I've reviewed OVAs in the past but there are many that don't require their own pages for and these three certainly live up to that.
Handsome na Kanojo
Actress and model Mio Hagiwara meets a young director named Ichiya Kumagai and falls in love with him, however Ichiya is too fixated on his movie to notice and it's only when he escapes a nasty motorcycle accident that he realizes his feelings for Mio. This story was one of many attempts by artist Wataru Yoshizumi before finding success with Marmalade Boy. Translated as Handsome Girl and the term is used within the OVA by Ichiya to describe classy Hollywood ladies like Lauren Bacall.
Despite a good setup and a fantastic art style this 1991 OVA goes too fast leaving little time for chemistry to develop between the leads.
Final Verdict: Out of the three OVAs this one is the most solid in terms of setup and story but is still forgettable and overshadowed by the artist's more popular works.
Elf 17
Prince Muscat of the Galaxy Empire holds a martial arts tournament to find people to travel with him across the universe which draws the attention of wrestling fairy Lu and the mecha suited K.K. Together along with the spaceship's pilot travel across the universe starting with a desert planet where they thwart a smuggling operation of antique wine.
It sounds like a good idea but with nothing much to work with in the character department, there are plenty of moments where the viewer will draw blanks such as the poorly constructed plot twist in the last five minutes of the feature. Then again this was made by the same person who did Ultimate Teacher, an anime deemed unreviewable by Bennett the Sage of Anime Abandon.
Final Verdict: Out of the three, this 1987 OVA is probably the only one that could've been serialized if a bit more care was taken over the final product particularly the poor characters.
Katsugeki Shōjo Tantei Dan
School Girls Yuriko and Shizuka attempt to save their rich friend Midori who gets kidnapped as part of an operation by the chairman of the school to steal a military weapon hidden in Midori's mansion.
This is the worst of the three as the characters are designed to be stupid within a story that makes utterly no sense in a world with such a lousy color palette. My first review on this blog was Debutante Detective Corps which you could argue is a more sophisticated version of this anime which is like saying a McDonald's is high class cuisine. But there is a fundamental difference between this 1986 OVA and the Debutante Girls, at the very least the Debutante Detective Corps made an effort to suck while this OVA is lacking any effort at all.
Final Verdict: It's such a low to see such crap being dredged up from the distant past and I thought Circuit Angel was bad, this is just insulting.
