Birth
I'm not sure how many people here have seen this but
Birth is an OVA from 1984. It's about 80 minutes long or so and while it's not the first, I believe it's notable as being one of the very first OVA's released.
There's not really much story and for the most part what is there isn't really anything original or complex. It takes place on a planet where these machine lifeforms called Inorganics have basically destroyed most of the life on the planet and turned it into a wasteland. This manifested sword known as Shade appears and the movie is basically one long connection of chase and fight scenes as the Inorganics attack the main characters and try to destroy this Shade sword. The ending seems a bit open ended or confusing though which might just leave quite a few people with a general "What?".
You're not watching this OVA for its story though but really for it's animation. There's quite a bit of sakuga here. While it may not be the whole movie, it's not just one stand out scene but more one after the other through the whole entire movie. Probably the big name here as far as animators is
Yoshinori Kanada. He's the animation director and helped do quite a bit of the animation himself. Unfortunately I'm not as well versed in terms of appreciating the different animators yet as some, such as
7Th and
/XX/ but it's interesting to see some other names such as
Hideaki Anno helped work on the animation.
Despite having some really incredible animation in many parts it does seem like there's some hiccups here and there such as where the lip syncing looks clearly off at times. Another scene is later in the OVA where Namu falls off of a motorbike and it just looked weird to me the way it just sort of seemed to skid along the ground before falling. There's the humanoid Inorganic and after it jumps off the bit of a cliff there's about three cuts of it running along and, I think it was the second one, you get a good sense of speed and the animation might actually be okay but the movement just looked funny there to me as well. That might have been intentional though as you'll find there's all kinds of little sometimes seemingly random visual gags that pop up throughout the OVA.
I just borrowed some images here from
EmmanuelMunoz (remember that bunny?) but they can't really give you a sense of the animation quality here.
Instead I found a YouTube video here which shows a scene of the OVA which looks to have been animated by
Yoshinori Kanada himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P3JH3DE99n4
The chase through the canyons here and the part around where Rasa is flying over the bit of a stone bridge there is one of my favorite parts of the OVA due to the animation. If you're someone who really appreciates the animation of shows or doesn't mind watching a show more purely for it's animation compared to its narrative then I think you should give this a watch if you already haven't.
