Junk Boy Review

Hi guys! Well, my Mom got sick this past weekend. She’s asleep on the couch, taking down water & crackers, then vomiting up said water & crackers on occasion. On top of that, I was hanging out with my friend from the Merchant Marines this past weekend (That I mentioned last week), and I was relatively tired when I came back home. Luckily, I got some energy back to put this review up today. Tragically, it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen, but let’s not waste more time, and look and the rather horrid OVA, simply known as.......Junk Boy.

Story/Setup
Taken from the anidb page:

“Yamazaki Ryouhei is a cool twenty-three year old, with an extremely high sex drive. A smooth talker with the lady killing eyes and a winning smile, we follow him in his never-ending search for the perfect woman. When Yamazaki catches the eye of the beautiful senior editor, Oda Yuki, you know he's not just going far, he's going all the way.

He lucks into a job at Potato Boy magazine that seems just made for him, but just how far can you get if your only hobby is looking at naked women?

Now he's aiming for the top, turning Potato Boy magazine into one hell of a publication. No one expected things to get so hot, so quickly, but Yamazaki knows what he wants and he knows how to get it. Don't think he will take no for an answer!”

That’s it. No deeper meaning, no intricate plot, no nothing. It’s simple, straight, and to the point. By contrast, it’s weak, basic, and rather boring. Not only that, it’s doesn’t even try to be even a tiny bit clever. Junk Boy’s story is just plain bad!

Setting
Although Junk Boy takes place in a urban environment, it never says where the OVA takes place (If it does mention where it takes place, then I didn’t hear it. For the sake of location, let’s assume that Junk Boy takes place in Tokyo). Other than that, this is perhaps the most boring looking show. There’s no originality to everything, and just when you suspect that there’s a shred of something even remotely original, it’s taken away by how bland everything else is. Even when the OVA travels to a more seedy locale, there’s just no energy to them.

Characters
I haven’t talked about this yet, but Junk Boy is the biggest Goldenboy ripoff I’ve ever seen. It’s the Demon Fighter Kocho of Goldenboy, and nowhere is this more apparent than in it’s characters. They all feel like pale mockeries of the various characters that appear within the much superior Goldenboy. The biggest culprit of this character ripoff is the OVAs lead male, Yamazaki Ryouhei. They try to infuse as much of Goldenboy’s lead male character, Kintaro Oe, as much as possible, and they fail spectacularly!

The only thing that Ryouhei has in common with Kintaro is the fact that he’s a horny bastard, but where Kintaro knew how to control his urges (To the best that he could, anyways), Ryouhei pounces on just about anything he sees. On top of that, he’s nowhere near as clever as Kintaro was, and is hardly as charming to boot.

Animation
The only area of Junk Boy that I’m gonna give at least some positivity towards is it’s animation quality. It’s still not one of the greatest looking OVAs that was ever released, but there’s some charm to it. For starters, the women in this look nice. They got some curves to them, and their bodies seem to be correctly proportioned for their specific age. The men, while not the most handsome looking, all have their own look to them. The only one that doesn’t really have any good looks to their name is Ryouhei. He kinda looks like Michael Jackson coming out of the grave, who went to get plastic surgery to look normal again, then somehow got lit on fire again. Yeah that’s a little extreme, but you gotta trust me on this.

Voice Acting
The voice acting in Junk Boy is.....okay, at best. All of the voice actors seem to put in the minimal of effort. Curiously, this works in favor for some of the characters (Mainly the main character), but it flat out fails for everybody else.

Episodes & Episode Length
Junk Boy, fortunately, is a single 45-minute OVA. A curious fact about this is that it’s essentially two stories in one movie, making me think that this was 2 episodes at one point. Luckily, they put the two together, perhaps in an effort to lessen the pain.

Availability & Pricing
Junk Boy is perhaps one of the hardest titles to locate. Given the fact that it was only a VHS release, it makes locating a tape all the harder. Normally I’d say go to Amazon to find one, but at the moment there aren’t any on the site to be found. Even used copies can’t be bought off of the website!

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

Funny fact: the English voice actor for Ryouhei (Alan Marriott), is the same guy that voiced Daizaburo "Eddie" Ban from Mad Bull 34. Small world, isn’t it?

General Impression & Rating
Normally I’d say something about how bad Junk Boy is, but these two comments from the anidb page fit this OVA the best:

“Watch Golden Boy instead.”

“Only reason you would watch this is by accident thinking it was Golden Boy, leaving you with anger that people recommended it to you, lol!”

Junk Boy gets a 2 to 3 out of 10.

See you all later this week, when we’ll look at something that’s properly scandalous. Until then, stay Otaku!