Mars of Destruction - The World's Worst Anime (Literally)

You know how with most anime, you can generally find them somewhere on the Internet? Unless it is super old or obscure, you can probably find somewhere on the Internet that has it available for viewing, legally or otherwise.

So imagine my utter befuddlement when I attempted to find myself this show. In a viewable quality, mind you. Just finding it anywhere was a difficult task to begin with.

The show only came out in mid-2005. So why does it seem like I can't find this show anywhere? It's only a 20-minute OVA, how bad could it possibly get in that short amount of time?

Remember that I've been saying for awhile that I wanted to do something like this. Something just so utterly horrible that I had a difficult time finding it even on the Internet. I mean you can find anything there these days. By my reckoning, I'm at almost 200 posts about the animoos (this marks #192, woo!), and after seeing my blog having hit over 12k views (that's a lotta views by the way), I figure it's time to get this sucker out in the open, for all the world to behold.

My friends, I give you... Mars of Destruction. Let's. Do. This.

Our story begins, somewhat predictably... in space.

As you can see, it is a very starry place.

There's some peaceful arias going on in the background as we zoom in on what looks like the sun. Oh, and suddenly it's the futuristic year of 2010.

... wait, 2010? Wasn't that... four years ago? Five years after this came out? Oh hell...

In the year 2010, space travel is so common that astronauts returning to Earth just wanna hurry up, go home, and have themselves a beer.

Super exciting stuff let me tell ya.

But the copilot, whose face we have yet to see and will probably never see because we're too busy watching this totally riveting sequence of re-entry in real-time, is all "dude, let's deliver our cargo and THEN get wasted". Yes. That sounds like a fine idea. I mean, you guys only went all the way to Mars on some super important space exploration trip. I'm sure that beer is TOTALLY supposed to be your first priority and not, I dunno, sharing the incredibly exciting discoveries you may have made on the red planet?

Then we get to see a thing in a glass box, and even more super exciting re-entry stuff. This is exciting.

You guys have BEEN in re-entry for well over a minute now!

Then uh... oh god.

Then there's some green flashy thing as they perform 'final checks', a thing that they SHOULD have done before attempting re-entry, and then, I dunno, they start freaking out over something? And there's some alarms? I have no idea what's actually happening of course because the only thing you get to see IS THAT STUPID SHIP THIS ENTIRE TIME. It's not even clearly defined, it's just a freaking glowing blob.

As one might expect, the ship blows up.

... boy that is a convincing looking explosion.

Somehow the alarms continue a few seconds after the explosion of the ship, at which point I guess it just fizzles out for no reason? Oh god. What have I brought upon myself.

Two minutes in and we're already doing a timeskip. F**k.

Strange events in Tokyo. Oh no. We get a lovely shot of a train station devoid of life whatsoever, telling us trains with no people will soon be arriving, and some lovely footage of the lovely Japanese countryside.

Oh and I guess aliens or something suddenly.

No idea how this guy even got here.. or what he's doing in
a totally empty park.. but okay let's go with it.

Oh, but hold on! I guess suddenly there are also people who know there is an alien in a completely empty park.

What convenient timing. They're probably going to kill
this thing in one hit and be totally awesome.

But between cuts, the enemy seems to multiply, and now we're dealing with TWO of these dumb looking aliens. Seriously, why didn't you just establish there were two of them from the start? And why is everyone just standing there, staring at one another?

Don't move, Sniper Joe, their eyes are attracted to movement.
They can't see you when you're standing still...

The girl in the middle is kind enough to tell us that they've spotted two "ancients". Well, glad that got cleared up. Wait they're multiplying again. DAMN IT.

So your brilliant strategy for killing these things is to let more
of them just casually walk up to stand in a line so you can
shoot them more easily? What is this show??

A third one shows up, they raise their arms, and shoot lasers out of their mouths.

... I did not see that one coming.

