Machines won. Humanity lost. Now a woman and her crew are fighting not to reclaim the planet, but to survive long enough to matter at all. Gall Force operates in the margins of 80s sci-fi paranoia where every victory is temporary and the real enemy isn't interested in negotiation. The OVA format means no padding, no filler, three episodes that move like a ambush, each one stripping away another layer of hope until you understand why the machines were right to be afraid of us.
In 2085, machines are the only victors of the Third World War. Some years earlier, humans found an ancient alien ship beneath the Moon and turned its advanced technology into weapons for the military powers of East and West. Those weapons eventually judged their warlike creators a threat and set out to destroy them. After an evacuation sends 20,000 people to a base on Mars, Sandy Newman leads a band of warriors fighting to take Earth back. Their slim hope is to reach a group of nuclear missiles that were never launched and use them against the machines' citadel in central Australia. Across three OVA episodes, the action mecha story draws heavily on the 1984 film The Terminator.
