If you liked the YAMATO movies but, like many of us, thought it was much too melodramatic, then SUPER ATRAGON is the OVA series for you! There's lots of action, interesting characters, badly dressed "aliens" with odd weapons, buckets of fatalities, and a really cool retro-tech battleship that looks like a giant Swiss Army-shark.
This second episode in the series finds the Undersea Battleship Ra kicking Subterranean butt both above and below the waves. That's right, it flies! Well, why not? The Japanese seem to have a thing for flying sea ships. There are great gobs of action at the beginning and end of this OVA, with a fairly large chunk of exposition and a slightly mushy love story in the middle. We find that those big killer Tootsie Rolls are part of a plan to saturate the surface of the Earth with high intensity microwave radiation. The Subterraneans are trying to stop the surface humans from destroying the world. They're just going to cook it. Huh?
Obviously the Subterraneans' planning skills are as bad as their fashion sense. Concerned about mankind's propensity for war, they test us by allowing both the U.S. and Japan to find a new energy source with almost limitless power. We scored rather poorly on this test by using the new technology to build super-weapons instead of affordable housing. But talk about your bad plans! Whose bright idea was it to give the monkeys a big stick? If you're not sure about wanting to shoot Bob, giving him an assault rifle and a running start isn't very smart.
Enter the monkey wrench. Annette and Avatar are Subterranean observers who are supposed to report the results of this test. Both end up overstepping their mission by taking opposite sides in the fight over mankind's status as either neighbors or pests. With Annette's help, the crew of the Ra hope to stop Avatar's plan to wipe out the surface dwellers.
I may poke fun at it, but the whole thing works. The animation is high quality, despite the occasional recycling of action sequences. This is by no means uncommon, but I was surprised to notice so much of it in only the second OVA. I particularly like the mix of advanced technology with World War II designs. This reminded me of Disney's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, and it is interesting to see echoes of that film in this one. There is the advanced submarine sailing under no flag, the secret base that gets destroyed because the rest of the world finds it, and the central motif of humanity's warlike nature.
The symphonic soundtrack is quite rousing and viewers will probably be repeating commands along with the executive officer. However, it is pretty much just the one song all the way through, at least whenever something interesting is happening.
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that every captain of a flying ship seems to have some sort of eye problem? Harlock wore a patch, Global wore his hat so low that no one could see his eyes, and the master of the Ra has a nasty little scar along his left eye. Even Bogart, the captain of the U.N. fleet, cannot decide what color his glasses should be!
This is a good show with lots of fun. Little matter that the North American title is pretty much meaningless. (The original Japanese, SHIN KAITEI GUNKAN, means "New Undersea Battleship".) This episode's ending sets up for more adventures as the Ra gets ready to go looking for Avatar's buddies. From the looks of the first two OVAs, SUPER ATRAGON 3 will be worth the wait.

SUPER ATRAGON 2 Original Story by Oshikawa Shunro Copyright © 1995 Kaitei Gunkan Seisaku Iinakai English subtitled version Copyright © 1996 Toho International Co. Ltd Subtitled VHSSA/002S $29.95 Dubbed VHSSA/002D $29.95 60 Minutes Released in the U.S.A. and Canada by ADV Films