Hyoi and Ryoi, two brothers with the power to take the form of cats, must unravel the mystery of a creeping, tentacled, demon plague before it consumes them and their classmates. Ultimately, they must confront their old Dark Cat master Jukokubo, though whether they can put an end to the evil he has released remains a mystery. (Source: ANN)
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Overview: It is time again my friends to dive into the depths of obscurity and uncover an ancient evil that has long since been buried. Dark Cats UNITE! Anime has gone through many trends over time and although I often complain about cheap cash ins and cliches that plague modern anime, it is important to remember that the grass wasn't always greener back in the good old days! In fact, even the most incompetent anime in 2014-2015 generally don't compare in terms of technical ineptitude to some of the OVAs from the late 80s and early 90s. Dark Cat is one of those legendarily bad titles. Itwas basically the Mars of Destruction of the early 1990s! After all, you don't simply get a 4.48 MAL rating on accident. This is a site so generous with its ratings that even Valvrave the fucking Liberator has over a 7.5! What did Dark Cat do to deserve such a low rating? I'll explain. The story is that 2 brothers in high school have the awesome superpower to transform into cats. Do they transform into ferocious werecats or thundercat creatures? Nope, just regular house cats. Together the 2 brothers must fight against generic hentai tentacle demons...even though this isn't actually a hentai. These action scenes typically involve the brothers chasing the demon in their cat forms, then transforming back into humans and fighting with light saber ripoffs. The author was inspired to give the characters cat powers after reading the fact that house cats can run at up to 30 miles per hour, which is slightly faster than the fastest human. The problem is that house cats can only sustain short bursts of speed and are actually VASTLY inferior to humans at distance running. If you were going to chase a demon for miles through the woods like they do in Dark Cat, it would actually be a greater advantage to just stay in your human form. This makes the cat transformation, which is the ENTIRE selling point of this fucking series, absolutely worthless! If this wasn't bad enough, Dark Cat has one of the stupidest romances in the history of anime! The dialogue is absolutely terrible and no 2 characters have even an ounce of chemistry together. The reason for the relative fame (infamy) of Dark Cat is actually not the horrendous plot and characters though, but rather the ludicrously bad voice acting. For some reason, I keep reviewing titles that have insanely bad voice acting, but Dark Cat might actually dethrone Cipher for the title of all time worst! Why is that an accomplishment? The "voice actors" in Cipher were people literally taken off the street and asked to read cheesy lines with zero context. Not a single voice in Cipher was a professional voice actor. The voice actors in Dark Cat actually ARE professionals...but they are all early 90s hentai actors that aren't use to voicing regular anime. They know how to make sexual moans, but they have no concept of how to deliver actual dialogue. Generally, bad voice acting makes an anime laughably cheesy and "so bad its good". However, the degree to which "badness" is enjoyable actually follows the mathematical graph for a concave function. It goes up to a certain point, then rapidly starts decreasing and keeps going down further and further. Dark Cat is WAY beyond the high point in the graph and deep in negative Y axis territory. The art and animation as you probably suspected by this point, is completely atrocious. This was just a lazy effort all the way through! MOST bad anime have at least one thing I can say positive about them. The art was decent, I laughed at one scene, at least it had tits and gore, etc. For example, MD Geist had a freaking kickass theme song! Kite made me laugh a couple times. Seikon no Qwasar had fairly decent jiggle animation for the bouncing tits. I find the opening to Steel Angel Kurumi to be amusing. If you look hard enough, there is almost always a small silver lining. There is NOTHING positive to say about Dark Cat. This is one of those rare anime that just FAILS in every single category across the board. The art is bad, the music is bad, the writing is bad, the premise is bad, everything about it is fucking terrible! If you ever manage to see a physical copy of this on VHS or DVD, fucking burn it!
