Subject #001 - Mars of Destruction

Or - Yes, There IS a Wrong Way to Use Classical Music

and so, a day after declaring this project open, we begin our hunt for the worst anime ever.

Will I find it? Perhaps, perhaps not...but the chase will be rewarding. Like a grail quest, only instead of the cup of Christ, my treasure is a cracked and faded Big Gulp filled with the leftover contents of an Aristocrats act.
...feel free to imagine your own form of disgust here. Point is, we're going as far from 'sacred relic' as possible here.

Anyway, with that we kick this project off with our first test subject, the 2005 OVA 'Mars of Destruction.'

Now, knowing the backstory behind this title going in, I'll admit my expectations were NOT high. For those not familiar with it, this OVA was made as a promotional tie-in for a visual novel/game released on the PlayStation 2 in Japan.

That's right. It's a 20 minute teaser trailer. Now that expectations have been sufficiently lowered, let's fire this puppy up.

The story begins in 2010 (obligatory joke about how the year passed with no such incident goes here) as a shuttle on the way back from an expedition to Mars explodes on re-entry to Earth. In the years that follow, Earth finds itself attacked by a mysterious group of beings called Ancients. A group that, for the record, takes the prize for probably one of the more underwhelming monster designs I've ever seen in an anime.

...and no, seeing it in action doesn't make it any more threatening.

Especially when you realize that dot in its mouth shoots lasers.
Remember how long ago THAT meme was big on the web?

To counter these monsters, we're introduced to the group AAST, the Anti-Unidentified Ancients Special Team. A specialized team formed to protect people with specialists from various different police organizations...
...
...who are all, if this show is any indication, teenage girls that apparently got bussed out of high school prematurely.

It's either that or future Japan's child labor laws have become INCREDIBLY lax.
Either option seems to hold water as far as anime logic goes.

Of course, they aren't just throwing these well-armed young ladies into the jaws of danger alone, good Heavens no. That would be irresponsible afterall.
Enter the protagonist, young man Takeru Hinata, specialist in...you know, as far as this OVA's concerned, he doesn't really seem to have any specialty...or much personality either. In fact, the one thing he can do is that he's the one human who can wear the super suit known as MARS, and that seems to largely be because of his genetics. It's a pretty passive accomplishment like that. Anyway, said MARS suit allows him to successfully thrash the Ancients where the experts are only able to mostly wound them.

It's amazing what a difference having a suit
that looks like actual armor will make here, isn't it?

That's...really prettymuch all there is to the story. After the opening fight, which plays host to one of the most unintentionally comedic deaths I've seen in an anime in a long time (see below), the story largely concerns a plan to ship some of the earlier mentioned Martian wreckage to America for research. Inevitably, Ancients attack the transport, including one special one who it's pretty clear only Takeru can fight.

No, not the death yet.
Though at least this monster design IS a step up.
Just not a particularly big one...
for a 20 minute feature, this is probably as good as it's gonna get.

Anyway, it's best not to put too much thought into the storyline. It's mostly just a pretense for the fights that ensue, set to various pieces of classical music. The results of which are, at times memorable, though not for the reasons they were meant to be.

and NOW we come to the death

...you know, given how she went, unless they've gained the ability to regrow heads in 2010, one has to wonder why this was particularly necessary.
Then again, it's not like she'd be remembered otherwise.

The rest of the deaths are, despite their rather graphic nature, somehow completely bland affairs. We aren't even left with a sense of horror as the nameless police are ripped apart by Ancients because they barely register as characters. They aren't even animated with eyes for further distancing. It's like being told you just ran over a person only to find out you just hit a traffic cone.

No. Really. I have proof on that 'no eyes' claim.

Unfortunately, as you can guess by the general caliber of these screencaps, this isn't even one you could look back at and think 'at least it looked nice.' The animation makes it pretty clear this was done on a low budget to increase interest in the game.

Come to think of it, 'bare minimum' seems to sum up most of this effort. Nothing really stands out as particularly good or memorable (...by intent, anyway) in the finished product. What story there is, including the big twist at the end, is mostly a pileup of various cliches that have been done before, and better, in other animes. The acting is not bad, but nothing remarkable by any standard. The designs, as you can see by the screencaps, are pretty uninspired, and the animation that goes with them doesn't imbue any extra life onto them. Even the music in this only serves to further undermine any hope of this being remembered for a good reason.
I also just want to say for the record, I'm not just docking this anime points for the decision to use classical music. Because other titles HAVE managed to take classical pieces written for other works and used them to make some downright memorable sequences of their own (Giant Robo, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and, of course, Neon Genesis Evangelion all come to mind here) but in this case, the choices of music and how they're employed just feel wrong for the scenes in question and often cause the moments to fall flat. Most damning is the fact they manage to take one of the oldest established 'big action' pieces of classical music, Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries' and put it in such a lull of action that you almost don't even realize it's playing unless you're listening for it.

Have I found a winner the first time out? Not really.
This is certainly bad, don't get me wrong, but I can't rightly say I'd call this the worst ever, nice as it would be for this to be the low point. Rather it's an anime that seeks to achieve the minimum and even just barely accomplishes that.
Of course, it still ultimately fails at its main goal in the long run - as a promotional effort for the PS2 disc, I can honestly say this did NOTHING to gain my interest. I would even go so far as to say, if I had any interest in playing this before, this would have probably killed that.

With that, I'm going to close this first file. we're not there yet, but with this half-hearted advertisement for what appears to be a genuinely uninteresting story to begin with for a starting effort, we seem to be on the right track. Keep an eye out in the future as we bring in more test subjects in hopes we'll find the crown jewel of crap.

Till then, keep sending in suggestions. Can never have too much ammo.

...ah, what the Hell, one more time.

I'm just gonna take this as a sign that, when getting all the best in police recruits,
AAST didn't have much of a budget left for medical staff.