Kimera – review

Director: Kazuyoshi Yokota

Release date: 1996

Contains spoilers

This was a one off OVA anime based on a two part manga and released in 1996 (not 1997 as imdb claims). I have used the English voice actor names as it was the dubbed version I saw. Now I do prefer original language and subtitles but, honestly, I don’t think it’d make a blind bit of difference to this one.

pod

The film begins with something falling to Earth, we see a flash in the sky and then a hunter and his dog find debris – it is a pod of some alien kind and the occupant is gone. The hunter sees something in the trees and falls, meaning the tentacles get the dog first and drain it to a husk. He is next.

Jay (Tristan McAvery) and Osamu (Brett Weaver) are cereal salesmen (I kid you not) driving to get Osamu to a date that Jay has set up – it would seem. Osamu is wearing what amounts to a cat bell on a chain – because he likes it. Jay suddenly stops as there is a van on fire and men with guns – air force, he assumes, as he questions them. Suddenly something (a figure we later discover to be called Kianu (Bryan Bounds)) smashes into a vehicle, exploding it and all hell breaks loose.

Osamu finds the pod

Jay ends up in the woods, seeing a security guard drained and mummified. Osamu ends up in a truck and facing a pod. Inside it is a… well she looks male, is later revealed to be a hyper-fertile female and then revealed to be hermaphroditic… Whatever, Osamu is fascinated and his bell wakes him/her up (by the way he/she is Kimera). They kiss through the glass. Kianu appears and is going to blast her when he is forced off by the twisted looking Ginzu (Guil Lunde).

Ginzu

Confused, you will be. This is because the story makes little sense. Jay and Osamu end up with the military and are told by Dr. Gibson (Rick Peeples) that if they forget what they have seen they can leave! Why? Because Gibson happens to be Jay’s dad! Now remember they were transporting Kimera for some reason… as though she/he had just been found… well the crash was two weeks ago. Then again evil Dr Fender (Phil Ross) has been working with Ginzu.

inter species kiss

Gibson is called away and leaves his security card, this means jay and Osamu can take it to do some snooping, ostensibly to let Jay discover what is going on so he can trust his father again. Kianu breaks in and starts draining security guards (by biting them and sucking all the fluids out. Some connection lets Osamu find Kimera and her alien pod has her name written in English, he lets her out and a battle occurs.

Kianu

Okay… cut to the chase… Kimera is the hybrid daughter of an alien and a human designed to breed as the brothers Kianu and Ginzu’s generation cannot. Kianu loves Kimera and, having got her to drink his blood, has promised her he won’t let her be a mother (essentially an industrial baby machine) and before all this occured she hung out with dragons (whatever!) She is so hyper fertile that, if she shouldn’t find a man she can produce her own sperm.

drained

The aliens came to earth generations ago (hence vampire legends) got their asses kicked by the sound of it and now Ginzu wants to subjugate the planet. You know what; I’m losing the will typing this. The story was bonk, it was the worst rather than the best of anime/manga story telling. There were no likable characters, things relied on coincidence and leaps of faith and there was nothing that tied the audience’s sympathy with the story or the characters.

All in all this was a poor anime and the animation, now, seemed dated as well. 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.