10/10 creative plot idea, amazing visuals, there's nothing more I could've asked for (just kidding but not really) i think the cat guys were strange and jukokubo was an aamzing villain. so good i literally wrote a german fanfiction for it yay im so proud of the creators for embracing their inner desires to make this and i hope there will be more in the future who else wants a sequel guys??? i sure do i could do with some more snazzy character development the ending really made my eyes water it was very emotional (no spoilers though) jk even bamboo blade was better than this
Dark Cat is the lowest point on the trash scale as you can possibly get sitting rather comfortably on the same scale in which Mars of Destruction, Helter + Skeleton and Black Bullet reside in. It's THAT fucking bad! While I shall try and do justice the horror and terribleness of this OVA in this review, the only true way to believe this vile crap exists is to watch it for yourself...something that I would never recommend unless you're one of those sick twats who enjoy getting a kick out of terrible anime. The plot for this short OVA, if you could even call it that,focuses on two brothers who have the ability to turn into cats. Now they don't turn into awesome Black Panthers or bad-ass Lions or anything, no, don't be silly. They turn into common household cats. Very intimidating, right? Anyway, these pathetic excuses of fighters are on a quest for to find out what is happening at their school all the while battling a tentacle monster who wants to molest all of their classmates. Why? Because Japan loves tentacles, I guess...? While this is going on, we have another side story involving a few of the other characters who attend the school in which has a main focus on a love traingle of the sorts. The only problem is that this is so god damn boring and it feels that if these characters were removed entirely it wouldn't have made a single difference at all. Watching paint dry is more exciting than the plot for this piece of trash!" The plot is as basic and strange as they come and doesn't make coherent sense on a shot-to-shot basis. One moment the two cat brothers will be fighting in the jungle, the next will cut to the romance plot and then again to the brothers in a strange seizure-like scene in which they search for answers for whatever predicament they're in through their sub-conscious. It's a mess and as a result the narrative is hard to follow nor care about in the slightest. All of the characters are stock and have no emotional attachment to the plot or the events that take place within it since everyone feels like they're so bored and uninterested in everything that is happening around them. The characters are the most cliche and forgettable thing you could ever watch. The character designs are complete ASS and nothing about them is engaging. Why should I care about the fate of a group of teenagers in which my feelings for them are as strong as my feelings to a Mars Bar. The ending for this show tries so hard to pull at your heartstrings and it's so evident that the creators are going for an emotionally heavy scene but it just comes across as jarring and confusing. The scene makes no sense visually nor logically either coming across as a disaster. It's not even something you can laugh at since it is so god damn dull! When I first watched this I thought the player was messing up since there are so many breaks in the audio but no matter where I viewed this I had the exact same result. Everything in this OVA feels disjointed and everything cuts away too quickly making it harder to follow with your eyes. The problems are so frequent in this show with random audio jumps, strange shot transitions and terrible animation that feels way more technically inept than Genocyber and MD Geist and that's saying a lot. Speaking of animation, by God is this production a mess. There isn't a single shot in this show that looks good and everything is ugly as hell visually. The fights are sloppy, the art is poor and everything about it makes me want to drive a pitch-fork into my face. The English Dub is perhaps the worst dub I have ever heard for any anime ever. The Japanese dub was bad, but the English dub is the frosting on the garbage cake. Even the worst jobs in Hentai dubs that I've seen have more emotion and believable than this inept piece of regurgitated crap. Every actor's delivery is so unnatural and so bad that it feels awkward to watch. The worst character out of the bunch is Hiroki who, when being beat-up only makes small grunting noises. Fun fact; the guy who did the voice acting for this character is also the same guy who uploaded this anime on YouTube. In the description of the said video, he claims that we brought on during the last second to record the line for this character back in 2003 which explains why it's so bad but I still think that even my crack-addled neighbour could still pull off a more convincing role. The entire anime is pathetic. That's the only word I can use for this show. The script is so god damn inconsistent and makes no sense, the animation is terrible and everything is so disgusting and gross. Normally in these really bad anime, there is at least something I can enjoy. Genocyber had the gore and catchy music, MD Geist was unintentionally hilarious and even stuff like Mars of Destruction has such a cheesy, terrible charm to it. Dark Cat has nothing. It's an empty husk with no ideas, no passion and no purpose. The anime is not trying to promote any original source material so it makes no sense into why the creators would believe that making this show would somehow be profitable in the slightest. The random images they throw at you with the tentacles are disgusting, the villain is a joke and everything in this OVA is so boring, so tedious that it's not even worth your time. Stay away from it. Not even the terrible dub can invoke a chuckle or laugh... (Part of LIQfilms 12 Days of Christmas - Day 3)
