[00:02] We all have some idea of how hard it is to truly be the best of the best. But you know what's even harder than that? Being the worst of the worst. At the peak of human performance, you'll find dozens of almost equally qualified
[00:15] rivals vying for the top spot. But at the bottom of the valley, there are millions. To truly become the worst, say, anime director of all time, you would have to underperform every half-ass hack, overconfident fool, and
[00:31] fatally overworked isekai phoner inner who's ever comma. Not just once, but consistently. It's not enough to make one really bad anime. not enough to make one really bad anime. You'd need to try over and over and
[00:46] You'd need to try over and over and never make a good one. Not even by accident. Yet, despite those unfathomable odds, despite his countless competitors, one man has managed to lie below all the others at the absolute
[01:01] nadier of this art form. With an average MAL score of 3.32 MAL score of 3.32 out of 10 and a career best of 4.71, out of 10 and a career best of 4.71, which he had help on, no one else even
[01:16] comes close to his consistency. and his most impressive records sit comfortably below the likes of XARM, Jibiate, Pupa, even Krenexia and the Eight Seals with
[01:28] even Krenexia and the Eight Seals with an unshakable iron grip on the ANN an unshakable iron grip on the ANN database and MAL and IMDb's database and MAL and IMDb's bottom two anime of all time. Well,
[01:41] technically one of them's bottom three on MAL, slightly behind whatever the this is. But whatever the that was is only like a two-minute long experimental short film a lot of people don't even consider to
[01:55] be a real anime. And one of this guy's real anime still has a lower rating than real anime still has a lower rating than that. His name is Yoshituato and this is his story. But first, this is a polite reminder that I have a Patreon on which
[02:11] you can read my old scripts and watch uncensored cuts of many videos, including this one, for a very reasonable price. It also hosts extended I have been doing lately on our second channel, Basement Life, which, if you're
[02:25] not familiar, is a fun, chill place where we make basically whatever we feel like. Once I'm done grinding on endofear anime videos, for example, we're looking at getting into some Japan travel and lifestyle content. So, if that sounds
[02:38] fun to you, or you just want some cool surprises in your inbox and general good vibes, go subscribe over there. And of course, click the Patreon link in the doobly-doo to support all the fun we have over there and all the suffering
[02:51] that I do over here for your enjoyment. Speaking of, Mr. Sato Sensei's tale is ultimately inseparable from that of the company where he committed his crimes against anime. Idea Factory, an anime studio that isn't an anime studio. It's
[03:07] a video game developer. If you're aware of them at all, it's either from their work on Hyperdimension Neptunia, the JRPG series for guys who really want to their PlayStations, or possibly this iconic PS2 dub.
[03:22] >> What's [music] Tokyo? the world I came from. How do I get back the world I came from. How do I get back to where I came [music] from? to where I came [music] from? >> Oh, that. Um, well, the thing is,
[03:39] [screaming] >> or perhaps you've seen Diabolic Lovers, the second worst rated reverse horror anime on all of MAL, which is also the sixth highest rated anime based on an idea factory game. Sato didn't direct
[03:55] that one. Obviously, it's slightly over a 5 out of 10, but he did have a hand in its production and all the others as the co-founder and current president of the entire company. A company much better known in its native Japan by the
[04:10] affectionate nickname Idea Faku, which means exactly what it sounds like it does. Idea has stood as a pillar of the Japanese Kusugay or shitty game fandom
[04:23] ever since the release of their very first in-house title, Spectral Tower. A PS1 rogike with 52 monsters, 33 weapon types, 23 different items, 55 burgers, types, 23 different items, 55 burgers, 55 fries, 55 tacos, 55 pies, and 11,130
[04:41] dungeon floors required to beat the game. and 10,000 of those are in one game. and 10,000 of those are in one dungeon. So, good luck not dying there. That game is also where we find one of Sato's earliest credits as the CG
[04:57] producer for its cutscenes. And even in this nent work, we get glimpses of the kind of quality he was capable of pulling out of a team. But not content pulling out of a team. But not content to merely produce, he also animated all
[05:11] the cutscenes for another studios game. that Idea Factory published earlier that same year. CG Mukashi Bashi. And it's here that we see what he was really here that we see what he was really capable of.
[05:32] Now, before you say anything, remember this was 1996, the frontier days of CGI, barely 2 years after Donkey Kong Country. So instead of judging them by today's standards, it's only fair to compare Sato's CG cutscenes to those of
[05:47] compare Sato's CG cutscenes to those of his contemporaries.
[06:03] that was 95. Can we get a Tekken cutscene from 1996?
[06:24] established developer at that point. Plus, it's a completely different genre. I think the only really fair comparison would be another recent Japanese startup making an RPG of their own with CG cutscenes in the very same year. But I
[06:39] cutscenes in the very same year. But I mean, where would you even find?
