Battle Athletes had a horribly disappointing new release this season, which made me wonder if the whole franchise was actually any good. Was my nostalgia for the past distorting the actual worth of the series? Well, at least as far as the tv series goes, yes. The tv series was a sort of weird re-telling of the events of the oavs, except now loaded in with 500% more gags and worse animation. There is some new good content in the tv version, but it's so overwhelmed by the stupid gags that occur every five seconds, whether visual gags or physical violence gags or whatever, that it's completely drowned out. To rank something like this as 'great' and 'must-see' is an insult to the rest of the anime in my rankings. Gunbuster and In This Corner of the World are easily better than this nonsense.
The Battle Athletes oav's should still be great. It's a no-nonsense take on actual sports competition and a great coming of age story for Akari. But now we're talking about six standalone episodes being great, which is no different from Gunbuster or Shamanic Princess or Bastard, who can claim the exact same thing. Now that it's gotten to this point, and 2 of the three pillars of Battle Athletes have already fallen, I'd like to replace the whole franchise in my rankings with something new and better.
It's difficult for a 90's series with a 90's budget for animation to keep up with the 21st century. 86 looked so beautiful, as did Idoly Pride, and they're both twice as long as Battle Athletes' ovas. I don't think either of those series are good enough to be in my rankings, but it makes the point of what old series like Battle Athletes are up against.
I'll be recalibrating my anime rankings soon, once the final episode of Shadows House comes out, and Battle Athletes will be at the bottom. Hopefully some new summer anime show will impress me and take its place. If not there's always the fall season to take another crack at it. It's time for all these old, short, 90's ova series to retire into obscurity.
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