Anime: Spectral Force

(Feedback, comments, etc. always welcomed.)

The late 1990s were a bad time for OVAs.
Anime based on RPGs are rarely good.
This is a late 1990s OVA based on an RPG.
Any questions?

Animation:
Horrifically awful. CG was not up to the task back in late 1998, to say the least. The general look of Spectral Force is one composed of PlayStation (One) -type backgrounds, with anime characters poorly PhotoShopped in. There is zero effort to convincingly integrate these disparate elements, so the end result is 50 minutes of distracting stylistic clash. This is most laughably evident in once scene where Hiro gets attacked by something that's supposed to resemble a monstrous fish. And as if the CG issues weren't enough, the regular animation is just as lousy. Tons of stills, dialogue spoken by offscreen characters (i.e. no mouth movements), lines "thought" instead of spoken, and cheap shortcuts are the order of the day. Even the standard anime "speedlines" are poorly done, as you can see obvious visual cuts where the animation repeats.

Sound:
Voice acting was respectable enough, so I can't downgrade the score too much. Most notable is Hiro's VA, Yuko Miyamura, whom you might recognize as a standoffish redhead from that one mecha anime with the angels. Miyamura puts in a good performance as a princess torn between two heritages, overwhelmed and confused by her circumstances, yet determined to do what needed to be done. I didn't hear anything especially bad about the other VA performances, but then again these roles don't demand much more beyond "phoning it in." I did not sample the English track, but based on the talent involved, it should be a passable dub for anyone who doesn't hate ADV's regular actors.

Music is nothing spectacular, mostly a bunch of semi-synthesized vaguely medieval orchestral pieces. Oh yeah, I guess there's a forgettable J-soft-rock closing song, which I didn't find worth listening to twice.

Story:
The story of Spectral Force [SF] manages to be all over the place, while pretty much going nowhere. We've got humans, Gods, and Demons fighting for control of a world named after Michael Jackson's compound. There's potential for an epic war story out there, but 2 episodes is just not enough to sufficiently explore it. Instead, we see the surprisingly easy overthrow of a kingdom, a fight against a seemingly unbeatable monster getting handily resolved offscreen once the main character leaves, a reshuffling of political alliances, and several other random events. I'd imagine things might make a bit more sense if you've played the game or read the manga, but SF as a standalone work is a complete mess. Explanations don't explain, misdeeds are arbitrarily forgiven, and answers only raise more questions. It's always a bad sign when the ending narration of the last episode sounds like something that could be read at the beginning of a longer, better series. Protip: With a second-episode title like "The Final Battle at Jig Road," people expect, well, a final battle that takes place on a road called Jig. Not "A Minor Skirmish at Jig Road That Ends When One Small Army Decides to Retreat From a Big Army."

Characters:
As I alluded to above, the Demon Princess Hiro gets some reasonable development. Between the obligatory mix of Good Times and Bad Times flashbacks and the events in the present, you can understand why she is the way she is and the motivations behind her actions. Unfortunately the other characters are either flat at best, or illogically constructed at worst. Most of them can be defined by their standard RPG archetypes from the 8-bit era. There's the Fighter, the Gunslinger, and the Gaijin McNinja on one side. Then there's some other "heroic" party that's active for a brief time in the first episode, then seems to stumble around looking for something to do for the rest of the time. Various other characters, like the leaders of rival kingdoms, are introduced, but there's no room to develop them at all.

A cast of stereotypes would be one thing, but some of these characters are downright illogical. Take the band of mercenaries. They keep calling themselves "mercenaries," but that word doesn't mean what they think it means. Why would any profit-driven warrior complain about being paid too much, or develop inexplicable loyalties to a different race that appears on the losing side of a major conflict? Nobody knows, and worse, nobody cares. And I thought that when SF introduced its setting as a fantasy world, it would be free of the standard "Japanese teenager gets stuck in another world" clichés, but again I was proven wrong. Why does Random Highschool Girl A get magic powers between the two episodes? Once again, who knows, who cares?

Value:
While I'm no stranger to buying anime, I'm just glad I found this one on xdcc and didn't have to spend time waiting for fserve sends to acquire it. However, I will say that the DVD's asking prices on Amazon's Marketplace are a fair indication of the show's value. I do want to check out the English track at some point, so I guess that's reason enough to revisit SF.

Enjoyment:
Although SF is pretty bad, it's not completely unenjoyable. It was cheesy, it was stupid, it was incomplete, but at least watching it didn't inspire *facepalm*-ing or drive me to drink. And for a random, "Ooh, this one's hard to find! *get*" download, I pretty much got what I deserved.

Recommendations:
Dust off your Final Fantasy VII discs and play that again, it'll look much better than SF and have a better story. If you want RPG-based anime, the mediocre Arc the Lad is far better than this. Heck, even Final Fantasy Unlimited was better, despite not being based on any one game. It's been ages since I saw Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals, but from what I recall, it's also better than SF. And if you just want fantasy in general, just about anything is a better choice. Record of Lodoss War, El-Hazard, Scrapped Princess, and Utawarerumono come to mind.