[06:59] edge there in terms of camera work, lighting, sound design, actually animating things, [music] and basic ability to tell a story. But Idea ability to tell a story. But Idea Factory still had them and damn near
[07:11] everyone else in the entire gaming industry beat in terms of sheer ambition. Because when Sato left his job at the anime production subcontractor Studio Dub to join up with former Data East producer Shingo Kuana, they didn't
[07:27] just set out to make games. No, they were going to leverage both of their were going to leverage both of their talent uh resumes to build a multimedia talent uh resumes to build a multimedia tie-in driven IP empire to rival the
[07:41] gaming industries titans. Of course, those titans already had massive intellectual properties that anime studios and production committees would actually want to license. But Idea Facto's founders had a plan to
[07:56] circumvent the entire studio system by making their own anime in-house alongside the video games just like Dynax. foreshadowing is a literary.
[08:09] >> And the heart of those grand plans lay in the IF Neverland brand. A sprawling shared world comprised of 40 different nations that would serve as a canvas for
[08:21] all manner of generic fantasy stories. Starting with the obligatory quest to kill the demon king that kicks off their 1997 strategy RPG, Spectral Force. Well,
[08:34] technically it started with Spectral Tower, but that game barely even had a story and all most people saw of it was this bartender jerking off. So, yeah, Spectral Force, which to its credit does at least put a mildly interesting twist
[08:47] on the trope. The aforementioned demon king ruled the land for nearly a thousand years of relative peace until the rebellious human hero took up a mythical magic sword to ah, you know what? I'll let the game's title screen
[09:02] take it from here. This is a story which became to be called Neverland Great War. Later, a hero knocked the devil down just as a
[09:14] legend. After the devil had died, a country was splited and people began to fight. As the player, it's your job to pick a faction of those people, led by
[09:26] the hero, the demon king's daughter, who is somewhat confusingly named hero, and a bunch of other guys representing all the other generic fantasy races, some of whom I think you have to like unlock by beating the other campaigns and shape
[09:40] the outcome of Neverland Great War yourself by muddling around in menus mostly and sometimes watching simulated autoplay battles that all look like autoplay battles that all look like this.
[10:01] intel gathering, kingdom building, commodity trading gameplay in there, too, but uh those features might have been added in the sequel. The game's labyrinth of opaque systems isn't very well documented in Japanese, let alone
[10:15] English, so it's hard to say exactly how it played. though if the English translated DS sequel Spectral Force Genesis is any indication very poorly. That game's second most positive review on Metacritic from RPG
[10:31] positive review on Metacritic from RPG fan concludes, "Don't go near this and refuses to liken it to even torture because at least that would make you feel something." At any rate, one thing I do know about Spectral Force 1 is it's
[10:45] where we get our first humble taste of idea grand anime ambitions in the form of some opening credits which Sato apparently animated while also directing apparently animated while also directing the CG cutscenes for Idea Facto's horror
[11:00] visual novel Yakuto no game which was to be fair a huge no game which was to be fair a huge improvement on Spectral Tower.
[11:20] OP analysis hat on for a moment, his work on Spectral Force was even better than that. Almost downright subpar, demonstrating a workmanlike technical
[11:32] competence that's mainly let down by a singer with all the energy of someone singer with all the energy of someone [music] trying to play the game.
[11:47] release of Spectral Force 2, Sato would finally make his full anime directing debut with a two-part OVA adaptation of the original game prologue. But there
[11:59] are two other things that make this work particularly noteworthy among his filmography. Firstly, it somehow got a dub from ADV, which explains a lot about how they went out of business actually. And it also happens to be Sato's second
[12:15] highest rated solo directing effort. So, when I show you this, Brana just saw us IN HER CRYSTAL BALL. >> JUST REMEMBER, it's all downhill from
[12:30] here. Literally all downhill. I'm not even going to bother showing you his best solo directing effort cuz that one's really just a compilation of cutscenes that they outsourced to WoW World to animate. That's how bad these
[12:44] are. He was able to outdo everything else he ever did by just not trying at all. Plus, the first third of those cutscenes are just a rehash of this OVA because the game they're from is just a remake of the first three Spectral Force
[12:59] games as a crappy FF Tactics knockoff this time instead of a crappy Dragon Force knockoff. But now's the part where I get to tell you everything that happens in the crappy OVA based on that crappy Dragon Force knockoff. The story
[13:13] kicks off with a graphic sequence of a scantily clad angel lady being violently crucified by peasants with pitchforks who we never find out who she was or why that happened and it never comes up again. Then, slightly less than 1,000
[13:29] years later, some sort of low poly comet thing flies across the exact same shot thing flies across the exact same shot five times in a row,
[13:42] nod. An elf lady in a fancy bed fear sweat. And this blonde samurai guy, uh, A >> honestly, I've got no idea. Then the
[13:58] comet crashes and it turns out to be at last a way to kill the demon king, Janice, the great sword, Tinmakin. >> Then some stuff explodes. Some guys stab some skeletons. Some skeletons stab some guys. The Power Rangers are there. And a
[14:13] lady with a crystal ball says, >> "The battle is over. The humans have replies, >> "Order my demons to pursue them. We must destroyed us." >> Which I guess happens offcreen while the
[14:29] lady goes back to a castle where a floating skeleton tells her, the old monster that has settled in the canyon gorge. I told her it would be dangerous. I knew it. >> I told her we'd fight it together after
[14:42] the battle. She is knew it. Oh, I told her it would be so bad. It's so dangerous." I promise I didn't leave anything out of that summary. That's just what this whole OVA is like. Although, the skeleton did leave out the
[14:54] important detail that Princess Hero is fighting that monster naked. So, if you're not watching this on Patreon, you can't see her sister swoop in to save some bodyguards for Hero.