Is this where the 'imma chargin mah lazor' meme came from?

And instead of returning fire, like smart girls, they just let one of their heads get casually blown off.

Very casually blown off. She just keeps standing there.

Oh my god. And the audio for this? Oh it's f***ing precious. She cries out like someone dropped an ice cube down her pants or something. Just surprised and suddenly dead. Whoops. Don't worry you can fix it in post? Oh wait no, no you can't. There is no fixing a casual yelp of surprise in post.

I have to show you just how awesome the animation quality is in this show. It's seriously breathtaking.

As in you will be laughing so hard you cannot breathe.

So not only do they spend ten years running at one another, I guess the Ancients forget that they can shoot freaking lasers out of their mouths and the girls literally cannot hit a stationary target for shit. Even when they are like, five feet away.

Oh no, poor nameless girl I care nothing about.

Of course once knocked on the ground, everybody stops fighting to turn to look at the girl lying on the ground. Including her comrade. Who could clearly shoot someone in the back or something? But decides not to because she's a bitch and that chick totally ate the last crepe or some shit back at the base I dunno.

Oh no my pal has been knocked on the ground, better
watch and do nothing while she dies.

They give her all the time in the world to do something, but then there's a glowing light and some other asshole shows up.

Oh hey it's Anubis from ZoE.

They want you to get a gooood close up look of this guy, so they make sure to add so much blur to everything that you just can't see shit thanks to the washed out colors.

Kamen Rider... something.

Once again, the Ancients just kind of stand there pointlessly, and the guy pulls a sword out of nowhere, and after about thirty seconds the Ancients decide they maybe oughta do something, and begin charging their mouth lasers.

Also, the girl on the ground called out for Takeru, whoever the hell that is.

Then the Hero jumps over the lasers and stabs an Ancient through the friggin' throat and just kind of struggles with it totally forgetting there's some other dude with a mouth laser or something. Also, the audio is incredibly hard to hear. It might be because of the quality of the footage I'm seeing, but my money is on it just being horribly mixed to begin with. Since it doesn't sound like anything to be impressed by.

Anyway. Other Ancient comes up and starts frying his back with its mouth laser fire jet thing, but Takeru (who has been called out for a second time so we're guessing that's his/her name), is taking it like some kind of boss we should care about, despite their back plating being crushed and set on fire.

By the way, why is it that these lasers turn into fire now, but before they just completely disintegrated that girl's head and didn't cauterize the wound?

Oh but somehow Takeru has managed to pull the sword out of the guy he was stabbing before, and run it through the guy behind him as well. I'm sure a gaping wound to the torso will be far more effective than stabbing 'em through the throat. And then everyone falls and the girl screams for him and now he's all on a table and injured. Also, dumbass doctor is a dumbass.

No shit her head literally got removed. I'm amazed there's
that much of her neck left. Also, why cover her body with
the cloth, but not the MORBID LACK OF A HEAD?

I am already convinced that this dude is the worst f***ing doctor IN THE WORLD. THE WORST. LITERAL WORST. I MEAN GOOD GOD. The rest of her body isn't even in that bad of shape, she got SHOT IN THE HEAD. It literally reduced her to a living blood fountain. I am fairly sure that if you should be covering anything, IT IS THE GODDAMNED HEAD. OR RATHER THE LACK OF IT. AND NOT ANNOUNCING THAT THIS ONE IS DEAD BECAUSE IT WAS PRETTY OBVIOUS WHEN SHE LOST HER GODDAMNED HEAD.

Oh and that guy in the table doesn't look so good.

Thrilling medical drama for people we know nothing about!

And for some reason, they keep deciding to show us upside down stuff for no reason at all when it involves that one girl.

Seriously what purpose does this even serve?

