A 1987 mecha OVA that swings for the fences on concept: 300 years of Earth-Crest war boiling down to one automated dreadnought, one half-human kid, one cyborg, and a Crest girl who shouldn't exist. The action sequences have real weight and detail when they land, and the premise is exactly the kind of ambitious sci-fi territory the 80s owned. The direction is scattered enough to bury what should be a killer story, but the skeleton underneath is strong enough that fans still dig it out.
In the year 2400, Earth and the Halmacfutz, a people known as the Crest Race for the tattoo-like markings that grant them psychic powers, are at peace after a war that lasted three hundred years, though old resentments linger. A new threat, the Automatons, now infiltrates Crest systems and turns their machines against them. One of these has seized the vast colony battleship Peansard and killed everyone aboard. A false distress call lures the Earth ship Tetraskelion, and attack craft from the Peansard strike both the advance search team and the ship itself, killing nearly the whole crew. Those left include Galory, a boy who is half human and half Crest; Nikolai, a war-weary human cyborg soldier; the Crest warrior Jennings; the ship's AI, LM; and Althea, a Crest girl they rescue. They must board the Peansard to save any survivors of the advance party and destroy the Type-38 Automaton in its core before it spreads further. Based on a manga, this single-episode OVA is a mecha science fiction action story.
