Anime: Shadow Skill (1996)

the OVA are disapointing compared to the series.

A waste of time. Except for the fourth OVA (The Epilog), it's a simplification of the series (which wasn't very complicated anyway).

The fourth OVA is more interesting, it comes after the series and advances the story a bit. We even see, at least, one of the high powers of Kuruda do something else apart talking and acting superior : Scarface can fight. Of course he does that without moving, he's Scarface after all. That's great.
Irony aside, the last OVA only is worth watching. The origin of the shadow skills is even revealed and is very original. If it was possible to note specifically that OAV, I would give it more points.

Shadow Skill is all about fighting, fighting and fighting.

The story is reduced to the bare minimum to allow for a maximum of one on one battles. The hero, Gau, is out to become the strongest fighter ever, to beat the current top fighter Scarface no matter what. Along this very much predictable plot he fights anybody, and I mean really anybody.

For a four episode OVA a lack of plot would be ok if there were other things to back it up. But there is not much else.

The action and fighting scenes are very average, their animation more like a cheap TV series than a real OVA. The motion is a little awkward and they reuse a lot of scenes, even longer ones.

The music is very unremarkable and feels like mass-produced for fighting anime. The voices are mostly ok, with the exception of some very annoying ones.

Overall Shadow Skill has a distinct 80s feel to it, cheaply produced to please a young crowd, hoping they don't care if it is any good if there is just enough fighting.

The theme of an endless battle to become the strongest fighter ever has been used a lot. Chances are you have already seen something like that and most likely it has been a lot better than Shadow Skill. I cannot really recommend it to anyone, maybe genre fans who are in dire need of a fix of fighting, regardless of quality.

A pure fighting anime which contains only a very unnoticable story, but has some character development to distinguish it from other titles.

The animation is at least original, since the faces and characters look very different from the usual anime characters. The fighting scenes look pretty much okay too, but there is a lot of blood spilled over the place. That might be nice for people who watch anime for gore, but it doesn't do the animation any good since it looks overused.

My version didn't contain any OP or ED, but the voices were nice, and the music was okay as well. It did annoy me that the characters spoke eachothers names so often, as if they were afraid to forget them. Or perhaps they did that so the people watching the anime would still know who the characters are. Still, the voices for the characters were the right ones, so it'll give a good mark.

The story is pretty near unexistant - but that could be expected from an ova of only 4 episodes. The problem here is that the episodes are all single stories, which hardly have anything to do with a bigger story involving all eps. And although episode 1 and 2 clearly show a sort of (weak) story, episode 4 hits rock bottom. There appears a character without being introduced even once, while they treat him as if he's around for years already.
The rest of the story is pretty predictable, although the 'origin' of Shadow Skill, revealed in the last episode, is kind of an interesting idea.
In the end, the only thing I can say about the story is that it is confusing and not making any sense.

The only thing which saves this anime from being bashed completely are the characters. Both Gau as Elle are 'nice' characters, where Elle is even the most interesting one. Although they keep a bit mysterious, even after some time, they still have a certain charisma which allows you to keep watching. Of course a lot of people might say: 'But they are only beating up people!', but that's clearly not the only thing here. They have their reasons, and while Elle has a bit of a Lina Inverse-attitude, she is much more interesting than most other characters in fighting anime. Too bad that they usually react in a very cliché way...

Did I like this anime? I wonder myself. I did like the characters, and I did like their reasoning to fight, but the story lacks so much and is so transparant that it's hardly any more than just watching people fight over and over again. Probably not rewatchable at all, except if you like fighting anime, which means you'll probably can't get enough of the actionscenes.