Oh and I guess that guy dies since all his lines go flat. And we get a flashback where he is told that he needs to wear the MARS. And immediately goes all rebellious and "no I don't wanna!" and some disembodied father-figure is all "you must, you have the capability, more than any other." Oh okay, so he's the Shinji stand-in. Except that we have no idea what this MARS is, why we should care about this guy whose name we barely know, or anything about these things which are coming up to attack people.

And I just bet you're gonna tell us too.

Turns out he is, in fact, yelling as his dad as he tells his father that all he wants to do is show off his MARS.

Okay. So let me get this straight. You're telling us that some dudes went to the planet Mars, and then got blown up on the way back, and now there is a battle suit of some sort that does things to people that is also named MARS.

... you really thought this through didn't you? I mean clearly.

Sorry, were we supposed to?

I have to say, this is the best way to provide exposition - by focusing on a generic character's face all the time while he yells. But then the screen goes black as we hear some kind of hitting occur, and then he goes "What are you doing? Stop! Stop! STOP!"

So either his dad is abusive and doesn't give two shits or anything, or he just dicked his son. Literally.

... I'm really not sure which is worse. Best of all, they don't even attempt to tell you what happened because they don't have the budget for it and it's better to let your brain fill in the unimportant stuff.

Yes, this is an unimportant detail since they don't bother showing us any of what's supposed to be happening.

But now he is magically back to life, and once more we get to see faces of people without names.

Yay this is a good thing. I think. It's good right?

Oh and those other two girls? Still upside down, for reasons I just cannot comprehend.

Okay girl, do you like this guy or hate him? Seriously.

And now, it is a city of the future. Probably. I'm guessing because most of the scene is a giant incomprehensible mess that looks like someone vomited on MS Paint.

I'm talking about the background.

Somewhere, there is plot happening.

Oh so we're back to that thing? Okay.

Blondie there is nice enough to tell us that they, the AAST, have been tasked with taking an airplane to transfer the ship pieces. Because reminding the people who work for you what your group's name is happens to be a great leadership tactic.

Whoa, slow down the exposition train a moment!

I guess some serious shit has been going down offscreen and they have decided there is some kind of connection between the Mars ship exploding and these Ancient guys. Oh and are the MARS suit repairs complete? Yes? Oh good, because we definitely don't want to confuse anyone any more, or risk any more lives. I guess this suit is important or something because if it doesn't kill the person wearing it, it makes it so the person doesn't die fighting these things.

... yeah.

Oh no, the pilot is useless. What drama.

Immediately cut to Takeru sitting on the rooftop silently contemplating shooting whoever landed him this role in the face. Also that one girl is there too and she totally doesn't have a thing for him at all.

God you are laying this romance thing on pretty thick.

Blondie is all "we need him, it was his destiny to wear it since he was born into this family."

Wait. I'm sorry, what? You're telling me this is some kind of ancient bullshit tradition handed down through generations?!

Oh. My. God.

At which point they interrupt your regularly scheduled program to tell you what that acronym from earlier meant.

Holy shit aren't you going to finish the last scene first?

Also, this is the worst acronym I have ever seen. Anti-unidentified? Okay, that alone is just precious, but then they go on to state that they target Ancients. Which means THEY HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED! Why do you use the term 'unidentified'? Do you think it makes it sound any cooler? Because it doesn't!

We interrupt your interruption to bring you: girl showing
off cool energy weapons that will never show up again.

And while we're at it... here. Let me show you how impressive these combat animations are.

With moves like those I don't think you'll be protecting
yourself, much less the citizens.

Aparrently, this AAST is made up of teenaged girls from various police organizations.

An expert. Riiiight. I believe that one.

Oh and there's that guy who was literally just your "average high-school student".

Except that it probably has something to do with his family.
You know, like you tried to establish like, a minute ago.

So the whole point of telling us all of this information is to point out that "this is a lot of security for fragments of a spaceship."

OH YES LETS JUST IGNORE THE WHOLE PROBABLY CONNECTED TO THE ANCIENT ALIEN INVADER THINGS. F**K. THIS SHOW IS BLOWING MY MIND WITH ITS DEPTH FOLKS.

