Title: Read or Die (OVA)

Director: Koji Masunari

Japanese Production Studio: SME Visual Works

Type: (OVA)

Number of Episodes: 3

Vintage: 2001-05-23 - 2002-02-06

U.S. Licensing Company: Geneon Entertainment

Related Series: R.O.D. (TV)

 

General Summary

 

Yomiko Readman is a bookworm. The opening shot we see her room (if you can even call it that) completely full of books from the floor to the ceiling. On the outside she may just appear as a normal girl who has a passion to read, but she is also known as “The Paper” for her unique ability to manipulate paper to do her bidding. She is a rather clumsy girl at times, always so focused on books that sometimes she even puts her life on the line to simply save a book she hasn’t read! She is part of an organization called the “British Library’s Special Engineer Task Force.” It just so happen that a book has recently been stolen that could lead to the destruction of the entire world! Yomiko and her other two operatives “Miss Deep” and Drake must take the book back and save the world. Will they succeed? Or will mankind be wiped from existence? You will have to watch R.O.D. OVA to find out!

Art and Animation

 

The art in R.O.D. OVA is spectacular, most OVA (for the most part) are fairly detailed and this title is no exception. The character design is great, even the side characters are highly detailed. The building, the tabloids, the street lambs everything is detailed. If there were any still shots they were beautifully done other then that I didn’t find any. The action scenes where extremely fluid making it outstanding.

 

Character Development and Storyline

 

Yomiko is developed quite nicely; the first episode shows her personality as well as her behavior to various situations. Yomiko is a bookworm which we find out just from the opening scene but she is also rather clumsy at times. She has a strong sense of determination to succeed and she always believes in the good in people verses always looking at the negative of any given individual. I would say the characters are quite memorable because the the interaction between Yomiko and Miss Deep. The pacing of the show is amazing; my only complaint is that they could have done a better job when setting up the storyline, if this OVA was only 5 episodes and they took some time to introduce the characters and really draw into the story more, this OVA could have been easily on of my all time favorites which is the only reason i did not give this OVA "two thumbs up." The ending of the OVA was not what I was expecting but it was interesting and rather creative.

Final Summary

 

This OVA was good, it had a decent plot, fast paced action and great music. I really did like the fight scenes in the series, not only were they fast paced, but the animation was top notch. Aside from the awesome action scenes the series has a nice comical spin on it as well. The comical parts are with Yomiko's personality. She is a fantastic fighter on the battlefield, but outside fighting she is just any normal girl with problems of her own such as short on money to buy more books! If only they gave more depth to the characters it would had been near perfection. Even so, I highly recommend checking into this OVA.

 

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(This review/pictures made by EternityOfPain)