Story: This was an interesting anime, to say the least. This story had about three different plots going on at the same time, making it hard to follow which story is being told when, and for what purpose. The "main" story that is trying to be told is of two brothers, Hyoi and Ryoi, who infiltrate a school in order to find a source of evil behind the disappearances of random people. Very quickly these brothers find the mastermind behind the disappearances, a man named Jukokubo. Hyoi and Ryoi also encounter some monsters that look like blobs with tentacles, but later find out it isthe evil emotions within a human that bring about the form, so the story also contains a bit of gore. What is funny about these three is they can all switch between a cat and human form. Hyoi and Jukokubo are from a group called Dark Cats, though Hyoi left because Jukokubo is evil and is the one who taught him everything he knows (as I understand it). One of the other plots trying to force itself to the front is centered on a girl, Takako, who is in love with her childhood friend Hiroki, who does not share her feelings. This plot line is presented with about as much time as the previous plot, which makes it difficult to tell a complete story on either end, with the 60 minute time limit. In the end, I decided the story deserved a five rating. The base idea was pretty good, but was not capitalized on. The story had a bad habit of jumping from one story and back to the next, but making no connections in the process. Other parts of the story made no sense, such as Hyoi needing healing by a tree in a forest. By the end, the story had more holes than Swiss cheese. Animation: The animation fluctuated a little too much. In many parts, the animation was pretty poor, but in other spots, it was well done. The best animations were typically done with the few gory parts. Due to the large jump between poor and great animations, this was given a rating of 6, though the good animation scenes saved this from a lower score. Sound: The voice acting was not bad, but it was not great by any stretch of the imagination. The voices for Hyoi, Ryoi, and Jukokubo were the better of the lot. The music was just a crazy dash of horrible 80's teen music, with the occasional piano piece set in the most emotional parts. Other than the piano parts, the rest of the music was placed in bad spots and ruined some of the moments. The sound effects were not too bad either. They were used appropriately and moderately, not bogging the story with unnecessary sounds. The piano parts and the sound effects were really the saving graces of this anime's sound, warranting a six rating. Characters: There were too many characters with too much air time to develop any well enough. Between Hyoi, Ryoi, Takako, Hiroki, and Jukokubo, it is difficult to focus on anyone character enough. This is one of the weakest points of the story. The situation between Hiroki and Takako is explained a little bit in the end, with just enough to have a basic idea of what happened between them, but a background story on them and the others would have really helped develop a better idea of who these characters were and why the viewer should care about them. I felt a five was necessary, due to the lack of development of any of the characters to a better extent. Overall: This anime had some really neat ideas abounding, but decided to lose itself among all the random happenings. If this OVA had been given a little more attention and made a little longer or given a second episode, the story could have been really interesting and worth the watch, but as it stands now, it is hardly worth a mention.
I really don't understand why this OVA is so hated This is one of the few pre 2000s OVAs i've watched which has a decent script and pacing, and most inportantly, a captivating story It's only downfall is time, trying to fit many layers and different tones in just 50 minutes made some scenes feel a bit rushed and shifts in tone were quite abrupt This story i think would've fit very well as a one cour show, the already interesting concept and power system would've only benefitted from having more time to smooth out the different tones and explore and develope the characters
I am still in shock. I understood that this was bad but... the real gravity of suck is still taking full effect. I can not, in good conscience, recommend this to anyone without the assistance of alcohol. The story is horrendous. It begins in medias res and explains nothing. I even had to double check that this was not a sequel. Two story-lines are told simultaneously, and the overlap makes no sense. In all honesty, not much can be said because there isn't anything to talk about. The art is what's expected of early 90's, but lazy. The designs weregeneric, and there were multiple times it seemed the art was trying to be sexual without any of the enjoyment of hentai or ecchi. The show almost encouraged the random yelling of "That's a penis" or "I've seen enough hentai to know where this is going". The dub is humorously bad. Every character lacks emotion in delivery, no matter the circumstance. It's a guide on how not to act. In addition, some distortion is done on a few voices, making them almost unintelligible. If I need subs to watch a dub, there is a problem. The music is forgettable at best, and usually badly balanced. Overall, the sound is sometimes enjoyably bad, but that's it. The character with the most emotional representation is an umbrella. I'm not even joking, the best characterization moment is about 5 seconds with an umbrella in the rain. Besides that umbrella, which is an inanimate object, every character is rushed and flat. There was not a moment where I cared for any character at all. This show can be enjoyed, but it takes effort. Alcohol and a good crowd can make it enjoyable. The baddie's unintentionally adowable final form, the always-flat acting, and the numerous idiocies throughout make this the perfect example of a piece of shit. Numerous moments, including some with phallic monsters, make me think this began as a hentai. Honestly, it would have been better and made more sense as a hentai. Unfortunately, it is just a boring almost-hentai. TL;DR Don't watch this except with lots of alcohol. I suggest a drinking game. Take a shot for every bad line or moment where it should have been a hentai. You'll be shit-faced. Then, and only then, can you get through unhurt.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if hentai-worthy, eldritch dick monsters invaded a Saturday morning cartoon? Well, Dark Cat of course! It's near impossible to explain in text how messed up and inconsistent the tone of this anime is, combining pure cheese typical for kids cartoons with absolutely obscene, Lovecraftian scenes of demon possession and disturbing fanservice. Also, as a cherry on top, the English dubbing for this was done by a hentai localisation company with no experience with proper anime. Honestly, the end effect is kind of hilarious, particularly when the story becomes more dramatic or during fight scenes. Combining an anime that has noidea what it tries to be with voice actors that have no idea what they're doing is more or less a match made in heaven. If you're looking something to laugh at, Dark Cat should be high on your least, probably on the same level as masterpieces such as Mars of Destruction or Psychic Wars. That's the only way you should approach it though...
