Hanappe Bazooka Review

Hi everyone! My Grandma from South Carolina came up last Saturday, so my scheduling this week might be off. On top of that, my friend that was in the Merchant Marines came back recently, so my second review might not get put up this Friday (I’ll be hanging out with him that day). With that said, let’s start off this week with one of the weirdest & wildest OVAs I’ve ever seen, and take a look at Hanappe Bazooka!

Story/Setup
Taken from the anidb page:

“Lecherous high school boy Hanappe is visited by two demons who step from his TV and immediately fall in lust with his mother and sister. The demons turn Hanappe’s home into a meeting ground for their demonic friends and grant Hanappe the power of the Hanappe Bazooka. Now his index finger is capable of both a deadly blast and the ability to drive women in a lustful frenzy, but Hanappe isn’t very good at controlling it and winds up in serious trouble.”

Yep people, this is a strange story. Theirs is only one man who can come up with such a story. A man who’s produced some of the most original, strange, surreal, and dirty shows ever seen by otaku. That man’s name.....is Go Nagai. I love him for his weirdness, and this story is no exception.

Setting
Hanappe Bazooka is split roughly between two settings: the real world, and the supernatural/space world. The real world is nothing special, and is actually kinda forgettable. It’s when the OVA goes to the strange places that things looks fresh & different. There’s the demonic world, outer space, space ships, and a host of other wacky locations. Points for creativity!

Characters
Like pretty much all of Go Nagai’s shows, the cast is a combination of lecherous, kind, odd, sexy, etc. The lead is a lecherous lout that you hate at first, but when he grows a spine & gains something of a heart, you kinda want to cheer him on. You’d got the demons, who are dark, sinister, yet can become incredibly lighthearted & funny. Then there’s the rest of the people, who fall into a soup of standard Go Nagai characters (Standard is being used loosely here). Depending on how you look at it, that last statement is either a good thing or a bad thing.

Animation
Right off the bat, you can tell that this is a Go Nagai title. The girls look lovely/cute/sexy, the guys range from ugly, to gruff, to mildly handsome, and the background & various setting can be either normal or strange looking. As far as the overall look & feel is concerned, Hanappe Bazooka isn’t a bad looking show. You can definitely tell it’s a product of it’s time, but overall it’s an alright looking OVA.

Voice Acting
The copy I downloaded has subtitles. Whether the original version released in the United States had a dub, I’m not certain about that.

Episodes & Episode Length
Hanappe Bazooka is a one-shot movie, clocking in at 45 minutes & 33 seconds. Kinda like Golgo 13 & Gundress from last week, I suggest that you watch this at night!

Availability & Pricing
Now, I do know that this was released in the United States. Put out by ADV Films on the 4th of September in 1992 (That’s the date I saw on Wikipedia), this was a title that was available at that point in time. Now, I can’t even find any of those copies. To make things a little more complicated, I don’t know if this was released on DVD when ADV embraced the format. This is definitely one of the rarest OVAs in the anime world that I’ve encountered to date.

If you would like to download it, then click the link below:

http://www.garoo9.com/elevator_kart/?p=682

Extras/Other
Since I downloaded this, I don’t know what the extras are.

General Impression & Rating
Hanappe Bazooka is a fun OVA. It’s not a perfect OVA by any stretch of the imagination, as it has some problems. Despite that, this is a rather goofy, dirty, and all around good time of a movie. I recommend watching this: perhaps for curiosity’s sake, or for the fact that you can say that you watched it.

Hanappe Bazooka gets a 7.5 out of 10.

See you all later this week. Until then, stay Otaku!