athena.hessel - 2014-12-13 07:45:10

Bobby ni Kubittake, or "Bobby's in Deep, feels much like an experimental film as it tests many different artistic techniques and tosses them all together. First of all, this is a mid-80's movie, so the base style of visuals and sound should be understood before looking beyond. A lot of the experience feels synonymous from other things made around the time to an extent, but Bobby's in Deep is different in its execution and its direction. It presents a setup that doesn't feed the viewer everything off a silver platter and expects a bit of focus and thinking to understand everything that's going on and maybe even interpret some deeper meaning to it that I could see being formed.

From the moment upon viewing the art style, quality, and color-design of Bobby's in Deep, it's clear that this is an old OVA. However, watching further in will smoke out a more unique affair. The direction is the leading strength of Bobby's in Deep. Although it works with a seemingly limited budget as a whole, it weighs everything out in lightly commendable way, but the style the direction forms will be something that only a small niche of viewers will likely find pleasing. It really does feel experimental as at some moments the artsy change in visuals will be slowly transitioned into, while some other times it's more jutting. Also, the lack of consistent movement throughout the OVA makes an unfavorable contrast, being a large amount of screen panning. There are fantastic moments of animation though, one being all-too-similar to the music video "Take On Me" (interestingly both this and the music video were made in 1985). The visuals keep interest throughout, but not all of it feels in the same vein.

The beginning features a girl dancing in a peculiar manner around her brother, and while there's no hint at incest in the story, there didn't seem to be any other logical/literal explanation for her bizarre attitude than something along those lines. That is one example towards the direction itself as to how it actually isn't flawless for being one of the leading factors in the OVA. The mood of the OVA will always feel conflicting with the consistent change in the color format, and from the intentions behind the colors at some points. When there is more love, or hope, in the air, the scene will tend to shine bright white. When reality tries to kick in more, the scenery will turn darker. In that way it works, however, it only does when revolving around the main character. The intentions of other characters will always feel diabolical in the moment, but later having that mood feel as though it wasn't supposed to be felt at all by the characters acting in an entirely different manner. This can be seen in multiple side characters, the sister being an example in that beginning scene. Just about every character in this OVA made me misunderstand their true nature near the beginning, and it took some thinking afterwards beyond the artsy nature to make a bit more sense of some of it.

Don't be fooled by these thoughts though, as the story is in no way complicated in more literal terms. It more-or-less is about a slightly-misguided, young biker trying to be more forceful in how he feels his life should be. He treats everything dynamically and does what he feels like doing in the moment. He wasn't an agreeable character in some of his thoughts, and I actually found him to be somewhat immature in a good deal of his lines. What led me off-guard though was, while I still feel I didn't misunderstand the main character, the story feels as though it glorifies him by the end. The main character was understandable to an extent in how he wanted to act on his interests, but that isn't exactly a respectable trait all of the time. People have responsibilities and are more respected when they are more respectful themselves. I feel the nature of the story was confused about its characters when adding in the strange directing. Much of it didn't seem to connect, but maybe that was the goal. It certainly made a more-or-less plain story more memorable, I'll give it that.

Bobby's in Deep is an OVA featuring a basic plot-line and some worthwhile, experimental visuals. While the visuals serve interesting throughout, they seem to be made to go along with a different story than is being presented. The music is what one should expect from the 80's, and there are some male-vocal tracks. I didn't find most of them that enjoyable, but the last one was slightly catchy. It kinda killed the enjoyment of the vocal tracks that the OVA would tend to do more panning while the tracks were playing, making me almost wish for them to finish so the animation would get back on track. The characters aren't that deep, but the disparity from how they are presented to how they literally are made them a tad interesting. The plot is still nothing special and is basically a run-away story, but the draw is how Bobby's in Deep performs it all. From the length, Bobby's in Deep is recommendable to everyone who can tolerate older art-designing and music.