I've been watching a lot of truly awful anime lately, and coming off of OVAs like Mars of Destruction and Skelter Heaven, I actually came out of Dark Cat with a sense of respect and gratitude for its competence. It had a narrative, and was – mostly – comprehensible in its storytelling, as rushed as it may have been. There was an undeniable presence of an art director, something I’m not convinced was present in a few of the other similarly rated titles I have seen. Some of the shots were noticeably well composed and even clever, and required an artistic vision and some decenteffort to create. The animation wasn’t awful, the designs ranged from serviceable to genuinely charming (I like the subtlety of Hyoi and Rui’s cat-like features!), and I liked that the characters actually emoted. It wasn’t as generic as I expected and took some risks, even if they didn’t pay off and left it with a reputation of being “too grotesque to be enjoyable”. I can understand the common criticisms of the gore and body horror being poorly animated, but I won’t decry it for existing and “being ugly”… of course it’s ugly, it’s body horror reminiscent of The Thing from The Thing. (Now would be a good time to warn people not to look this OVA up, unless they are sure they are okay with body horror and gore of this calibre. Tentacles with teeth and spines rip out of people’s skin from the inside and deform their hosts, it is quite awful) The body horror in Dark Cat being disgusting and making my skin crawl isn’t a fault – I think it’s the intended purpose. Though I will concede that: 1 .The phallic imagery of the horrific flesh mutations, particularly that of the teacher who attacked Rui, was… bizarre, considering that otherwise the OVA isn’t particularly dark in tone or otherwise sexually graphic. 2. Perhaps having grotesque body horror is completely unexpected in a story about two bishounen teens (?) who can turn into cats and fight ghosts. Yes, Dark Cat, the OVA put on Worst Anime Ever lists for being a grotesque spectacle, is just as commonly placed on those lists for being a dumb anime about guys that can transform into house cats and who fight supernatural entities with not so amazing powers. This is a gripe I’ve seen a few times when I looked up the few impressions I could find of this OVA, but there was no point during my watching experience that I thought, “Man, these teens are pansies, they don’t even turn into big scary lions or anything! What’s the point, it’s practically a power-down! cinemasins ding” because I don’t go into anime expecting every single male character I see to be Big & Strong & Cool, I guess? Especially not ones with their hair styled into cat ears. Otherwise, it seems the biggest reason Dark Cat is lauded as One of the Worst – perhaps even ahead of the silly concept and nauseating gore – is actually because of the abysmal english dub. It’s my honour to say that I didn’t watch the dub, so it doesn’t factor in at all into my impressions! So in the end, perhaps my only true gripes with Dark Cat are: 1. Despite having no particular issue with body horror and gore existing, the extent of destruction and graphic death gave the OVA a bit of a snuff film vibe. 2. The conclusion to the story was quite bad. Dark Cat isn’t a very complicated story. Demons and ghosts exist and wreak havoc on emotionally vulnerable humans, and supernatural soldiers try to mediate between the realms by purifying tortured ghosts and saving those dragged into darkness by evil entities. These beats are common in the supernatural genre of anime, but Dark Cat’s handling of its tragic morality tale left me more confused than anything. I can't really elaborate on my issues with it without spoiling everything, so on the offhand chance someone who is going to watch this OVA for some reason cares about what happens in it, I won't get into it. Other than the bad writing, the string of deaths in the backhalf of the OVA when the monster lets loose in the school are quite uncomfortable to behold. The violence of a fight against a monster like this, I can handle, but the graphic images of helpless death were difficult to stomach. And in this OVA, there is no miraculous reversal of the demon’s damage once it is purified – there is no implication