Bastard! - Another look back at old school OVA's

I remembered a few things about this show since my brother used to own it, so I decided to give it another watch since I do recall enjoying it, even if it's not something that I could remember small details about. In contrast to Legend of Crystania, which I re-watched and reviewed a while ago, this one actually came out to be a much more enjoyable watch.

That said, there is something that anyone going in should understand about your 80's and 90's OVA's, and that is they are very often never finished, feeling like more of an advertisement for the Manga they were based on than an actual finished product. As such, there is no real conclusion to the story of Bastard, so if that's going to bother you it's best to just skip it entirely.

All that out of the way, Bastard is the story of Dark Schneider, a Sorcerer who nearly took over the world with his four Lords of Havoc. He was sealed away, and in the past fifteen years, his old allies have formed a plan to resurrect the God of Destruction. Dark Schneider, rather than having been killed, was actually sealed away in the body of a young boy.

Now, this boy is clearly not even ten yet, though age is never specified. He is clearly not fifteen years old, which is how long Dark Schneider has been sealed away for. You may be asking yourself a long series of questions about his because of how little sense any of this makes, and by the end of the OVA, you may find yourself bothered because this is never really explained. And if that is enough to bother you, oh boy stay away from this show, because that is the least of the head-scratching questions that get brought up and never answered.

This is a show that basically falls into the description 'Violent Schlock'. You don't watch this show for a deep story or interesting characters, you watch for some bizarre jokes and seeing a dude cast a spell called 'Venom' that instantly rots away whatever body part of his enemies it hits. Also, a couple really out of nowhere fourth wall breaks. And a flamboyant vampire who gets bitchy when one of the girls he bites ends up not being a virgin before going off about young women these days.

That said, it's not the best of this kind of anime. You do get a lot of over the top and fantastic fights, but these fights sometimes don't take up quite enough of the show's runtime. Yoko, the lead female, as well as the boy Schneider was sealed away in, are kind of obnoxious characters. There are a few romantic interests being built up over the shows run, but none of them are at all interesting. That does become a problem as his feelings for Yoko, as well as the need for a virgin kiss to break the seal so Dark Schneider can let loose and do his thing, can work to drag down the show. I mean there is also the half elf he raised and refers to as his daughter (Even though they are not blood related) but clearly they'd been fucking as well and that is really awkward.

All this makes this a hard show to go into much detail on, because it's a genre that's basically hard to go into detail on. The story is irrelevant except for where it drags down the action, characters have no need to be deep so long as they are fun to watch do their thing, and that just leaves how visually satisfying the violence on display is.

Bastard is not really on par with some other violent schlock you would find in the time as it doesn't quite go over the top enough, and it does slow itself down far too many times with its poor attempts at character relationships, as well as feeling a bit disjointed as it stumbles from fight scene to fight scene. All that said though, the action is still a lot of fun to watch, and there is a good variety of fights you see through the sick episode run time. If you can ignore the badly told story and just get into the fun characters and violence, Bastard is a good watch.