I just recently finished watching the latest Leiji Matsumoto show Ozma and I realized a couple of things while watching it. First I have to say that for what its worth the show was pretty fun even if it was obvious that the end product really lacked originality; feeling like some odd mishmash of Matsumoto's previous works but lacking any of the emotional depth. And why did it lack the depth, well that is simple the show was rather short and that hurt it. Now don't get me wrong I have nothing against the short and sweet approach, and have seen some rather good short stories but the scope of which Ozma plays out and length which it was given; six episode, will undoubtedly be the key defining aspect of this series.
Before I continue blabbing on let me tell you a bit about the show itself. If you don't know Ozma was a supposed "lost story" of acclaimed Manga-ka Leiji Matsumoto that was just recently "discovered" and put into production to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Wowwow TV station. There really is no doubt that the budget of the show was pretty big with this being both an anniversary project and a new Matsumoto series. The CGI used in the show for the ships looked really great, you can tell a lot of time and effort went into rendering them. A short anniversary project with a good budget is pretty much what Ozma turned out to be.
It is because of that, I honestly didn't view the series as a TV show but more like a TV Special or made for TV movie. Six twenty-five minute long episodes each with about three minutes dedicated to an Opening and Ending song, when you cut out the length of the songs and add it all up you're looking at just a bit over two hours. That's a very small run time and you would have to keep tight control of it to make sure the quality was any good. And that's the greatest flaw right there; the show was just not controlled enough, the timing was off, and the characters really didn't have much to do until the end of the show.
When Ozma works it really does work. The audience is treated to great submarine battles that play out as a game of whits with nice animation taking place in an interesting environment. The desert setting is probably the most original thing about the show and does have a nice pay-off with some great effects and fun Sci-Fi concepts. But when Ozma fumbles, oh boy it fumbles. Boring and bland exposition, characters scenes that don't go anywhere simply because the characters are just too one dimensional and boring and a story resolution that is pretty obvious right from the get-go. But to be fair on the characters, while they may not shine all that much the cast (especially the crew of the Bardanos) is fun to watch, its just that none of it ever goes anywhere.The show did manage to throw in one decent devlopment at the end for the masked character Gido, which was a nice turn of events considering how obvious his identity really was. I actually got a good laugh outta it since people have been making jokes about his Paper-Thin Disguise since before the show even came out. Thinking to myself how he was such an obvious trope for the majority of the show and yet they actually did do something sorta interesting with his character at the very end just made me laugh.
For me the best character in the show would have to be Bainas since she plays up the coolness factor the whole time and that was just plain fun. She was the most interesting character to watch for me simply because of that. The main lead Sam Coyne never amounted to much nor did he really ever do anything, he mostly was a static character, only getting one moment of character development that never was actually resolved. Sam felt like a tag along for the majority of the series, while Bainas was the active player in all the action giving us some really great battles.
At the end of the day I would recommend Ozma to those who are interested, but I wouldn't put it high on your to watch list. It is a short and pretty show but it is not a very compelling or emotional show nor is the writing anything beyond the typical Sci-Fi fare. But it does offer some fun battles and interesting concepts such as desert submarine warfare. By no means is Ozma a bad show but it is not a great show ether, I would feel safe putting it somewhere in the middle.