So now there's an empty train line, and some police vehicles roll up to it even though the gates are closed.

Not only is this the worst convoy, it's the worst looking
convoy in the history of transporting things.

They really went all out to show us how amazing they are at the animation thing.

... that last sentence was a bold-faced lie.

Oh and there's a bunch of those Ancients just standing around watching the abandoned area in the hopes that a police convoy carrying those important space bits might come past. Lucky for them!

I guess they come in Sniper Joe and Evil Dragonlord varieties.

So they line up on the rooftops and the girls in the truck start talking about how nobody knows anything but there's probably something going on but nobody actually knows anything. Then they get yelled at for not paying attention to their jobs. Cue girl gasping a full five seconds before anything happens to the car in front of them! Which gets obliterated in a lovely white screen because the detail is just too awesome.

Quick, we better stop the entire convoy and ignore the fact
that there are six lanes on this road which are twice as wide
as they have any right to be! We are stopped in our tracks!

Then the Ancients come walking in from the flames and a dude is topless.

No, not shitting you, it goes from Dragonlord and Sniper Joes advancing to "dude has no shirt".

Is this important? I think it's important. It looks important.

Then they start trying to play some music in the background, but it just kind of lazily fades in and out. I think they wanted to play something triumphant to help give you the impression that some important shit was going down? Also, dude is almost naked and about to walk into this thing so I guess it is important.

And now: Bondage!

So he gets dragged into the thing and transforms into the hideous MARS Suit, and I guess it has a time limiter on it since they start a clock for this.

Oh no watch out he's gonna gitchuuu.

A cop gets pummeled to death and these so-called experts wind up showing us that they are, in fact, nothing of the sort. Mouth lasers happen and eliminate the rest of the faceless cops (oh noooo), and there's fire everywhere. And screaming and, wait, there are other PEOPLE in this city?! If they weren't screaming I'd have never known! Also they've never seen this Dragonlord Ancient before bu it's okay, that dude with the magic suit will deal with this and the badguys will just stand there and let it happen.

Seriously they just let the girls run around and start shooting them without even trying to defend themselves. Oh and I guess those other two start fighting to... to... oh my f**k. No.

They begin fighting... to Beethoven. Hell if I can remember which symphony, but trust me. You've heard it. Straight out of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Pretty sure at any rate. But it comes out of nowhere.. Just. Right out of left field. Bam.

Anyway, our hero gets slammed against a car and the evil guy laughs and walks away. Oh no! Whatever will he do. Guess he'll let that one girl face off against him and be totally ineffective. Oh my god. I can't get past the music. They don't just let it play, they constantly change which pieces are playing. Mid-sonata. They just cut it and move to a different movement. No transition, they just literally stop and immediately cut to another.

What is this Mars of Destruction?

Anyways a girl gets held upside down by the evil Dragonlord (the one with purple hair if you care), we learn her name is Tomoe before she gets thrown to the side to... uh, relative safety. I guess. What the hell you guys were totally tearing apart the cops but the moment something with boobs gets in your way you just decide they aren't worth your time? That didn't stop you from blowing that one girl's head off earlier!

Oh no. Poor Tomoe. However will I give a shit.

Now he grabs that OTHER girl whose name we still don't know and that chick with green hair is all "hey Takeru, we haven't finished our tests but we need to do something crazy or something I dunno it only seems logical."

Truly, this is riveting work.

And now? Now they've shifted to RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES. Except that they keep cutting in different bits of OTHER parts of Ride of the Valkyries. For... no reason. Who the hell did the audio mixing for this?! Anyway, Shizuka (I guess that's her name) hands him a giant sword, and gives him a warning before he uses it.

No pressure.

Oh and there's also a chance it might go out of control so he should make sure not to use it anywhere there are lots of people around.

