An oldie, yes, but is it a goodie?

Well, let's look at the plot. Taking place in 2019, we have John Stalker, research pilot for the Central Guard Company. He's testing a new suit designed by Leyla to help people in the city of Cyber-wood's violent slums called Cancer. Leyla's effort is competing with the one run by Adler, who has created the Alpha Project to indiscriminately kill the citizens.

Adler sabotages Leyla's suit to kill John. Before the trap can be sprung, however, mysterious energies attack John and injure him. At the hospital, he is kidnapped by several strange men, but a second mysterious energy attack frees him. John proceeds to walk to the Cancer slums, and winds up in the middle of a demonic ritual.

Adler and Leyla decide to search for John after they remember he was born and raised in Cancer. Adler finds John at the ritual and promptly shoots him. As Adler rejoins Leyla, John appears at their car with three bullets in his face! He grows into a metallic monster and attacks the duo, seriously disfiguring Adler.

The next day, Leyla finds herself talking to Doctor Volks, lead scientist of the Lords of Voldo. He tells her John is one of several boys taken from Cancer twelve years ago and implanted with "seeds of hatred" to help certain demon creatures come into existence. At the proper time, the group forcibly merges the boys with a powerful metal called Astenite to create Devil Armors. These beings will act as enforcers for their god Voldo. However, doubt within the host will make that person lose control of his armor.

Meanwhile, amidst the carnage and destruction he's causing in Cyber-wood, John begins to cry into his avatar, Saldo.

What follows are some pretty decent action sequences. Well, decent for a late 1980s OVA with a low to mid-size budget. The animation quality fluctuates from sometimes good to mostly average or below average. I really liked the music though, which consists of some standard instrumentals and a bunch of high-powered heavy metal vocals by a band called Trash Gang.

CYBERNETICS GUARDIAN, or SEIJUKI CYGUARD as it's known in Japan, was directed by Ohata Koichi, who seemed to follow animation trends during the late 80s, yet didn't take anything new into the 90s. In fact he seemed to forget what little he knew when he directed GENOCYBER and M.D. GEIST II. In all honesty, CYGUARD may have been his worst effort to date.

As for the English track, I found myself enjoying it more than I enjoy most dubs these days. The people playing John and Adler gave decent performances. As for Leyla's American actress, I found I liked her better than the Japanese performer, who kept doing the same exact screeching scream in several scenes. Admittedly, this is probably the audio editor's fault, but it began to get on my nerves. At least the English VA did not do this, and she sounded competent in her role, so she gets a few points from me.

The video quality on the disc is pretty good too. It's generally clear with only a couple splotches near the end. I could tell they actually put some effort into the transfer and encoding when I got to the Japanese trailer for CYGUARD, which seemed to be taken from a laserdisc with no enhancement and placed on the DVD as an afterthought.

Still, there are a few decent looking U.S. trailers, a character gallery and ten chapter breaks, which is a good amount for a 45-minute video. There's also something for DVD-ROM players, but I don't possess the equipment to test that out.

In the end, I'd say CYBERNETICS GUARDIAN doesn't do anything new or groundbreaking for the anime medium. In fact, sometimes, it can be downright redundant. However, if you find this at a local video store, there'd be no shame in checking it out, even with your friends around. Partially recommended.