In the distant future, a mysterious floating object appears suddenly in the center of the city. The
top secret mission unit "Alta Mira Agency" or AA is comissioned by the Defense Agency to deal with
this mysterious invader. In charge of the robot training is Hunagai Otsuya. He must choose one of the
girls to recieve special training which she will recieve in secret. They must use the "Battle Soles"
to push back the enemy even at the cost of their lives.
(Source: Anime News Network)
When I reviewed Abunai Sisters, I called it the worst anime that I'd seen at that point. While it still might have been the worst anime that I've personally watched, it has some stiff competition with Tenkuu Danzai Skelter+Heaven. At least this is 10 minutes shorter, so there is that. The plot of Skelter+Heaven is set in the far off future, where a mysterious floating object suddenly appears in the center on an unnamed city. The top secret unit "Alta Mira Agency", or AA for short, is commissioned by the defense agency to deal with this mysterious invader. In charge of the robot training is Otsuya Fungai, and he must choose one of the people in the Alta Mira Agency to receive special training to use the "Battle Soles" to push back the enemy, even if it might cost them their lives." Got that? Because the OVA sure as hell doesn't tell you any of that, and there is a reason for that. Tenkuu Danzai Skelter+Heaven is a very truncated adaptation of a visual novel for the PlayStation 2. Now, if you're going to release a 20 minute OVA for your PlayStation 2 visual novel, what route would you take in making it? Maybe make it an adaptation of the first part of the story of your game with a "To be continued....." at the end to make people interested in continuing the story? Maybe make it more like a promotional piece that's full blown extended trailer for your visual novel, filled with an exciting look at the game, and maybe include interviews or gameplay in your promotional video? Well, this OVA is neither of those things. Instead, this adaptation just crams a bunch of stuff from the game into 20 minutes without consideration to making it coherent in an way, effectively making this a complete mess that confuses people who have played the game, and is probably off-putting to people who might be potential players. Which just begs the question of why would you make such a cut down version of something like a visual novel novel if it's just going to end up as a complete mess. You might as well have just saved the money, time, and effort. And along with poorly telling it's story, the animation isn't much better. A lot of the time the animation is just 1 frame of a character standing their with 2 or 3 frames of animation for their mouth to move. Other times when there is some animation, it's the bare minimum to call it animation. And a lot of the backgrounds seem like rough sketches that the animation team had to cobble together and color in because they didn't have the time or budget to make them actually look good. And that's just the 2D animation. I want to call the 3D animation better, but I think that might be a result of just how cheap the 2D animation looks. Initial D Fourth Stage, from a series infamous for it's awkward handling of CGI, came out around the same time as Skelter+Heaven, and it's CGI was much better than this. Since there was barely anything to this OVA, I decided to look into the visual novel. And from what I can tell is that it's a rip-off of Evangelion, with giant monsters attacking the city in a similar style and the main character having to deal with personal problems. Just go watch Evangelion. Would I recommend seeing Tenkuu Danzai Skelter+Heaven for a night of watching bad anime? No. It's not entertaining enough to laugh at, and despite it being less than 20 minutes, it's still incredibly painful to watch.
I don't really know what to say other than I am impressed in the most dumb founded way with Idea Factory and their "ideas" during this period. And I can't emphasize this enough with this tittle. From the same creators responsible dubbed "the worst anime ever," Mar of Destruction comes their first draft. Yes fun fact, Mars of Destruction came out during 2005 while Tenkuu Danzato Skelter Heaven came six months before it during 2004. Yes, you read that right, Idea Factory was already doing OVA tie in's for games before these two "wonderful tittle's" like Generation of Chaos, Spectral Force & Gakuentoshi Varanoir Joukan that were below average to just bad in quality. And part that makes Mars of Destruction & Tenkuu Danzato Skelter Heaven is just the clear lack off effort put into them and it shows in all aspects resulting in a 101 in what not to do when producing an Anime Video Original. But that's the part that just messes with my mind Mar of Destruction was their second attempt. And that, they had the galls six months later to try again. And yes their first attempt was way worst, but not by much when comparing it to Mars of Destruction. Anyways let's get this over with, here's a synopsis: In the far off distant future, a mysterious floating entity appears in the center Tokyo. In response, the top secret mission unit the "Alta Mira Agency" or AA is commissioned by the Defense Agency to deal and repel this mysterious invader. Hunagai Otsuya, the one in charge of the robot training and the one responsible for choosing the lead girl who will receive secret training. And through said training will use the "Battle Soles" to push back the enemy even at the cost of their lives. So did that synopsis make some sort of sense? Hopefully it did because the OVA did a terrible job at even doing that. Now let's go over points so that I can drink away the 19 minutes I will never get back. Story: A complete train wreck that also causes a nuclear explosion. And that's putting it lightly. But what do you expect when when you simply cut in game cut scenes with no context that creates useless scenes that does absolutely nothing for the plot. It's a mess that tries to shove everything in 19 minutes which makes it's jarring and a pain to follow. And the things that you can follow