| Average |
5.7 |
| Animation |
6 |
| Sound |
5 |
| Story |
5 |
| Character |
6 |
| Value |
6 |
| Enjoyment |
6 |
| Campy, contrived, over-the-top, obnoxious...Maris the Chojo is so bad that it's good. Take Rumiko Takahashi and strand her in the 80s with liberal amounts of crack cocaine and this is pretty much what she would turn out time after time. So much of this OVA is bizarrely surreal, and not just in the kind of way that actually seems to click. In a series like Mermaid's Forest, irritable flesh-eating maidens who crave immortality are very much the norm, and the viewer doesn't think twice about their presence. In a deep-space, popcorn-flick OVA like Maris, however, the talking cockroaches and nine-tailed fox copilot and bizarre little critters just don't seem to make quite as much sense. They make for a fun romp but don't seem to slide into context very well.
Random animal species aside, the rest of the characters turn some otherwise dry comic relief into something genuinely enjoyable...to an extent. There's one big long fight scene towards the end that's reasonably funny, and the sheer randomness of the plot has a great deal of appeal. The plot is basically a moot point, but this is 45 minutes of brainless, excessive fun. And of course, it was designed smack in the middle of the 80s, so look forward to the hilariously bad power ballads and amusing hair.
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