Roots Search: Shokushin Buttai X has on paper all the elements to make a great spacer horror story: a mysteriously abandoned spaceship, characters slowly losing their sanity and a horrendous alien humanoid creeping about. This could’ve been an interesting blend of “Alien” and some Lovecraftian horror, and the OVA does indeed borrow quite a lot from specifically “Alien”.

Sadly, riding on the boom of scifi-horror is not enough to produce a good flick, since the production fails to execute the concepts on all fronts. The visuals seem to be a decade behind the contemporaries of 1980’s and the meticulous attention to detail that the era is known for is nowhere to be seen. The colour choices are bland and the visual effects headache-inducing. Some of the graphical concepts – like the spaceship “Green Planet” – are intriguing as themselves, but without much fidelity end up being as uninteresting as everything else.

Music is unsuccessful in conveying the atmosphere in a meaningful way and the sound effects often don’t match what’s happening on the screen. This is a shame, because the right kind of atmosphere is a critical element to a good horror story. Voice actors are doing their best, but there isn’t much to be achieved when half of the script is people shouting each other’s names.

Characters do seem to have some meaningful background stories that we see small flashes of, which is at least refreshing compared to similar kind of slasher movies where the characters are cannon fodder for the big baddie. These flashbacks are tied to the bigger philosophical theme of how human nature has far-reaching consequences for the whole race, and this theme is somewhat appealing. However, with the screen time of 45 minutes, there is not enough time to build them up to be anything more than a bit out-of-place existential dabbling that goes out with a psychedelic bang.

The main duo Moira – a young woman with psychic powers – and Buzz – a lone survivor from the “Green Planet” – end up running around witnessing the horrors, yet have time to fall in love and produce the most psychedelic sex scene (or is it?) I’ve seen on anime.

The "alien" itself is chaotic in nature: is it a mind controlling humanoid? An ancient threat from beyond time and space? A cancerous biological monster spreading it's tentacles to catch terrified victims? All of these at the same time? No-one seems to care, so each shape is just a convenient way to advance the plot and nothing more.

Quite ironically, after a bizarre ending, the best part of the OVA is the soothing ending theme “Labyrinth of Space” by Kumiko Kaori and the accompanying impressive visuals by Naoyuki Kato.