[15:08] >> We're going to be somebody. Prana hired us. All three of us, you, Sato, and me. That makes three. and send her off to do some adventuring with them and her dad's magic soulreaping scythe as a way to keep them both safe from the hero
[15:22] who's coming in armed with some deadly oneliners. Now, let's see if these bony demons have any guts left >> and an even deadlier sword, which is so powerful it turns this into a flash cartoon.
[15:36] >> I'm all right, but those demons aren't. Let's go. Of course, upon realizing that her walk cycle's turned into a low res PNG bouncing up and down, Hero is alerted to the danger. But before she can get back to the castle, they're
[15:50] attacked by a summoned skull which can teleport and has a healing factor because I guess this is the no rules anime version of Yu-Gi-Oh. And even though lab coat, Shinji, and Walmart guts stay back TO MAKE IT
[16:03] DISTRACTED. [screaming] >> COME ON, DIE, YOU DEMON SCUMBAG. >> It still stalls them just long enough that after the martial arts guy who's
[16:16] also named Sato flies through the CGI woods to the castle that real life Sato's team still can't animate nearly as good as FromSoft did 2 years ago. They arrive to see the hero stabbing Hero's dad.
[16:37] that's not a post edit. That's the real anime they made. That's the second best anime they made. And in one last cruel twist of fate, Hero has to use the soul scythe thing on her own dad and her sister so they can take the legendary
[16:52] sword to the afterlife together because it's basically like a magic nuke and they can't trust the humans to use it responsibly. And and that's why he let himself get all stabbed and stuff. And they resolve this heavy emotional
[17:05] conundrum with literally the Dragon Quest meme. >> I can't. I can't. I won't. >> Princess, [music] you must. But way more drawn out. It is her last wish. Imagine how painful this must be for her. You
[17:20] have to grant this wish. You're the only one who can do it. And she trusts you. I one who can do it. And she trusts you. I know you can do this, HERO.
[17:36] this powerful Shakespeareian drama that he whiffs his chance to finish the job. he whiffs his chance to finish the job. >> Chiffon. Oh, right.
[17:50] >> Freeze, you scumbag. We showed that demon who's boss. HEY, [screaming] HIM, >> RIGHT? So now world peace is over and there's a big war that's going to be on. And
[18:05] meanwhile in Tokyo, Japan, this lady's minding her own business when some old in a temple somewhere gives himself an aneurysm to isekai her and also bleach her hair for this obviously evil guy. And that's it. That's how the episode
[18:21] ends. Of course, in part two, we do find out what his whole deal is. And it's one of those things where nothing I could possibly say would be funnier than just >> Perhaps it's time I fought against those enemies who deny my greatness.
[18:35] >> Do you mean the demons or the human race, my lord? >> Don't you see? I refer to anyone who has ever been mean to me. [laughter]
[18:53] >> of course, >> and install isekai girl, who apparently fell in love with him offscreen as his puppet empress. But we got to get through the aplot before he explains why he's doing that, which is both way more
[19:06] complicated than the last episode and way simpler to summarize. [music] Everyone's fighting everyone now, so hero needs some allies. And conveniently, she's already getting offers from some of the humans, but she
[19:19] super duper racist. Partly on account of, you know, a human murdered her entire family in front of her like 5 minutes ago, but mainly due to the answer to another lingering question from episode 1.
[19:33] WHAT'S THAT ALL ABOUT? >> Heroes a half demon see, which made other demons be all mean to her. So one day she decided to go out and play spin around and laugh with some creepy ass human children. [laughter]
[19:48] But then one of the kids tripped. So >> that child is a demon. >> I hate demons. >> Kill the demon. Kill her. >> NO.