whatsoever that everyone who died isn’t still dead. The main thing I was actually worried about when I watched Dark Cat was that there would be onscreen assault, thanks to reviewers griping it for “generic hentai tentacles”. I am relieved to say that there is none, at least not insofar as deserving a comparison to actual porn. There is sexual content scattered throughout the horror scenes: The occasionally phallic appearance of the tentacles, shots of the tentacles coming down from under skirts, and there is one shot of nudity when Aimi’s shirt is ripped open as she transforms, though I would say it’s too horrific and ugly to be sexualized or otherwise considered “fanservice”. What is the point of the hits of sex imagery in Dark Cat? I have no idea. This isn’t Alien, it isn’t about the horror of sexual assault or the violence of creation, and there doesn’t seem to be any moral posturing about it as is often seen in slashers. I couldn’t parse any sort of consistent STI allegory regarding the plague of tentacles upon the student body, despite how many summaries I have read that describe the tentacles as that, a “plague”. … I realize I am probably the only person on earth to give any aspect of Dark Cat’s production this much thought. To sum up: It seems to just exist for the shock value. Considering the extent of disgusting imagery already present a la The Gore and Deformation of Human Bodies, I don’t think this OVA benefitted from featuring some explicit looking tendrils, beyond cementing its abhorrent reputation. Is this all to say that I think Dark Cat is a good OVA? No, of course not. It’s tone deaf, and tasteless, and has awkward pacing and bad writing. But compared to the utterly soulless and artistically devoid works the likes of Skelter Heaven and Mars of Destruction, I would say the fact I was able to write this much about Dark Cat is testament to that fact that it at the very least, contains content – and some of that content was like, decent! By virtue of being executed with an average amount of competency for an OVA from the early 90s, and for having a balance of good and bad elements that gave me something to hold onto and mull over after viewing, I'm going to go ahead and say this is one of the better entries in the Worst Anime Ever countdown lists.
Absolute master piece, honestly I have never seen something so epic. It was more epic than watching Tyler Fortnite Blevins Ninja for the first time. So amazing. One problem i have is that there is no sequal, like you could've got Graham Higley to voice the dark, or possibly GIJoeshow to voice that cat (He does an excelent impression). A seriously missed opertunity Bandinamco/Epic games. Finally, I would like to mention how good the animation is, like it must have taken them at least 3000 top animators who worked for a couple months to complete on scene, simply amazing! Cat in the Hat doesn't evenhold a candle to this master piece and i am honestly suprrised Dr. Zoos came back to make this one
I **wanted** to like this show, I really did! But Dark Cat seems to try to do everything it could to make this show as unpalatable as possible. Thing is, the premise is not that bad. It's everything else that just messes up. The characters range from the ultra-annoying to the uninteresting. You have Mr. Emo Boy who is the mopiest little sad sack of guano you will ever find. And you have the unrequited love of his childhood friend, even though he basically ignores or craps all over her at every single turn.The two transfer students (spoiler NOT spoiler, they're CATS!) are not exactly the most interesting duo. Oh, and the Big Bad of this little story? Essentially an exploding, expanding tentacle monster of pink, pulsating, throbbing flesh. Just an awful thing to experience on the screen. Poorly animated and poorly drawn at that, but that's true for the whole show in general. And then there's the what-the-frack ending that is, well, what was the point of all this again? Oh, and I watched the dubbed version, which was its own special cherry on the top of hell. You've heard about those anime shows that are "so bad it's good?" Well, this one takes that one extra step, to "so bad it's BAD." Don't even bother to watch this, even to laff at the awfulness.