... I think she forgot the part where they are in the middle of a deserted yet somehow still populated city? I'm pretty confused but hey.

JESUS DO YOU WANT HIM TO USE IT OR WHAT?!?!

She keeps flip-flopping so much on the "use it but don't use it but use it" and then that other girl runs up to help that other girl and she gets dropped and oh no.

This seriously could have been solved with you just,
I dunno. Murdering folks indiscriminately?

It's laughable how she tries to fight back by knocking on his arm. No, not even hitting it ineffectively, just knocking on it. KNOCKING.

But then that one dude shows up to be the hero and save the day and end this miserable pile of crap.

Turns out it's actually a gun of some sort.

So he points it at the badguy and it starts charging up and we get to see all the hilarious charging up stuff and he lets it rip, and the shot goes right through Dragonlord and the truck and now it is America and sunny and everything is great.

Wow really? That's the first thing you say?

It is revealed that the pieces of the ship are.... on their way? Wait, you mean they aren't suddenly delivered now? I thought THAT WAS THE POINT OF THIS WHOLE TRIP?!

Basically, you have all the answers, but you just want
to be a dick and demand the materials anyway.

He has discovered the secret of something or other. There used to be a civilization on Mars! Gasp. Who would have thought. Why is this important? Where are you going with this? Why, DNA results indicate that Homo Sapiens, or Human f***ing beings were the life form that existed on that planet.

Look at how surprised he is.

At this point, the subtitles stop making any sense. Here is a direct transcription:

"Humanity itself was born and influenced by the DNA from Mars."

"Humanity has roots in Japan? Impossible! Then what was that incident in Japan?" demands the totally American guy. "What are those monsters?"

I am fairly sure they meant to say "roots on Mars" since that would make a lot more sense. But since the ONLY mention of a place he ever makes is "Japan", I honestly have no f***ing clue what was meant to be said here. Cut to that scene back in Japan where they do the aftermath of all that battle stuff. Boy looks at Girl, and Dragonlord wakes up to take out his frustrations on the boy. Oh no, better get your guns girls!

Start up the Chopin, and listen to the Dragonlord tell the boy not to forget. Wait, they can talk? Turns out they can!

MIND BLOWING REVELATION!!!

PLOOOOOOOT TWIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISTO. THE MONSTERS ARE THE EARTHLINGS AND THE HUMANS ARE THE INVADERS. Also, something about a Martian virus. I'm pretty unclear what he meant by "the real earthlings that were released by the virus that wiped out the Martians." But hey, I'm not expecting ANY of this shit to make sense. Then they gun him down, and he explodes. No, seriously, just explodes.

I can't even make a Shyamalan joke this time.

And now... we get our not-quite-a-title slide.

You waited 18 minutes to see this!

Music fades out, and CREDITS OVER A GIANT SPIRAL GALAXY.

... oh my god. Like. What the actual legitimate f**k was that. Really, what was that? We are treated to lovely still images of peaceful civilian imagery. Cities, buildings, telephone poles. Y'know, stuff. While more classical music plays. What is the point of any of this? I don't know.

These credits. They are important. Because I say they are.

Idea factory. And that's pretty much it. That was Mars of Destruction.

I've had to do some digging, and find out exactly WHY this godawful piece of shit ever saw the light of day. Idea Factory doesn't even MAKE anime - they do games. Mostly Visual Novels or Otome games. Those are dating sims for girls, mind you.

So, someone at the office decided trying to boil down one of their games into a twenty minute film was a great idea.

... I can only hope someone got fired for this decision.

... man, I don't even know what to do with myself now that I've finished watching this. I think I'm just going to sit here, and stare at the wall, and ask myself:

If there truly was a God, he wouldn't allow this to have existed, right? Surely, no just and merciful omnipotent being would ever allow an atrocity of this level to have been born?

Therefore, one can only assume that there is no God.

F**k you Mars of Destruction. F**k you.