[20:01] >> NO. [screaming] racism. And while she's trying to get over the racism so her country isn't all wiped out and stuff, one of her bodyguards decides to go off on his own
[20:14] to do some unofficial diplomacy with the sweaty elf lady from the prologue. >> But just I I had heard in the forest how you want to protect the forest, you know, from from bad things and and from bad people. So I thought, well, that's
[20:27] what Hero wants. So uh hey, great. >> Great. What? Then they're interrupted by the samurai guy from the prologue who offers to make the alliance a three-way, but she hates that guy, so she'll only join if lab coat McGuns can come up with
[20:42] something more to offer her. Whilst he's pondering what that could possibly be, the humans start marching to exterminate the demons who've set up a clever ambush in response. Is it time? Shh. But then they all get double ambushed by the
[20:57] obviously evil guy who finally reveals his true identity. >> At last, we meet my dearest little sister. >> Just who are you? Tell me. >> Like most racists, not very bright.
[21:11] Anyway, uh he was banished by their dad for being obviously evil. But now dad's dead, so he's like, "Join me, sister." And she's like, "No, you're obviously evil." And he's like, "Okay, eat a Kira arm. But then he gets stopped by
[21:25] this random old guy and blasts off. And to distract from how badly he just got owned, he makes fun of her deformity. >> Remember your hand? It's a sign the world hates you. >> So the humans are all like,
[21:40] >> "Weird. Let's go finish them off now." >> But then the nerd comes riding in with >> But then the nerd comes riding in with the cavalry to chase him off. [screaming] A >> damn. RETREAT. RETREAT.
[21:54] >> Cavalry he acquired by figuring out what the elf queen really wanted. 24/7 access to that sweet, sweet nerd dick. >> I find that all sorts of things can be
[22:06] really beautiful to me. Even strange little men without proof. >> Uh so he's got to go back with her now and and do a lot of stuff. But before he does, Hero has a chance to say goodbye. Thank you. And also, by the way, I've
[22:20] stopped being racist. You cured me. And that's it. That's how the entire OVA ends. You spend $30 to $40 on a VHS. And the moral of the story is you buy two video games now, which spoilers is the moral of most of these stories. They're
[22:37] all just piles of halffinish dog that can only really be understood by playing the even bigger pile of horsehit they were made to advertise. And I cannot emphasize enough that this one with its sloppy 2D and 3D animation that
[22:51] go together like peanut butter and engine coolant. It's agonizingly yappy yet egregiously underexplained story and music that ranges from flatly forgettable to Resident Evil director's cutcore. I will order their annihilation
[23:05] cutcore. I will order their annihilation now. >> Is the best one. The very next if Neverland OVA 2001's Generation of Chaos
[23:20] somehow manages to tell an even more confusing story with even worse animation and even uglier CGI, if you can believe it. And it feels even less
[23:32] conclusive despite being the backstory of Chiffon, the hero who killed the demon king in the last OVA. I mean, you'd think that Closure would come free with that premise. Just, you know, show what made him want to murder that guy so
[23:46] bad. Then people can go watch the anime where he murders that guy. You know, screenwriting 101. Unfortunately, the screenwriter for all of Yoshiu Sato's anime never took that class. And that screenwriter's name is also Yoshi
[24:01] Terusato, who apparently thought that what we really needed to know is how their Teimu Pokémon game Monster Complete World, whose player insert protagonist has the same generic ass design as Chiffon, ties into this grand
[24:17] dark fantasy war story. I don't know if I'm like fully getting across how dumb that is. Imagine if Nintendo made an anime that like explicitly paints out
[24:29] that the official sequel to Pokemon Red and Blue was Fire Emblem. So instead of, I don't know, demons murdering his whole family or something, this anime is about how the hero used to be a Pokemon master, but then he turned 14, which is
[24:44] Pokemon stopped listening to him, except for this one big bug guy that he decides to ride back to the forest that it was born in. And that's how he's finally going to become a man by saying bye-bye 20 ton Caterpie. But when he gets there,
[24:57] So he pauses to rest in a town next to the forest where he goes shopping for a bit and sees that scruffy commander guy from the end of Spectral Force fall off a tower. So he runs up to help him. But the healer chick and other guy from his
[25:10] party in Spectral Force also run up to accuse him of murdering the commander and also do this deeply unfunny Monzai comedy bit that the OVA just keeps trying to make happen. And every single time it's even worse. But then the
[25:24] he was only up there to watch out for all the 20 ton Caterpies that have been rampaging in the city lately. And hey, guess what? She's 20 ton Caterpie just starts rampaging. So the commander guy's about to kill it. But Chiffon's like,
[25:37] wall to get back home." So the commander guy kills the wall instead and it goes back home. And then some unspecified amount of time later, they're all like, "Hey, remember when that happened? Good times." Anyway, let's go start a
[25:50] genocidal war with demons now. The end. I'd say it's the most pointless and worst written prequel of all time, but I still haven't shown you the second part of this OVA, which is the actual prologue to Generation of Chaos that was
[26:04] advertised on the box of the DVD you paid like 30 to 40 bucks for. And also, the whole OP of the OVA is just for that part of it. And it's 8 minutes long. In it, there's this halfdemon girl named Rosé whose little sister Amelia is sick
[26:18] with some unspecified little girl who's going to die disease. And even though home, she's got to go to work at the or something. I don't know. It's not really clear why. But anyway, she goes
[26:31] and does that and we spend, I you not, an entire minute just watching her not, an entire minute just watching her do this.