Dark Cat is an early 90s OVA that has two main focuses in it's story. The first follows Aimi Koenji, who is hopelessly in love with a boy in her school, Hiroki Koizumi. However, Hiroki is in love with somebody else, who ended up rejecting him. The other is a tale of two brothers, Hyoi and Hiroki Koizumi, who have the power to transform into creatures known as "Dark Cats", and who are busy fending off evil monsters that are being awoken in humans by the main villain, an ogre named Jukokubo. Either story on it's own would be somewhat generic, and combining the two makesthe anime seem a bit unfocused. However, the two tales intertwine at the end. I can't say the story was super unique, but it was at least entertaining for the duration, even if it's somewhat poorly executed with some plot holes. The characters are pretty basic and forgettable, but they were interesting enough for the story they were telling. The ending also didn't seem very satisfying, which is a downside. I would say the story is probably the weakest part of this whole thing, but it's got just enough in it to keep things interesting for a 50 minute OVA. The visual directing also isn't very great, consisting mostly of very typical shots, without anything impressive standing out. This doesn't do any favors for the art, which seems to be dated, even by 1991 OVA standards. It definitely looks more like the kind of thing that would have came out 5 years earlier than it did. Still, the art wasn't atrocious to look at, even if it was kind of plain and unrefined. The music was great, and was definitely the highlight, being one of the more memorable aspects of the anime. It had this 80s J-pop sound to it which felt really reminiscent of the era, and worked well in the setting. Voice acting in the Japanese dub was above average. There weren't any standout performances, but each actor did an adequate job at voicing their character, even if the lines they had to read were somewhat generic. Overall, it's not anything special, but it's a decent enough anime to check out if you're bored and can forgive some rough edges and a generic story. Story: 4 Characters: 5 Art: 6 Sound: 8 Enjoyment: 7 Overall: 6
I’m tackling this one again? Yes, yes I am. Honestly, my review of Dark Cat is a bit of a mess, you could tell I didn’t care while writing it. I won’t delete that review, rather, I’m going to give an honest review ripping Dark Cat to shreds. Without further stalling lets begin. May contain spoilers, like it matters, I don’t want you to watch this OVA anyway. Introduction: Dark Cat is an infamously abysmal OVA well known amongst anime historians for being a load of hot garbage. I mean, you don’t just get a MAL score of (at the time of writing anyway) 3.58 by doingnothing, so this has to be something special. Well, for better or worse, it is. Story: The “plot” (if you can call it that) revolves around our two main leads who have the power to transform into house cats. Evil shit is going on because this “plot” demands it, the 2 leads meet back up with their old master “Jukokubo” who’s evil for the sake of evil. There’s also some romance plot going on in the background, but nothing comes of it. The story of Dark Cat is incredibly basic, yet it sucks so much ass because of how poorly structured this “movie” is. The first 2 minutes & 52 seconds of this “movie” are nothing but padding. The movie starts with some girl randomly disappearing for no reason, now all of a sudden she’s dead (and oh boy do they make it blatantly obvious). As you could guess by the term “padding” absolutely nothing comes of this. I mentioned there was a romantic “plot” going on in the background of the 2 brothers fighting “evil spirits” (how creative). You also might’ve catched absolutely nothing comes out of this plot. Which is to be expected, given the short length & rushed story of this “plot”. Characters: The characters in Dark Cat are just as nothing as the plot is. They’re all one dimensional caricatures who exist only to serve the plot. Hyoui is just “main character guy” who pulls the strings & goes around defeating the evil spirits. Rui is pretty much the younger brother person who only goes along for the ride. He does get to do some stuff admittedly, he kills one of the Hentai monsters as an example. Hiroki is pretty much a blank slate. He does go through some “arc” (if you can call it that) about him realizing that Ami is the girl that he should’ve been interested in/attracted to because she cared about him & was his childhood friend. But Dark Cat kills Ami off by the time he realises this, making the whole endeavor pointless. Hiroki also has an incredibly grating voice as well. Ami is the girl character of Dark Cat, the definition of a blank slate. As mentioned earlier, she’s in love with Hiroki, but nothing comes out of this. Aside from near the end, where Hiroki recognising that Ami was the girl he should’ve loved all along kills one of the Hentai monsters for some reason. Jukakubo is the villain of Dark Cat. He’s the definition of evil for evil's sake. He never gives a reason for what he does, or why he does it. He was apparently the former master of Hyoui & Rui. But the series only mentions this once, & never lets us in on why Hyoui & Rui split away from him & went solo. Jukakubo also has a transformation near the end of the movie, but the transformation somehow makes him look WORSE & even less of a threat than he already has. Dark Cat is so abysmal that it FAILED at making a power-up sequence. Art: You probably guessed it by now given how negative the rest of this review was. But the artwork on display here is absolutely atrocious. The overall presentation is a bit of a blurry mess, & the line art on the hair in one particular scene gets worse & worse each time they change the frame. The series also gets lazy & forgets about detail. In the first fight scene against Jukakubo, Hyoui receives 3 slashes on his chest, in the exact next frame, there’s only 1 scratch on his chest. Then in the very same fight scene, Jukabkubo slashes Hyoui in the back, & in the very next scene the slash on his back is gone. The animation (if you can even call it that) is ridiculously lazy. The characters rarely ever animate, they’re