Um, so another reviewer is describing the storyline of this movie as "fairly straightforward". Actually it is fairly ridiculous. The lead character is a doctor who randomly gets a prophecy that he is the Chosen One to fight off demons who have been sleeping (?) for 5,000 years. Then he goes back in the past 5,000 years to kill the demons who were around then too. When he comes back to the future, I guess he just missed some demons or something because they're still around. A lot of demon battles happen. The only notable scene in the movie is when he punches a demon in the nuts and it hops around hooting and hollering. However, this is the only joke in the entire OVA. The rest of the OVA is completely deadpan and horribly bad. I'm giving it 1 extra star because it has high camp value, but you probably have to get drunk first.
4 Reviews
Occult anime thriller with good buildup, but abrupt payoff
BrianDanaCamp14 July 2002
Warning: Spoilers
PSYCHIC WARS (1991) is a short (51 min.) made-for-video Japanese animated occult thriller about a modern Japanese doctor summoned by the spirits of a group of Buddhist nuns to fight demons in Japan's distant past. It's got some very nice artwork and design and includes some picturesque scenery of Kyoto and ancient ruins in the surrounding countryside, done in a style reminiscent of the charcoal paintings of traditional Japanese art. The storyline is pretty straightforward, focusing on the hero's travels into the past of 5000 years ago to protect the early Japanese people from being wiped out by a race of technically advanced demons. The demons don't go quietly and a handful wind up escaping into the future where the hero, Ukiyo, continues the battle, only to learn that his girlfriend has a secret link to the conflict, putting him in a serious moral and emotional dilemma.
The build-up to the climactic series of battles is quite suspenseful, but the final action doesn't deliver much of a payoff. Things turn out much too easy for the hero, a doctor with previously hidden powers that have been triggered by a dying patient who's a reincarnation of one of the Buddhist nuns. The demons themselves are huge, grotesque, scaly beasts, too much like comic book monsters to be taken seriously. The final segment, in which the doctor must confront his girlfriend, is quite compelling, but ends too quickly. Perhaps a bigger budget and a longer running time would have allowed the story to play out properly. But this is a problem with many Japanese OAV (Original Animated Video) productions. A story that requires feature-length or multi-part telling is often forcibly compressed to standard one-shot OAV length.
The build-up to the climactic series of battles is quite suspenseful, but the final action doesn't deliver much of a payoff. Things turn out much too easy for the hero, a doctor with previously hidden powers that have been triggered by a dying patient who's a reincarnation of one of the Buddhist nuns. The demons themselves are huge, grotesque, scaly beasts, too much like comic book monsters to be taken seriously. The final segment, in which the doctor must confront his girlfriend, is quite compelling, but ends too quickly. Perhaps a bigger budget and a longer running time would have allowed the story to play out properly. But this is a problem with many Japanese OAV (Original Animated Video) productions. A story that requires feature-length or multi-part telling is often forcibly compressed to standard one-shot OAV length.
Rather beautiful if slow and rather confusing Anime adaptation of a Japanese Scifi Novel
c-conley9014 November 2015
Warning: Spoilers
If you took a rather long book and crammed it into 51 minutes of plot and action, you'd probably get this. A OVA released through Manga Video in the early 00s that was really something from the early 90s and something that only got a VHS release in it's native country of Japan. There is beautiful animation done that is extremely well done, if not extremely quick too. This OVA moves quite fast with things, which is a similar problem one reviewer on here noted and I can tell, if they had slowed down and developed the OVA out more than 51 minutes, it would have been better. It's interesting still to watch, it's no Wicked City or Ninja Scroll though. But it's interesting to say the least, and I can tell that possibly the English translation on the subtitles is a little daft but anyway. Some of the plot elements are confusing based on cultural (I guess) reasons. Also, the nasty habit of the editor to start switching back and forth in scenes sometimes not revealing bits til later after the fact. Very weirdly edited. Plus, not to spoil anything but the Doctor has lousy luck with women. And is able to punch through things with his laughable magic powers.
Some good artwork
HallmarkMovieBuff23 April 2008
One can hardly improve on Brian Camp's summary and analysis (the only one here of this writing), so here are just a few additional observations.
This is the only tale in my experience with a physician as a superhero.
The story is rather simple, tending toward the Saturday morning cartoon, limited no doubt by the short length of the work.
The animation, too, is generally primitive by today's anime standards, but there are occasional flashes of brilliance, which alone make this worth watching.
This was shown on American TV during the SciFi Channel's Monday night anime block in a one hour time slot with commercials, with a rating of TV-14-S,V.
This is the only tale in my experience with a physician as a superhero.
The story is rather simple, tending toward the Saturday morning cartoon, limited no doubt by the short length of the work.
The animation, too, is generally primitive by today's anime standards, but there are occasional flashes of brilliance, which alone make this worth watching.
This was shown on American TV during the SciFi Channel's Monday night anime block in a one hour time slot with commercials, with a rating of TV-14-S,V.
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