Ankoku Shinwa (Dark Myth)

From the pen of horror mangaka Morohoshi Daijiro came Ankoku Shinwa, a seven chapter manga from 1976 that was turned into a two episode OVA in 1990. In it, teenager Takeshi finds he is simply a force in a cosmic war of gods and feuding ancient families. Its art is good, especially the monsters. Nothing else is.

The fact that a seven chapter manga was shrunk to two episodes without missing much tells a lot. What you get is the following:

• Good drawings/animations of monsters and mythical beings (again, the art has little complaint)
• CONSTANT exposition on the jumble of Asian religions that make up the backstory/reason for the manga
• Set pieces that only exist to provide the base for more exposition.
• Human villains who do nothing except fall victim to the Indiana Jones Villain Fate where they try to use something supernatural with predictably poor results.
• All of the above happens very, very slowly.

On one hand, the OVA is inevitably faster than the text manga. On the other, it has the production values of what you’d expect a low budget OVA to have. So… not really ideal either way. It’s a shame, the concept could have been done better.