usually just still images being dragged across the screen, or a still image being panned across the frame in order to convey movement.’Dark Cat’s unite” also has a sword that Hyoui pulls out of his ass in first fight against Jukakubo. The slashes of course, are never animated. They just cut the screen to black & draw a slash. Sometimes, they don’t even draw the slash at all, & just cut to a still image, that’s how competent the animation team was. The only part of Dark Cat that can be considered “animation” are the Hentai monsters. But even those are just the same 2 second animation looped over & over to nauseam, they couldn’t even bother to animate the Hentai monsters well. For fucks sake Dark Cat, Sound: The sound is TRASH! Dark Cat is well known amongst anime historians for its ludicrously bad voice acting. The series makes use of late 90s Hentai actors to voice the characters, which makes the dialogue come off as incredibly awkward. Taking a note from Garzey’s Wing, (no, it wasn’t dubbed by the same studio) the characters speak in run-on sentences. These make the characters incredibly hard to understand & hear, the abysmal sound mixing doesn’t help there either. Dark Cat also has the distinct “feature” of an absolutely lacking sound design. You’ll see things like tentacle demons smashing windows, no sound effects. People getting punched, no sound effects, grabbing people by the shirt, no sound effects, footsteps, no sound effects. The sound design is absolutely lacking on all fronts. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anime with sound design this lacking. Final Thoughts/Overall: So that’s Dark Cat. It’s absolutely abysmal. You know, MAL is a pretty generous site when you think about it. They give trash like Girls & Panzer & Zombie Desu a 7.5+. What I’m getting at here, is that you don’t just get a 3.56 (at the time of writing) by doing nothing. You have to be especially bad in order to get a rating like that. Dark Cat is just THAT BAD! I usually say in my 1/10 reviews that “there’s nothing positive here”. Well, that’s a bit of a lie. See, Green Green got me some laughs out of how lazily made it was. Kennel Tokorozawa is under 35 minutes, Girls & Panzer made me laugh for the 1st 6 episodes, & Skelter + Heaven is only 19 minutes. But this time, I actually mean it. THERE IS NOTHING POSITIVE TO SAY HERE! Dark Cat just fails on absolutely all fronts. The sound is bad, the story is abysmal, the voice acting is ATROCIOUS, literally NOTHING is good here. Dark Cat deserves to remain a buried piece of garbage that nobody should watch. Final rating is, to nobody's surprise, a 1/10. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now for my original Dark Cat review that I put absolutely no effort into it. Another shitty OVA, another low effort review from yours truly! Dark Cat is a rather infamous OVA among who I'll refer to as "Anime Historians". People such as myself who go back to the past, to watch the shitty anime that suck ass. Why is Dark Cat so bad though? Sit down, and I'll tell you. May contain mild spoilers, like it matters for such a dogshit OVA. Story: The story of Dark Cat goes as such, our 2 lead characters, Hyoi & Rui are 2 brothers who have the ability to transform into house cats (you would think it'd be something bad-ass like a Lion or Tiger but no). There's a virus of sorts going around infecting their neighborhood creating Hentai monsters & demons. Therefore, our 2 heroines have to stop this "evil". The plot has promise to it on paper, sure it may sound absurd, but this is supposed to be a dark fantasy anime about 2 blokes who can transform into cats, so just about anything could be possible. Due to the fact that the writers got lazy & didn't give a shit however, Dark Cat is nothing more but slapped together ideas with terrible structuring. Unlike Sword for Truth however, Dark Cat is somewhat comprehensible & easy to follow, it at least stays somewhat consistent with its setting. Characters: I honestly don't have to much to say regarding the characters of this anime, they're all pretty bland one-dimensional caricatures with less personality than the tree-stump in my backyard. Hyoi is the tough-guy who leads his more cowardly brother on. Dark Cat actually tries to give one of their characters "Hiroki" an arc about being a mis-understood individual who suffers from serious issues, however due to Dark Cat's incompetent writing & short length, he's killed off before any sort of development could take place, making the whole thing frustrating above all else. Aimi is the girl & Jokokubo is the old master. Nothing much to say really. Art: Rubbish wouldn't even begin to describe how absolutely atrocious the artwork on display here is, even for the time of release this looks like complete & utter shit, nothing looks good. Even the Hentai monsters don't look very good, the Hentai monsters just look like cobbled together clay that was turned pink for whatever reason, the tentacles look worse than the tits from Sword for Truth. Sound: Not much to comment on here really, the sound is just as bad as the art. The voice acting is atrocious as the actors just don't give a shit that they're working on this & only wanted their 5 dollar paycheck. The music is pretty much nonexistent. There's definitely some music in there, but because the audio mixing is so terrible & the artwork is so unfathomably bad, you'll not only not hear the music, but be too distracted by what's going on to listen to it. Final Thoughts/Overall Dark Cat is a product of its time, and not in a good way. Dark Cat is a product of laziness on the parts of all involved. This was clearly thrown out as a way to make a few dollars off of the Manga that this OVA is supposedly based off of (which I can't find on MAL). My final rating for Dark Cat is going to be 1/10, a low effort garbage anime like this doesn't deserve the effort of anybody who bothers to write a review on it. Before I go, I'll answer a question, "Is Dark Cat worse than sword for truth?" The answer you're looking for is no. See, Dark Cat is so unfathomably bad, that it's fascinating & compels you to keep watching. Sword For Truth is just straight up dog-shit with barely anything to say about it.