[26:48] where some human soldiers are like, "Kill the demon." So, she runs away from those guys into some demons who are also really racist. And she and her sister get burned at the crucifix. But then, actually, it turns out that was all just
[27:02] also, coincidentally, while she was asleep, some humans came by and burned her house down with her sister inside it. And then this lady knight rolls up to say, "Hey man, being a half demon, man, shit's rough." So then Ros buries
[27:16] protagonist clothes and goes on a dramatic walk through the desert. The end, having borne witness to these impeccable writing skills. I know we're all thinking the same thing right now. I
[27:31] want to see this guy pen a dry, serious political story next. And that's exactly what we got in Generation of Chaos 3, alongside yet more animation errors and
[27:43] obvious recycling, terrible CGI, poorly chosen music, and even more slideshows than ever before, both in the exposition dumps and a few action scenes where they
[27:57] very clearly just ran out of time and/or money for the in between frames.
[28:13] where a cult or something does some kind of ritual that never comes up again and evil dead force and hits it with a sword. This is easily the most coherent of Sato's OVAs. But it's also easily the boringest one. just a whole lot of
[28:28] people standing around talking about some battles that happened offcreen earlier and some other battles that might happen offscreen later with one six-minute fight scene in the second episode to break up the monotony in
[28:41] theory. I never watch anime at two times speed, but I had to to get through this one and it still felt too slow. Sato just loves letting the camera linger on
[28:53] the most dog CGI you've seen in your life for like five times as long as he'd need to if it was good. And also just like reusing shots over and over
[29:05] just like reusing shots over and over again.
[29:17] between like every other line as if it's a game trying to load the next audio clip with a scratched disc. As for how that dialogue's written, about 70% of it
[29:29] is just saying, "War is bad, but we got to do it, man." Over and over and over again. And they try to do a little bit of the, you know, people on both sides aren't so different after all type stuff. But that mostly boils down to
[29:43] just both the commanders got girlfriends and then after the big sword fight in the climax, the girlfriend of the one who lit himself on fire and jumped out a window for no reason stabs the other one just when he thought it was over. Also,
[29:57] that guy's childhood friend is the key to unsealing some sort of prophecy magic nuke type thing that they were going to use as leverage, but now that he's dead, his friend's going to unseal it cuz, you know, he feels bad or whatever. And then
[30:10] we've never seen before talks to that guy on the beach who's dying now cuz I guess the Evil Dead got him and then it's over. Besides those bookend bits
[30:22] played the game. The whole thing kind of feels like Satosan was watching Legend of the Galactic Heroes on a bender. Said, "I [snorts] could make that." And then banged out the whole script in the time it took to down two more strong
[30:37] zeros. which to be fair is twice the time I spent on this part of the script, but that's cuz I want to get to the OVAs you guys are actually here for. Yes, it's finally time to roast the public consensus worst anime of all time. At
[30:54] consensus worst anime of all time. At number two, Mars of Destruction and at number two, Mars of Destruction and at number one, Tenku Donsai Skelter Heaven. Except one of those roasts is going to be a whole lot shorter than I thought it
[31:07] would be going into this because I just found out that Mars of Destruction wasn't actually directed by Yoshi Sato. In fact, it's not a real anime at all, just another cutscene compilation like Spectral Force Chronicle, only without
[31:21] the interstitial text dumps to fill in the gaping holes in the story. MAL and ANN's credits do at least suggest that Sato was responsible for awkwardly slapping these cutscenes together. But according to Moby Games, they were
[31:34] originally directed by some guy from the idea movie department named Atsuhiko Kobata, which makes a lot of sense actually cuz they don't look nearly as dog as any of the other stuff in this video. And once you're aware that
[31:48] there's supposed to be a bunch of shitty visual novel dialogue and combat rhythm miniames set to the Barber of Seville overture stuck in between them. I mean, they're still not great cutscenes, except of course for the one where Doc
[32:01] Brown comes in out of nowhere to explain what the we just watched. Every anime should have one of those. Also, this bit's hilarious.
[32:20] cutscenes could potentially make sense with that missing connective tissue. Like it's definitely a 2 out of 10 anime, but it could easily be maybe like a four or five out of 10 game. Who knows? The fact that they don't is
[32:35] Sato's fault, though. And maybe you're thinking, well, obviously he learned from his mistakes here and fixed that with the text dumps in Spectral Force Chronicle. Except Mars of Destruction's DVD came out one month after that one.
[32:50] So, he already had the idea for how to fix that problem and just didn't use it here for some reason. Perhaps he already totally burned through Idea Facto's
[33:02] annual PowerPoint budget. Or maybe he was really pressed for time. Or maybe he just didn't give a Who can say? And if it is the latter case, I mean, who could really blame him? Not only is the story not very good, it's not even
[33:15] original. Like, it's pretty much just a Vangelion if instead of a big robot made of aliens. Shinji didn't want to get in a common rider suit made of aliens. With a common rider suit made of aliens. With even the exact same plot twist about the
[33:28] even the exact same plot twist about the origins of the so-called aliens and even origins of the so-called aliens and even less subtle symbolism.
[33:44] Yoshi Terusato would have some standing to look down on if the last thing that he worked on wasn't an even worse aangelion ripoff that also borrows a whole lot from Gunbuster. Now, credit
[33:57] where it's due, Tenku Donsai Skelter Heaven, the game does at least mix its stolen content up a bit. Instead of directly controlling a wish Shinji, this time you play as a Teimu Gunbuster coach charged with overseeing a whole Harums
[34:13] worth of genetically engineered rays who must be seduced into getting in their robots via a shitty dating sim before you can fight the aliens in a shitty rhythm miniame. Also, the plug suits got that high cut gunbuster leotard thing
[34:27] going on, plus full boob windows. And the robots are these bubblegum crisis type exomacs minus all the protective bits that might prevent a guy from augling their pilots or stop this from happening.
[34:46] make it to the hospital if Shinji can finish while they're still in the mechs? Also, I think it goes without saying at this point that the space monsters got tentacles on their tentacles. Full disclosure, some parts of that game
[34:59] summary may be completely wrong. That's just what I was able to piece together from the bits of the anime that I could comprehend, plus this one untransated long play that's up on YouTube, which actually has some animated scenes in
[35:13] common with the OVA. But it's only a couple of them. So, I don't think it's another compilation unless the uploader chose the wrong route and only one of them had animated cutscenes, which I definitely wouldn't put past these idea.
[35:29] But regardless, the game does credit Sato as its animation director. So, at the very least, we know it's his fault that it looks like this, which to be fair is better than most of his just by virtue of how much he copies
[35:44] Makoto Shinaai instead of using ugly CGI. But to be balanced, the CGI he does CGI. But to be balanced, the CGI he does use is some of the ugliest idea factory use is some of the ugliest idea factory ever made.
[36:04] anime department went out of business after this and the cutscenes Sato compiled in his last two OVAs were instead outsourced to WoW World, which explains why they look so much better. The anime version of Skelter Heaven also
[36:19] credits him for writing, directing, and storyboarding it. And I do think it bears his creative fingerprints in certain directing choices, like opening certain directing choices, like opening on a minute-long establishing shot of a
[36:31] PNG of Earth whose only narrative purpose is to say, "Yep, we sure are on Earth." Not to mention whatever the heck this transition's supposed to be.
[36:59] five times now, and I still have no idea if that was a flashback or what, let alone what it's trying to tell me about the story and characters. And that's not a one-off problem. The big climactic fight scene is comprised of literally
[37:14] three plot beats. They scan the alien to find a weak point. Then it counterattacks. Then everyone races to see who can sacrifice themselves to hit that weak point first. But the individual shots of the fight are cut
[37:27] together so quickly and awkwardly you can barely even tell what's happening or why half the time. All to make room for even more redundant dialogue that even more redundant dialogue that accomplishes literally nothing.
