoming the inexperienced hotshot hero you know he's going to be after you've seen the first ten minutes of the OVA. The support cast is barely that, but still, you're watching this because you like the 80's overall mood of mechanical designs and cyberpunk, not character development. Besides, most of the Animé from this decade, have that je ne sais quoi feel to them, and Venus Wars, certainly has that in it.

Art wise is typical 80's ova type stuff; brilliant if you are used to old anime. What really boosts this anime are the insanely over the top and extremely cool military weapon designs. The giant tanks bristle with cannons that cover all of its sides! It is absolutely ridiculous and the anime knows it. They often operate alone as assault weapons; presumably because their all round fire power is expected to cover every possible approach to the tank. In practice, there are only 3 or so crewmembers operating the tank; so in battle, half of the guns are never used! Those monowheel motorbikes are also so impractically dumb that they end up becoming cool. You know what else is dumb? That experimental section of the movie where they animated motorbikes on top of live action video footage. Interesting? Yes. Well done? No, very roughly! It's more jarring than bad anime CGI!

My way or the highway.

A cast that looks cool.

The soundtrack, while not memorable, is fitting for the decade this OVA was made. Fans of the sounds of the futuristic 80's, will feel at home here. For obvious reasons, most of the Animé made in the 80's reflected what was going on in the decade music wise. Moreover, most of us seasoned fans, built a connection between futuristic cyberpunk & 80's pop thanks to these Animé. Clearly, the quality is nowhere near Bubblegum Crisis and other works made by very talented musicians. However, Shakunetsu No Circuit (skillfully performed by Eiko Yamane) is probably one of the coolest songs ever written for an 80's OVA.

Overall, I really enjoyed this, you don't watch this anime for the lame, unrealistic characters and the barebones plot. You watch this for the badass mechanical designs waging blitzkrieg war over desert wastes and wreaking total destruction of the intricately detailed cities of Venus. What makes this even more interesting is the asymmetrical forces of the two nations. The Ishtarians have massive tank armies while Aphrodian's prefer hard hitting mobile forces. In conclusion, this is one of the coolest war animes ever made! Recommended for fans of military sci fi, the junkyard future aesthetic and war anime in general.

Here's the official trailer:

The 1993 English dubbed trailer:

Venus Wars Main Theme by Joe Hisaichi:

The ending theme:

Shakunetsu No Circuit by Eyko Yamane, probably the coolest song in the soundtrack: