The movie is set two hundred years after a previous war and most of mankind is still living a modest lifestyle, based partially on medieval times. The opening credits explain it like this: "200 years after the space/time collapse, ruined robots were accidentally discovered. The natives called them, "DECIMATORS", and used them for military operations. Decimators triggered a lengthy full scale war. The results left the world with two major powers, "Rivilia" and "Zafrin"."

The six episodes, Fool's Choice, Where Angels Fear To Tread, Fugitives, Searcher, Destroyers, and Those Who Wish Tomorrow, all focus on the adventures of a young man, Lean, who started off by working as a salvage expert on a private ocean platform. After his boss is killed, he grudgingly joins the military in order to save the business for the widow (out of honor). He is befriended by a mercenary and learns to pilot one of the advanced decimators with skill and precision, hoping to stay alive long enough to protect a young woman who he falls in love with, yet may be an enemy spy.

The show was based on the original Orguss series but set 200 years in the future. The cast uses the same robots from that series so fans may appreciate the retro look of the whole OVA. There were a great many inconsistencies with the plot and characterizations but the fact that it handled some of the political intrigue so well made it worth checking out. The original creator of the show, Fumihiko Takayama, is best known for his Mobile Suit Gundam series, a fan favorite.

Okay, the show was not exactly the best written robot series to come out of Japan but it was worth a rating of Rent It or better, depending on your personal tastes. Rather than release it in two separate volumes as some of the bigger companies do, I have to applaud Manga's decision to keep it all together on a single DVD. There was enough to like here to overlook many of the flaws of the show (and DVD) but it doesn't exactly compare favorably to shows produced in the last five years.

Picture: The picture was presented in the original 1.33:1 ratio full frame color it was shot in. There were limitations with the source material that included print scratches and some minor fading of the colors but it wasn't too bad for such an old show. The DVD transfer seemed pretty good with only the occasional compression artifact and some minor mosquito noise to contend with.

Sound: The sound was presented with a choice of a 5.1 Dolby Digital surround English track or a 2.0 Dolby Digital track in either English or Japanese. There were optional English subtitles but even when I opted to leave them off, they showed up on my screen. I listened to each track for a while and came to the conclusion that Manga only had a monaural track but put it on the DVD for bragging rights as there was no separation between the channels and most of the sound came from the front speaker. For the most part, it was clean with only minor defects (mostly on the English tracks) but the age of the source material showed more than once. The subtitles were okay but I noticed that they weren't corresponding to the character's lip movements a lot in a few episodes (the timing was way off).

Extras: The only extras were a short photogallery, a paper insert poster, and some trailers.

Final Thoughts: The show had its ups and downs with enough for fans to appreciate more than once yet I really can't justify rating it higher with the various problems encountered and limitations of the source material. There was enough padding going on here that it could've been cut in half and be more entertaining (and some of the plot and side issues were really weak). Check it out before buying it but check it out.