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Red Hayatte
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Title Info
- alias: Akai Hayatte
- seen: 1-4 of 4
- type: OAV
- grade: watchable
- genre: magic_war
- made: 1992
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
Everyone knows that Japan is actually run by various shadowy ninja groups. In this example they are super-powered ninja who work with the secret political organisations to run Japan. However there seems to have been a serious falling out, with the leader supposedly killed by his son and the organisation splitting into warring factions. These factions fight both each other and for control of Japan. Of course the true question of who killed the leader, and who has ambitions to take his seat, cannot be ignored. To complicate things further the leaders son, and potentially most powerful warrior Hayatte, has been killed but not before placing his spirit and his power into the body of his sister. She can call on his awesome power, but to do so puts her own soul at risk of being permanently replaced. Sadly since she is caught in the fighting she is not always given an option.
A bit spoiler-full, but it sounds pretty good right? The shadowy politics and conspiracies sounds like fun, while the conflict between young female and her borrowed power gives a human dimension. Well, sorry to disappoint, but I should also mention that six of the ninja have the ability to call up magical armor that looks an awful lot like high tech powered armor. This armor is awesomely powerful, with varied appearance and powers, and its wearers are both the most powerful warriors and faction leaders. Thus the running time is largely dominated by powered armor battles between these characters, which shuffles the other (more promising) elements into the fringes. Indeed so little time is given to the story that a lot of it doesn't seem to make sense, or is only suggested, which is really disappointing. This becomes even more the case in the later episodes where they seem to have run out of time. This leads to a climactic (power suited) battle for the conclusion which ends suddenly and unsatisfyingly. I imagine the manga was pretty cool, but it is disappointing that this is so dominated by the action, although if you like power suit fighting you might not mind so much.
The existence of the armor also means that `normal' ninja fighting is largely absent. The power level of the main combats is pretty high. However being a somewhat older production it is not that impressive. The complex appearance of the suits leads to the action animation being fairly simple, and the animation focuses on the powers of the suit rather than motion and sequence. It's not bad, indeed some of the early fights are good fun, but it degrades somewhat as the later episodes seem quite compressed. And without much support from the story it really does begin to feel like a super-powered wrestling match. So if you expect powered armor combat then this is probably enjoyable, and watchable, enough.
None of the sites I source from has a review of this title.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:14 WST 2009