We finally learn the girl's name after 18 minutes, more than a third of the way in. Not that the main characters' names matter anyway, nor does the plot nor the characters' backgrounds nor really any of the specifics. In this way, California Crisis reminds me of Monte Hellman's sun-baked road movie classic, Two-Lane Blacktop; that is, there is a story, one about a road trip, but that story also happens to be the aspect of least interest. Forget the story, and the focus is now what is being presented on screen. You've got the really striking art style reminscent of Patrick Nagel, with its bold colour palette on clean yet detailed line art and two-tone shading that gives a strong sense of directional lighting; the wonderfully '80s boogie soundtrack delivered by city pop singer Miho Fujiwara; the '80s Hollywood movie staples of SoCal, dive bars, diners, and car chases.
But even looking at the plot, certain familiar threads pop up, like the optimistic sci-fi elements tying outer space to the domestic life (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was also released in 1986) or the highly idealized sexual freedom of American women (think of all those provocative coming-of-age sex comedies the '80s is known for). Yet at the core of California Crisis is a novelly foreign critique of the American Dream. Here we have Noera, the male protagonist who claims he cares about his job, his car, his wallet, etc. but whose actions say otherwise; he is barely coerced by a complete stranger to take a road trip to Death Valley and during said trip ends up totaling two cars on unpaid loans. There is no hesitance in this adventure, the brakes never pulled to sit and wonder what the point of it all is, only the impulse to move forward to the next leg. Reflected is an attitude that pervaded America's, and Japan's, economic prospects of the time. During a reunion scene between Noera and his old classmate Jack Varo, his friend unwittingly sums up the mood of the trickle-down era while reminiscing about their high school basketball days: "Those times were great, weren't they? We all just did what we wanted." Still, California Crisis is even more explicit. The trip to Death Valley is initially decided on a whim when, after receiving a vision from the mysterious orb at the diner, Marsha dazedly blurts "American Dream" out of the blue. This tenuous association, along with Marsha's suspicious lack of a past, gives the impression that she's running from, or towards, something. But their arrival at Death Valley is met with a final car chase, after which they end up breaking the "Space Mind" after falling into a river. What's left is a transparent glass ball leaking river water. And then the OVA abruptly ends, their journey as fruitless as the American Dream.
California Crisis is a document of what director Mizuho Nishikubo and his production team saw and felt on their location scouting trip to California. The sum total is a time capsule of a certain era of American pop culture, which is a bit odd coming from a Japanese animation, but the accuracy is undeniable. There's a chase scene set to a neon-lit night club performance whose storyboard could have been taken straight out of a classic '80s action movie (I'm thinking Beverly Hills Cop?). Captured is not just the decade's aesthetic but also the dead-ends of its materialism. And how fitting for this idiosyncratic, Western-facing production, which could only have been born out of the '80s anime boom from a studio that almost immediately went out of business.