[37:55] [screaming] >> 10 seconds later. three back-to back flashbacks right into the middle of the fight, explaining that
[38:12] super soldiers. And also, they don't know how long they have to live because they're prototypes. and Protag has come to feel that taking care of them is more than a job because they had a lot of fun on a sports day or something,
[38:27] which would have completely killed the fight's momentum, if it had any. There's also this whole thing right before they fly off where the blonde girl gets all huffy. Protag picked the main girl to deliver the killing blow instead of her,
[38:39] different kind of blow from the main girl later. And he's like, "No, it's cuz you're too much of a loose cannon." and she's like, "Oh yeah, I'll prove him wrong by being a loose cannon." And then she follows all of her orders except the
[38:54] one that none of the girls follow. And in the end, she's the only one that we get visual confirmation that she survived. And the whole main plot, as much as there even is one, hinges on the idea that that main girl is in love with
[39:07] the main guy, even though literally their only interaction outside of that argument is her coming to him with concerns about her mortality and him basically saying, "Shut up and follow orders." They don't even properly
[39:22] establish whether the big squid thing's an actual threat or if he just came to Earth to float around and chill for a bit before getting on with his squid business. He does hit two helicopters that were about to shoot him with a
[39:35] laser beam. And there is this weird moment where the main girl mind melds with him for a sec and has a one-sided argument that kind of implies he thinks humans are too violent to exist. But they were kind of gearing up to kill him
[39:48] without so much as saying hello. So that's a pretty reasonable opinion to have actually. And even after they shoot him, he only causes any collateral damage to the city when he dies.
[40:13] Walmart Gendo deleting Protag from his phone. and one year later, oh no, more squids. It's just a fundamental failure of storytelling on every conceivable
[40:26] level. And while I do personally still think that Ji8ate and XARM being almost think that Ji8ate and XARM being almost that bad for 12 times as long makes them both a whole lot harder to watch. It still has a strong claim on that worst
[40:41] still has a strong claim on that worst of all time crown as do frankly most of of all time crown as do frankly most of Sato's anime. But on that note, it is a little strange don't you think? I mean, Idea Factory spent all these years and
[40:53] not an inconsiderable amount of money trying to advertise their video games with tie-in anime. Yet, all of them have the same fundamental problem that their commercials you have to buy before you can watch them. You would think at some
[41:10] point they would have tried the most obvious approach of putting one of their anime on television, and you'd be right. In fact, not only did Sato co-direct a proper TV anime way back in 2001 as his
[41:25] proper TV anime way back in 2001 as his second ever anime project, and not only was that anime run dim, the lynch pin of a whole new multimedia franchise, tying together a dog PS2 auto battler thing, a solid, if over complicated,
[41:41] Dreamcast strategy RPG, and a surprisingly good Wonders Swan shoot surprisingly good Wonders Swan shoot them up. was also the first ever them up. was also the first ever fulllength fully 3D anime ever made for
[41:55] fulllength fully 3D anime ever made for television ever. No, really. There were a couple short anime before it like Gregory Horror Show, a few longer shows with CG elements like Initial D, and exactly two movies plus Spirits Within
[42:10] came out literally the week after it finished. But this was the first time a Japanese studio ever tried to do the whole reboot thing. Well, technically they outsourced it to a Korean game developer, Digital Dream Studio, who
[42:25] also made the Wonders Swan game, which explains why it's good and also explains why the show looks so much better than any other 3D animation with Idea Facto's
[42:37] name on it. Even if that's not a huge compliment.
[42:50] an anime this groundbreaking on its visuals? Yeah, absolutely. Reboot was 7 years ago. This came out the same year as that show ended and Jimmy Neutron started. It's got some nice cloth and liquid physics, but even by the
[43:06] standards of the day, the sets are sparse and ugly. The characters inexpressive and unappealing, and the mocap animation is janky as But hey, looks aren't everything. And I mean, surely building an entirely new
[43:20] universe from scratch with the anime as the flagship product instead of having to copy what the games were doing must have given Idea Facto's writers a chance to really flex their creative muscles and tell a bold original story the likes
[43:36] of which the anime industry had never. It's Aangelion. They made Aangelion again. Or rather, they made Aangelion for the first time. And this time in pursuit of maximum mecca marketability, they decided to mash it up with Gundam.
