I haven't seen those Bastard!! OVAs in forever. I'd be curious to rewatch them again and see how they hold up. I remember I originally watched them because some raw DBZ tapes I owned had commercials for the Super Famicom game and it made me want to watch the anime. =P
On the subject of sword and sorcery, I recently rewatched my old dvd of Amon Saga.
1986 OVA that has the usual swords, magic and monster fare you find in pretty much all of these types. Main character is on a revenge quest, meets some friends along the way and include a princess for saving and some half-baked love affair. Not the worst OVA but very average and really lacks any decent action to add some excitement. The whole thing is kinda dull, which is a shame because there's potentially for some good fun. It being a 1986 OVA, there's some blood and violence, though other than the occasional decapitation or sword through the head, there's nothing too major in that department.
It was directed by Shunji Oga, who, among other things, was one of the of the main episode directors of Cobra, an assistant director on Golgo 13: The Professional and the main director on the very good 2008 Golgo 13 series. Unfortunately he doesn't bring anything special to this project beyond some nice atmosphere and compositions. Maybe more interesting is art director Mitsuharu Miyamae, who has been an art director and background artist on an assload of stuff. Some notables include art director on Macross: DYRL, Dirty Pair: Project Eden, City Hunter and the infamous Violence Jack: Evil Town - the latter being more the style of this OVA. And of course we have the famous Final Fantasy artists Yoshitaka Amano, who was one of the original creators on the project and provided all the original character design.
Amano being extra important in this case as this OVA actually saw a US release by Manga video in 2001. It's clear with the Amano connection, character designs, setting and such that Manga was hoping to attract the Vampire Hunter D crowd (And amusingly there's a minor character who looks very similar to D) and maybe obtain some kind of cult following. Obviously it didn't work and considering the anime fanbase during that period, this OVA must have seemed positively ancient.
It has yet to see any kind of re-release, which it desperately needs as the DVD looks like crap. Video quality can be really poor at times (Sometimes looking like a botched VHS conversion), the color is waaay too dark and you get issues like blurring during certain panning shots.
It's an interesting obscurity but can't be recommended unless you're a "hardcore" or just a general fan of 80s B-movie sword and sorcery stuff.
