Anime From The Vaults: Love City (1986)

In which I dig out an anime cassette that I haven't watched in ...(counts on fingers)...about 10 years.

  Tokyo, somewhere in the future.  "Headmeters" are powerful espers who can do all sorts of cool psionic shit - flying, blowing stuff up, all that jazz. Kei was a failed attempt at creating a Headmeter who has done a runner with his daughter Ai,  ex cop Raiden and a large cat that's way smarter than it ought to be. 
 Kei's bosses want Kei back or dead. And they really want Ai back since she's some sort of living psionic booster.
  In the process stuff gets broken, people die messily and some seriously weird shit happens. 

  During the initial anime boom the various companies quickly established a House Style. Manga Video tended towards SciFi and Horror aimed at the "Lad" crowd, the bloodier the better (Urotsukidoji, Fist Of The North Star) . Anime Projects released gentler, subtitled material forthe more hardcore Anime fanbase (Urusei Yatsura, Oh My Goddess)  while Kiseki sat somewhere in between the two (Black Magic M66, Plastic Little)

 And Western Connection released a bunch of stuff that they could get hold of cheaply. quickly slap subtitles on and dump onto the market with infamously poor tape quality.

 Even so, sometimes they released some decent stuff. The Lupin III movies and Devil Hunter Yohko were definitely worth buying. Ladius...um...not so much.
  So I had to wonder how well "Love City" would stand up after all this time.

For an anime from the 1980s, Love City holds up surprisingly well although some bits better than others.

 The animation isn't bad, especially given the era, although it is a bit strange seeing certain characters mugging like they just popped in from the "Urusei Yatsura" comedy next door.
 Espers making people explode followed by borderline slapstick is just odd.

Does this look like a man in a Dystopian SF/Horror?

On the subject of weird, there's some creative ideas in this OVA, starting with the aforementioned Headmeters
"Why are they called that?" I hear you ask cautiously.

  Every time a Headmeter uses their power, a handy guide appears on their forehead. Head...Meter. See?

 The serious looking redhead above is K2. Later on she gets a costume change.

 If I haven't said it already, this is not a comedy so don't ask me why she's dressed as a bunny. 

One of the villains is a wrinkly old dude in a robot suit. 

The mental image you just had is wrong. 

Here he is. 

 I don't know what that liquid is but I'm fairly certain it's at least 40% piss. 

Then there's this bit. 

We haven't got to the ending yet. The ending is where it gets really weird. 

 Allow me to go off on a tangent for a minute.  I've been watching anime now for about 20 years so I'm kinda used to it. 

But back when this stuff was just starting to trickle into the UK there was nothing around to compare. "Mindblowing" is not the word. Anime introduced me to whole new levels of bizarre. 

  The storyline is fairly simple by contrast. Bad guys want the girl. Good guys want to stop them. Bad guys want to bring about a messy armageddon. Good guys want to stop that too.  Simple but it's done decently and with some little wrinkles to keep things interesting. 

It goes without saying that the climax involves flesh squirming and mutating in ways that only happen in horror anime. Luckily there's no tentacle rape involved, which as far as I'm concerned is a bonus.  

To sum up: Love City is very much a product of it's era and is not without flaws. That doesn't mean it's without merit and if you like your anime bloody and a bit strange then Love City might be worth keeping an eye out for.