[43:52] So you've got ace mech pilots with special psychic powers fighting on two different sides of a morally gray space war, which is happening in space because Tokyo and the rest of the world got all flooded and stuff by global warming
[44:05] instead of the second impact. But still same basic aesthetic. And also one side of that war is a shadowy corpo governmental organization that's intentionally recruiting child soldiers because they have the best psychic mech
[44:19] pilot powers with an all caps name that's a subtle illusion to Christian theology. And by subtle I mean they called it Jesus which kind of sums up my feelings on the whole show. Jeez, that sure was ass. I did watch the entire
[44:35] thing in hopes of finding some exceptionally roastable clips, and my hopes did seem justified after seeing episode 1's attempts at etchy comedy, episode 1's attempts at etchy comedy, [screaming]
[44:53] panty shots from the deleted scenes. But it turns out those scenes were deleted because someone looked at them and also presumably that slide down the stairs and said, "Man, all that really sucks. Let's stop doing stuff like that." And
[45:08] surprisingly, aside from this one really out ofplace episode where the guys take a day off to pal around the city hitting on random women, they did stop. Sato's on random women, they did stop. Sato's co-director Ta Kato isn't exactly the
[45:21] guy I'd expect to push his boss to improve. He did direct the Kingdom of Chaos OVAs, which are widely regarded as the least terrible idea factory anime, the least terrible idea factory anime, but he also directed this thing,
[45:46] >> which visually at least is the worst anime this factory ever pumped out by a wide margin. You can barely even call it anime really. It's more of a motion manga. And I'm pretty confident I could have modeled better 3D sets than this,
[46:01] which is in no way a brag. I can't really speak to the script side of things, though, since nobody's ever bothered to fan translate this piece of So maybe that's enough to save it from being worse than Skelter Heaven. I
[46:14] kind of doubt it based on the jokes I did understand, but it's possible. Actually, judging from the first joke where a disembodied old man head gets a spray paint tool nosebleleed from his own naked granddaughter, I'd be willing
[46:27] to bet pretty big yen that Kato was the one responsible for Run Dim's failed panty gags. But that's the great thing about artistic collaboration. Even the about artistic collaboration. Even the least talented directors imaginable, and
[46:41] if these aren't them, we're getting pretty close, are able to rein in each other's worst impulses and amplify each other's strengths when they work together, especially on longer projects like this that give them a chance to
[46:54] iterate and see where the mistakes are. And even though neither of them has any strengths to amplify, the net result of that here is only the fifth worstrated Mecca anime of all time. Ninth if you count Super Maza Z and various other
[47:10] Korean bootlegs, which is pretty damn good for Idea Factory, but perhaps not that great for funny video making purposes. Like, yeah, there's still animation and continuity errors all over the place. The models can't emote for
[47:26] Neither director can make an action scene to save his life. The love about four episodes before it's over makes the finale of Al Noah Zero look like Shakespeare. Most of the emotional scenes feel like they were
[47:40] written by aliens with borderline personality disorder. The reason the two sides are even having a morally gray space war in the first place doesn't make any sense. And it takes the show three attempts to cook up a prologue
[47:52] that actually explains it properly at all. So until like episode 9, me and my buddy, who very kindly sat through this with me, had no idea that it was about
[48:04] two different companies fighting over contracts to inject nuclear waste into space, which are somehow worth enough money to make them both more powerful than most governments. Though, it also probably doesn't help on that front that
[48:17] the fan subs are utter dog that call the giant robots RVs for more than half the series runtime until someone finally double checked and realized they're supposed to be RBs. Also, this probably goes without saying, but Sato
[48:32] and Kato's attempts at the obligatory Mecca philosophizing are beyond laughable. After switching sides in the space war, Protagon has this whole revelation where he's like, "I thought you guys were all demons, but it was all
[48:47] in my head. Maybe all men have demons in them." And then they actually made a 3D them." And then they actually made a 3D model of Baffomet to just jump scare him model of Baffomet to just jump scare him in mirrors.
[49:09] >> There's a couple more moments that are pretty funny like that in isolation, like various characters saying Jesus has abandoned us. And this whole assassination scene where they ran out of time and money to animate the crowd
[49:22] around the guy getting shot. [applause and music]
[49:37] >> For the most part though, it's just excruciatingly boring. The blandest, most boilerplate real robot story you can think of, told by guys who can barely direct a 30-se secondond cutscene. Almost nothing in it is worth
[49:51] watching, even ironically, and even less is worth talking about. But I do still think it makes the best possible note to end this story on. In part because that numbing mediocrity represents the clear high point of Sato's entire filmography,
[50:07] high point of Sato's entire filmography, but mostly because its existence explains the rest of it. The reason that Sato's OVAs just kept getting uglier and worse with each installment is because he and his not an anime studio took a
[50:23] massive multi-million dollar bet on a franchise whose hopes and dreams were mainly pinned on the Dreamcast and Wonders Swan and even more damningly on
[50:35] him and his buddy's ability to take charge of a bleeding edge firstofits-kind work of art. Honestly, after a failure like that, you kind of just got to respect the guts it takes to pick yourself back up and scrape
[50:50] together a shitty Pokemon knockoff plus 8 minutes of video game prologue from whatever you could find in your couch cushions. I wish he hadn't, but I deeply respect that he did. And that kind of sums up my feelings on Yoshiu Sato and
[51:06] sums up my feelings on Yoshiu Sato and Idea Facto's entire history. Making anime and video games, even legendarily bad ones, is unfathomably difficult. Most people simply aren't cut out for it. and to keep going in the face of
[51:23] overwhelming evidence that you are definitely one of those people more so definitely one of those people more so than maybe anyone else who's ever tried. That takes something special. That is the idea difference. I'm Jeff Thu,
[51:39] professional garbage appreciator and Sato Sensei. Sato Sensei. I salute you.