As much as I like giant robots and epic fantasy, they make it hard to take war drama seriously when they abuse hax technology and magic. Area 88 doesn’t suffer from such a thing, since it’s based on a mundane setting and does not attempt to include super technology or protagonists with hax powers. It doesn’t have factions which are either good or bad and nobody is fighting for childish ideals; it’s just money, and power hungry politicians. Grounded in reality and focused on its characters, it’s easily the best war drama ever made in anime.
And it’s not as if it’s only good for the drama, with everything else being a boring low budget production. It’s one of the best OVAs ever made. The character designs are a bit weird looking and minimalistic, but the machinery looks great, and because it’s hand-drawn, it didn’t age as badly as most CGI of today. Can you believe this was made by studio Pierrot? Nowadays, everyone makes fun of the bad job they are doing with fighting shonen, but back then they were doing some pretty great work, one of which is this title.
It packs some of the best aerial fights, and manages to balance spectacle with the psychological effect war has on the soldiers. Many shows tried to include post traumatic stress disorders, most of the times for superficial drama that doesn’t mean anything outside of giving a character an internal struggle. Nowadays it’s closer to social anxiety antisocial teenagers are feeling in first world countries. Area 88 treats the issue as a form of addiction, which is still weird but makes sense within the context of the show. Once you get used to death and destruction, it becomes very hard to get rid of that lifestyle. It’s no longer about making money, it’s about the thrill.
This can be seen through the eyes of the protagonist, who although begins as a fish out of water type of character and wants to get out of that hellhole, he is slowly consumed by the very bloodlust he was originally hating. He begins as your average shonen protagonist, naive and frail, and eventually becomes a cold-hearted killer without ever coming off as an edgelord. In effect, it’s the opposite of what usually happens in shonens, where the idealist hero talk no jutsus his enemies into submission. Because Area 88 is not a crappy shonen, it’s a seinen; get it?
It has to be made clear that it’s a short OVA series. Things move very fast, often relying on flashbacks to get over gradual developments and the protagonist slowly adjusting to his new lifestyle. There is a lot of in media res going on, and while may feel rushed for some, at least its not overstaying its welcome.
Many have an issue with the ending, as it feels incomplete for stopping in the middle of what is essentially a sequel bait. I don’t think anything would change even if we had gotten more OVAs, as by then plot and character progression were essentially over. The outcome of the war doesn’t matter at all compared to how the soldiers fighting in it were feeling. So in this regard, the ending is fine.
As a whole Area 88 is a must watch if you are into war dramas that are not on the level of Naruto. It’s something that cannot be duplicated nowadays, since people got over the dread of the cold war and everything is made with crappy CGI. There was a 2004 remake which went completely unnoticed for these exact reasons. The age of hand-drawn animation and meaningful character drama is gone. The new generation, the one who got spoiled by too much CGI and cute girls doing cute things in high schools, has to be reminded what that age was all about by visiting the jewels of the past.