like the sub plot romance, the alien beings, the DEEP meaning of the robot's existence and "themes" (or whatever is there) are all pointless because we, again, have on context which means nothing for the viewer. And in a similar vain to Mars of Destruction, are blatant rip offs of others series like Neon Genesis Evangelion. Character: Bland and cut out cardboard cut outs that are just shoved in the viewers face like we are supposed to care. And that the problem with it, with only 19 minutes and clear ripoffs of other successful properties. Which makes plot twist and philosophical revelations, or what ever I witnessed in the end, pointless. And the development for these characters? Out of context in game cut scenes that are poorly edited that had me bawling and laughing in all the wrong reason's. Art and Animation: Similar to it's sister, Mars of Destruction, it is bland and bad. Character design are something from a bad eroge game and that itself feels like an insult to eroge. 2D animation is stiff and low effort. And what they edit together is what makes me laugh in all the wrong ways. Especially with the cuts and how they are sliced just makes it all feel like the company took every measure to make it so that the viewer will not get what is going on. Oh and the 3D animation is like an insult to 3D animation for the time, 2004. And it was clear that they did not have the budget for it in their games so yeah, they probably should have skipped on that part as well. Enjoyment: I mean it had me busting out laughing at how ludicrous that something of this quality could be produced. But other than that even with stupid low expectations and turning off my brain, it just felt like a pointless mess where doing nothing would have been so much better. Conclusion: Similar to Mar of Destruction, it is a clear example of a 101 on what not to do when editing and generally creating an OVA. And that in itself is impressive that a product of this level was not only produced, but was created with all the wrong steps taken. Although I was laughing for the wrong reason while in complete bewilderment, it is not even a case of so-bad-it’s-good because, as I was saying throughout feels like a painful waste of time that actively does everything wrong to make the viewing experience pure torture. But hey, if you still plan to see if that's on you but don't say I didn't warm you. As a whole, stay away from this one.
(TLDR at the bottom, as always, thanks for reading) Revamp of [my MAL Tenkuu Danzai Skelter+Heaven review](https://myanimelist.net/reviews.php?id=391395), also short review. Obligatory Dream moment note: ~!Also, according to Anilist statistics, only a small percentage of people reading this review, are actually followed. So if you ended up liking this review, consider following, it's free, you can always unfollow later. Enjoy the review :)!~
(As per my review policy, there will be no spoilers here) From the creators of Mars Destruction, here we have... Mars of Destruction all over again. To be fair, Skelter Heaven is actually Mars of Destruction's older brother, first appearing in late 2004 (Mars of Destruction was released in 2005). But otherwise the comparisons are inevitable: same director and original creator, both are adaptations of visual novel games, both have a similar alien invasion over Tokyo plot, and both are infamous for their abysmal quality and extreme pointlessness. Then, why is Mars of Destruction more known, while Skelter Heaven fell into obscurity? My guess is that it's because Skelter Heaven is better in almost all aspects, but in a bad way. It has an actually followable plot (at least until two-thirds of the way in, when it begins to randomly jump to exposition flashbacks), there's an actual opening and ending theme and some semblance of a soundtrack, and the "characters" are not idiotic blank slates but instead completely defined by a single trait. Oh, and it lacks Mars of Destruction's intelligence-insulting plot twist. That has to be worth some points. Regardless, Skelter Heaven is a complete waste of 19 minutes of your life. Being better than Mars of Destruction is its only redeemable quality, and it comes at the expense of its memetic potential, which for the most part is not a worthy trade-off. I can think of only one moment of genuine unintentional comedy. The animation in Skelter Heaven is very stiff, and supplemented by some blatantly terrible CGI. The backgrounds lack detail to the point where they seem unfinished. The writing is atrocious, and could perfectly come from the mind of a 12- or 13-year old. As noted above, the characters are distinguishable from one another by the single trait that defines their one-dimensional, extremely linear "personality". Believe it or not, there is some sort of attempt at character development, but it ends up being undescribably pathetic (most of the characters are static anyway). Again, a good part of the story (maybe 80% or more of the backstory) is missing and compressed into a bizarre sequence of confusing, shoehorned flashbacks. The fighting scenes, which comprise more than half of its runtime, are terrible in a very boring way, and 100% feel like "baby's first animated battle". As an adaptation of the game... I mean, at least I can guess what the game is about? Really, Skelter Heaven has a big problem causing any, and I really mean any, impact or impression in its audience. It's not inherently repulsive, it doesn't waste a good premise or offends you in any way, it's not an ironic comedy goldmine. It's just plain boring, yet at the same time it's too short to get you too bored. It's a void, the anime equivalent to intergalactic space, the television equivalent of just pointlessly staring into a black hole, but from a safe distance. It gives little to talk about - I could put spoilers in this review and at most fill an extra couple lines. Oh, and this thing actually tries to do fanservice. The content itself isn't too questionable, but it is about as sexy as you might expect. Veredict: 5/100. Skelter Heaven is too good for a so bad it's good watch, and too bad for literally anything else.