video

OVAs We Love: Genmu Senki Leda

Published on November 12, 2025Leave a comment

Back in August, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the site, Zimmerit.moe asked a bunch of people about their favourite OVAs:

Direct-to-video anime was a format that really helped set anime apart. The original video animation format allowed unusual ideas to flourish, creators to experiment, and offered up the perfect mix of length and shock value to help jump start the anime licensing industry in the English-speaking world. OVAs (or OAVs, if you’re of a particular age) offered a new way to commercialize anime and make money off an older subset of anime fandom following the implosion of the early ’80s gunpla boom.
[…]
To celebrate the site’s anniversary and to encourage folks to go looking in the video bins of history, I reached out to a range of folks to hear about their favorite OVAs. I asked them to write about an OVA they loved. Not necessarily their favorite or even one that was easy to recommend, but a single OVA that they loved. The following article consists of what was shared with me.

The result is a love letter to the format, full of both obscure and well known examples. with the emphasis on the former rather than the obvious big names. Thinking about what example I would’ve chosen, if I did the same and not go for nostalgia titles (Bubblegum Crisis, Dominion Tank Police, Guyver, there waas only one choice: Genmu Senki Leda:

A 1985 original seventy minutes long story about a school girl upset about how her first love ended, that least with an elegiac mood piece of her mourning her lost love, before she promptly gets abducted into another world. Where it turns out she’s the legendary warrior princess destined to save the world, all while wearing a chainmail bikini and having to fight off barbarian warriors and mecha both.

It’s great fun and cramps a lot into its runtime but mostly I love the animation and mood setting in this. If you like things like Greed or Legend of Lemnear this is worth seeking out.

Meet on the Ledge

Published on October 7, 2025Leave a comment

Richard Thompson talking about writing Meet on the Ledge as quoted in Andrew Hickey’s podcast about Fairport convention:

It’s a fairly vague song open to a lot of interpretations, I’m proud people can find different things in it. I certainly don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote it – a 19-year-old trying to take on big subjects, like transition, youth, old age, friendship, blah blah blah. Sometimes you just hit something. Being young sometimes means you’ve experienced nothing, but in moments you see everything.

That struck me, listening to the podcast on the commute back from work today. It has long been a song full of meaning to me, from the first time I heard it on What We Did On Our Holidays a decade and a half ago. For me it’s always been about grief, mourning and remembering absent friends and family. That I first heard it when my wife was in hospital, where she would eventually die, may played a part.

Sandy Denny dying at the tragically young age of 31, or the tragic accident that happened to Fairport Convention just after recording their next albume may have also played a role. The band after all, almost sixty years on, still use it to close out their annual Cropredy Convention.

It’s a song that’s aged as fine wine, a defiant remembrance of those who went before us into the great unknown and it never fails to gives me goosebumps. Seeing Richard Thompson, who wrote it when he was nineteen, still singing it at age 71 in the clip above, all that history behind him even more so.

Not a Hoax. Not a Dream. Not an Imaginary Story.

Published on July 7, 2025Leave a comment

the first episode of Macross 7 is up on the Macross Channel’s Youtube:

Also available: the first episodes of Macross Delta and Macross Frontier. Which means you can now sample the first episodes of all three Macrosssequels free.

As you should know, the original Macross was broadcast in 1982-1983, the story of an alien ship crash landing on Earth in 1999, giving rise to a huge technology boost. Ten years later, the aliens invade and turn out to be giants, but luckily humanity now has transforming mecha to fight them. Outclassed nevertheless, humanity’s sole hope rest in idol power as the aliens are completely devoid of any culture… Carl Macek would Frankenstein this together with two other, unrelated mecha series into Robotech, which is how I first discovered it, on Super Channel in 1986 or 1987. Even in that mutated form it stood out from the rest of the American toy commercials disguised as cartoons.

Macross 7 came out in 1995 and is the Gundam ZZ of the Macross franchise: seemingly less serious and more humour driven than the original, more childish at first glance. As such it contrasted poorly with the released in the same year, much more serious, adult, cool and cyberpunky Macross Plus OVA/movie. As with Gundam ZZ however, Macross 7‘s reputation has improved over time. You can also see 2008’s Macross Frontier as a remake, following the same general story of an alien power attacking a colony fleet and how music resolves conflict where violence cannot, a theme found throughout Macross.

I first heard about Macross 7 from a trans woman friend of mine on the Lspace IRC channel sometime in 2000, then when I finally got broadband, downloaded the first few episodes in good old Video CD format, using my DVD player to play it on my old, grotty CRT tv. Even then it was a revelation. Having it now available in HD is a minor miracle, after decades of copyright wrangles due to the existence of Robotech and the parasites of Harmony Gold.

De Jeugd van Tegewoordig: Twenty Years Young this Year

Published on May 16, 2025Leave a comment

Still only available in glorious 240p almost twenty years on, Watskeburt:

This was such a hype when it came out. At the time Sandra and I were living near where parts of the video had been shot, which means seeing it again now, twenty years on, gives me an intense wave of nostalgia. 2005 wasn’t the best of years but did saw us move out from our subrented way too expensive flat into our own apartment elsewhere in Amsterdam Noord and this came out just a few months after we had done so. The first and last Dutch rap song Sandra actually liked.

Is it the sport she likes or the player? — Sorairo Utility — First Impressions

Published on January 3, 2025Leave a comment

This too is yuri:

Minami, a first year high school girl has a very relatable problem: the gacha game she put all her time and money in is ending service. Now what’s she gonna do? Her friend Izumi suggests it’s a good thing, now she can actually do something you can only do in high school, like join a school club or do a part time job or find a boyfriend. That youth stuff, eh? Not something she seems overtly interested in (especially the last item, considering her reaction to that female golfer later on in the episode). But when Izumi suggest it might unlock a hidden talent, she gets fired up and starts trying every club in school, failing miserably with all. Once she broadens her quest to outside of school, she runs into an old man with back problems, who asks her to bring his golf bag to the nearby driving range where she sees the golf girl from the video and the rest is history…

Minami declaring she is going to look for her special extraordinary something while her friend looks on bemused

An enjoyable first episode which doesn’t spent too much time yet on explaining golf to the viewer. Minami with her desire to do something special and extraordinary but failure at achieving anything is extremely relatable. The way Minami is looking for something to be obsessed with and how she thinks golf might be it, is something I recognise. I like her friend Izumi too, a good foil for her enthusiasm, as well as Akane, the golf girl we see in the video, who ends up taking Minami under her wing.

The animation is fluid and good looking in the right places, with the actual golf playing receiving the most care; it’s also not afraid to get a bit ugly and off model when necessary, like when Minami goes into one of her rants. I already liked the original OVA when it came out in 2022, which was just three high school girls playing golf and hoped it would be a series someday. So far I’m glad I got my wish.