Kimera

Me being me, I love seeking out & watching really awful anime OVAs. With me also liking to write reviews on these said atrocities on occasion, I have come across some real stinkers such as Dark Cat, Sword For Truth, Kennel Tokorozawa, & Kite to name a few. Kimera just so happens to be another victim about to face my wrath. I’m kinda hoping this will be somewhat bearable, but we’ll find out I guess.

Story: 1/10

The story is completely incomprehensible. The “plot” is supposed to be about this guy named Osamu finding the titular character & protecting her I think? The only thing we really know about Kimera is that it’s a guy that looks like a girl, though it’s rather confusing at first. Because Kimera looks exactly like a woman, it isn’t until we see a shot of his chest that we realize it isn’t a girl, & instead a guy. Basically nothing happens until like the last 15 minutes of the movie. Where the main villain whose name I forget because the villain is just that forgettable. The villain goes on about some betrayal nonsense that ultimately doesn’t matter because it isn’t mentioned before these events, it isn’t explored, & it sure as shit isn’t brought up after the villain dies. Osamu saves Kimera from dying, he drives off into the sunset with ultimately nothing being resolved, & me having barely any idea of what happened during the OVA, & still having barely any idea whilst reflecting upon it. There are two big issues with this plot, the story is both uneventful, & incomprehensible. Barely anything of note happens during this OVA. There’s what? A rape scene that lasts all of 5 seconds & the OVA acts as if it didn’t happen once its over? A tedious exposition scene about this betrayal that isn’t brought up beforehand, & isn’t explored upon? Honestly, this OVA is so uneventful. At least in something like Garzey’s Wing, or Shoujo Tsubaki, there was stuff happening. Oh yeah, so two more things before I go on about the characters. Osamu & his co-worker Jay are supposed to be cereal salesman, yet we never see them doing anything of the sort, in-fact, the bulk of their working environment takes place in a laboratory, ya know, a place you’d go if you wanna sell cereal to people. Osamu’s motivations for why he wants to save Kimera are also non-existent. He just sees her & falls in love because? I don’t get it. I know somebody is probably gonna reply “but you don’t need a reason to love something”. Here’s my thing, I don’t think you need a deep reason to love something. It can be because she has a mouth & I would buy it. Just give me something please. Lets take Neon Genesis Evangelion as an example. Now, my memory is a bit hazy on this specific detail. But if I remember right, Hikari stated that she likes Toji because he’s a nice guy. I could possibly be wrong about that, but my point is, she has a reason, however shallow it may be to like Toji, & I completely understand her motivations/reasons. Osamu on the other hand has nothing, & seeing as I like neither him, or Kimera, I can’t get behind either of them.

Characters: 1/10

I honestly don’t have much to say about any of the characters because they themselves don’t have much to say or contribute to the narrative. Osamu is the main character. His partner Jay is the more rational of the two. Kimera is the title character who barely speaks & sucks people dry. The villain whose name I can’t remember is evil. The characters are nothing beyond the 1st dimension & it’s absolutely pathetic. While the characters in Shoujo Tsubaki were also nothing beyond the 1st dimension. They at least had something going on with them make them memorable.

Art: 4/10

I’ll be honest. The art isn’t the worst thing out there. Environments can actually look half-way decent at times. The tentacle monsters are somewhat ominous, & the color design at least looks better than Shoujo Tsubaki. The character art, when it’s on model, can actually look like there was some effort put into it. The problem is, the character art is almost never on model, so the character art looks bad in most instances. The dog at the beginning of this movie is one of the worst looking dogs I’ve ever seen in any anime. If there’s even some slight credit I can give to Kimera. It’s the art. I’ll give it to the character designer of Kite, he’s consistent. His art can be good, but there’s always a blemish somewhere in between the cracks

Sound: 2/10

The voice acting isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard. I wouldn’t call it good. But it’s half-way acceptable I guess. They rarely emote, & range certainly isn’t apart of the vocabulary on any of these individuals. Though, I’ll chock that up to poor voice directing & the fact that they’re working on Kimera, so it’s not like it’d do them any good to actually try in the first place. The sound mixing isn’t particularly great. It can be difficult to hear sound effects a lot of the time, & taking a note from Kings Game, the sound effects barely leave an impact because there’s seemingly a delay to the connection point. The audio quality is really bad, muffled, staticy, it’s not good audio quality. This came out in 1996 by the way. I know this is a low budget OVA, but I at least expect the sound quality to be halfway acceptable. The music is practically nonexistent

Overall: 1/10

While there may be some silver lining in there, this is honestly one of the worst pieces of shit I’ve ever seen. With its incomprehensible narrative, with underwritten characters, a plot that really makes no sense once you actually start to think about. Plot points that aren’t explored. Plot points that get brought up out of nowhere. Awful structuring, flat directing, & decent character art (when it’s on model). I was bored out of my mind watching this, & when I wasn’t bored, I was angry at the fact that I was watching Kimera. On the offenso-scale I’d probably give this like a 7 or an 8. It’s above Dark Cat & Sword For Truth, tied with MD Geist, but below Cipher. It isn’t the worst OVA I’ve ever seen, but it comes pretty damn close honestly. My final rating for this one is going to be a 1/10