Dark Cat is an OVA from the early 90s and it's regarded as one of the worst anime ever made. Like Mars of Destruction or Shuranosuke Zanmaken: Shikamamon no Otoko. But, it's like I always say. If I could sit through Evangelion in its entirety, I can sit through literally any anime. So, let's take a peek. Story: We open with women vanishing in puffs of smoke, leaving only small craters and shoes behind. They were all, coincidentally, named Yamcha. We cut to a young man with pointed ears talking to a teal coloured girl. Turns out she's a ghost and responsible for all those people who havebeen unceremoniously Yamcha'd. He helps her find peace so she can pass on to a place where she can have a real colour pallete. He and his little brother then move on to a school where there's some kind of evil presence. The big issue with the story is a simple one. It's a mess. There are so many plot elements that seem to come out of nowhere and the only way the series has to address them is to either just throw them in and never extrapolate on them or use tedious exposition. Take the seemingly magic sword that the elder brother just has but that we as the audience aren't allowed to know anything about really. Or the previous relationship between the elder brother and the antagonist that pretty much gets summed up "As you know, when I trained you blah blah blah." The pacing is pretty pathetic. A lot of these scenes come across as the "previously on" segments you'd see in a hundred plus episode series. While others get dragged out to a ridiculous degree, like the healing scene. The whole opening sequence is a waste of time since it doesn't connect to the main plot and the deus ex machina garbage at the ending really doesn't help anything. Characters: The characters are very trite and completely under-written. The brothers are the young and passionate shounen protagonist and the calm, confident shounen protagonist. The antagonist's motivations are nonsense. He basically decided that he wanted to help the evil in humans grow because there's evil in humans. Isn't that a bit like sticking something thin and metal into an electrical outlet because it'll fit? There's also a real problem with pathos in that you never really feel anything for the brothers or the people they're trying to save. Which means you're never going to get invested to any degree. Art: The artwork is pretty horrendous. Character designs are lazy. Plus it makes no sense that the brothers and main antagonist are supposed to be part of the same group but they look basically human with fangs and pointed ears while he looks like the evil alien from an old Roger Corman film. The big monster is basically a pink blob with tentacles. So, low effort crap they stole from a bad hentai. The movement animation is choppy and very low effort. You can find stick fight animations that are vastly superior. Sound: There are some decent actors. This has Hisakawa Aya (Sailor Mercury), Gouri Daisuke (Shabranigdo) & Okiayu Ryoutaru (Scar). So, pretty solid casting. Not the best performances since they have nothing to work with, but they manage to make it basically passable. The music is highly forgettable and hardly worth mentioning. Ho-yay: There is none to be seen. Areas of Improvement: Focus on one story and develop it well. When you have less than an hour to work with, you can't be spending a good chunk of it on side plots and exposition. Compelling characters. There are literally four characters in this who need to be somewhat developed. And an hour is plenty of time for that many. It just has to be done competently. Some effort into the artwork. Final Thoughts: Honestly, this isn't as bad as some anime I've seen. Yes, it's pretty horrific and lacks anything to recommend it. But I've definitely seen worse. I'm giving Dark Cat a 2/10.
