Garzey's Wing Review

Tomino has always written past his audience, trusting a viewer to catch up, and in Dunbine or the early Gundam work that pressure produces density. Here it produces nothing. Two novels of political and metaphysical setup are compressed into three episodes, and the compression removes every step that would let a newcomer follow. Factions are named once and never placed, the hero's soul is split between two worlds in a single line of dialogue, and characters state alliances and betrayals the OVA has not dramatized.

Chris is a passive protagonist who is told what is happening and then does it, so there is nobody on screen for a viewer to think alongside. The English dub, which is how most of the world met this, translates the dialogue with such literalness that the exposition turns actively hostile, and the reputation of this OVA as the standard answer to the worst anime ever made comes largely from that release rather than from the Japanese one.

The animation is not the problem. J.C.Staff draws a good Byston Well, the creature and armor designs are strong, and the battles are cut with real clarity. It is a well made object with no comprehensible story inside it, and the distance between those two facts is why it stays notorious thirty years on.