Tenkuu Danzai Skelter Heaven

(As per my review policy, there will be no spoilers here)

From the creators of Mars Destruction, here we have... Mars of Destruction all over again.

To be fair, Skelter Heaven is actually Mars of Destruction's older brother, first appearing in late 2004 (Mars of Destruction was released in 2005). But otherwise the comparisons are inevitable: same director and original creator, both are adaptations of visual novel games, both have a similar alien invasion over Tokyo plot, and both are infamous for their abysmal quality and extreme pointlessness. Then, why is Mars of Destruction more known, while Skelter Heaven fell into obscurity?

My guess is that it's because Skelter Heaven is better in almost all aspects, but in a bad way. It has an actually followable plot (at least until two-thirds of the way in, when it begins to randomly jump to exposition flashbacks), there's an actual opening and ending theme and some semblance of a soundtrack, and the "characters" are not idiotic blank slates but instead completely defined by a single trait. Oh, and it lacks Mars of Destruction's intelligence-insulting plot twist. That has to be worth some points.

Regardless, Skelter Heaven is a complete waste of 19 minutes of your life. Being better than Mars of Destruction is its only redeemable quality, and it comes at the expense of its memetic potential, which for the most part is not a worthy trade-off. I can think of only one moment of genuine unintentional comedy.
The animation in Skelter Heaven is very stiff, and supplemented by some blatantly terrible CGI. The backgrounds lack detail to the point where they seem unfinished. The writing is atrocious, and could perfectly come from the mind of a 12- or 13-year old. As noted above, the characters are distinguishable from one another by the single trait that defines their one-dimensional, extremely linear "personality". Believe it or not, there is some sort of attempt at character development, but it ends up being undescribably pathetic (most of the characters are static anyway). Again, a good part of the story (maybe 80% or more of the backstory) is missing and compressed into a bizarre sequence of confusing, shoehorned flashbacks. The fighting scenes, which comprise more than half of its runtime, are terrible in a very boring way, and 100% feel like "baby's first animated battle".

As an adaptation of the game... I mean, at least I can guess what the game is about? Really, Skelter Heaven has a big problem causing any, and I really mean any, impact or impression in its audience. It's not inherently repulsive, it doesn't waste a good premise or offends you in any way, it's not an ironic comedy goldmine. It's just plain boring, yet at the same time it's too short to get you too bored. It's a void, the anime equivalent to intergalactic space, the television equivalent of just pointlessly staring into a black hole, but from a safe distance. It gives little to talk about - I could put spoilers in this review and at most fill an extra couple lines.

Oh, and this thing actually tries to do fanservice. The content itself isn't too questionable, but it is about as sexy as you might expect.

Veredict: 5/100. Skelter Heaven is too good for a so bad it's good watch, and too bad for literally anything else.