“Wow, nineties anime looked like crap!”
“No, stupid, Digital Boy watches streams!”

So, I haven’t made a post on here in a, uh, while. That’s partly because I don’t really keep up well with current season shows, and the one that I’m actually interested, Amatsuki, has simply stopped being subbed. ATTENTION SUBBERS! SUB AMATSUKI! There’s a second season coming soon! Well anyway, lately I’ve been watching almost nothing but OVAs. Since something is always better than nothing, I’ll share them with you and you can come to know me as ‘the OVA guy’!

3×3 Eyes is a classic shounen manga that ran from 1989 to 2002 (I shit you not) and is a total of 40 volumes long. However, the manga was awesome enough that the bastards who make shounen anime adaptions knew they shouldn’t fuck this one up, so instead of a never-ending filler-fest they created a short OVA. There were 2 OVAs made for 3×3 Eyes, one which ran in 1991 (4 eps) and the other which ran in 1995 (3 eps), collectively covering the first 5 volumes of manga.

As it happens, I’ve read a few chapters of the 3×3 Eyes manga which were released in Dark Horse’s old anthology magazine Super Manga Blast! before they canceled every goddamn manga they were releasing.
3×3 Eyes was dropped at volume 9, so I’ve never gone to buy the volumes, though it has apparently been scanslated through volume 35. None of what I read happens in the first OVA (all in the second apparently) so it was a totally fresh experience.

From what I’ve said already, you can probably tell the inherent issue with this OVA – 4 volumes in 4 episodes?! Most manga adaptions which don’t fuck around with filler get in about 3 eps per volume (4 volume manga is usually 13 ep show, 8 vols is 26) so needless to say, some things got left out in this OVA. Many reviewers have noted how the anime is quite jumpy and at times the characters will just suddenly BE in Hong Kong when you could’ve sworn they were in Tokyo seconds before, however this problem is only really noticable in the first episode, and even then it isn’t disorienting.

That said, this OVA was handled EXCELLENTLY. In spite of leaving things out, the pacing was perfect. Relationships didn’t feel rushed or unrealistic, characters were developed well and given proper time to get accustomed to changes – the show honestly trumps your average full-length series in this regard. The characters were a bunch of fun. Yakumo, the main character, has just the right balance for a shounen hero. He’s brave, but not arrogant, headstrong, but knows his own strength, and even when he isn’t sure why, he knows the importance of protecting others. Overall, he’s the type you can’t help but like and cheer for.
Then we have the love interest and leading lady Pai, as seen above. Pai is one of the most interesting multifaceted characters I’ve seen in a shounen story, and I think she is what the author of Elfen Lied hoped to but failed to accomplish with Lucy. Normally, Pai is upbeat, always smiling, and more than a little airheaded. We see that she does have a brain, though, and is a little less clumsy than she lets on, but she’s still a bundle of fun. However, when the third eye on her forehead opens up, she becomes Sanjiyan, an immortal warrior with a cold, direct attitude. At first glance Sanjiyan seems like a calculating semi-evil bitch who just kicks ass, takes names, and doesn’t care about your life, however as we are exposed to her more, we can see her motivations for being that way and for a demon, she gains an utterly human quality. You don’t see that kind of characterization every day!

The side characters are nothing special, but are fun and well-enough developed for such a short OVA. The enemies come strait from the Generic Demon Bad Guys book, usually coming out of nowhere, destroying things, rambling about immortality, and using the word ’suffer’ countless times while laughing maniacally. The banter is never really intrusive, though, and the bad guys more or less exist to just advance the plot and put the characters in decisive situations rather than try to pass as characters. The battles aren’t so much about the fighting, focusing more on the situation going on as is common in monster anime, however is handled much better in this one than I usually see. When the blows are exchanged, though, things truly shine as 3×3 Eyes is not even remotely scared to show some extreme gore. Yakumo, being an immortal, looses limbs and gallons of blood in every battle, further emphasizing he reason I think there should be immortals in EVERY story. The gore was admittedly a little weird in episode 2 where one girl had a demon grown out of her body that tore her wide open in many places and cause eruptions of blood to constantly pour out of her and yet she survived and was up and walking not long after.

Overall, 3×3 Eyes was an extremely good OVA that felt like a whole series and definitely piqued my interest in the manga. I’d consider it a must-see.