Anime of Yesteryear Presents: “That little ol’ OVA: Riki-Oh”

So, here I am chilling out on a typical Friday night with no worries, no cares and above all, no date, as I happen to see how far down the whiskey bottle goes when it comes to pulling yet another boxy anime tape off the shelf. After some time in the darkness of “over exceeding” a bit to much, I came to in a world of a desolate Japanese city, filled with heavy smog of radiation and abandonment, as I happen to see far into the distance. I then hear a flute tune pierce my ears, with such beauty and sorrow as the tune danced in my eardrum. I look over to see a younger man in a camouflage poncho with a green leaf up to his mouth as he plays the peaceful tune and then looks up at me. He then begins to tell me his tale of how destiny seems to bring him from one Hell to another. This is the tale of Riki-Oh Saiga…

Ok, so for those of you who know what Riki-Oh’s about, you think I’m going to talk about the (overly) awesome live action movie based on the manga by Masahiko Takajo. Well, you would be half right. I am going to talk about Riki-Oh, but only the anime that is a condensed version of the movie, but you get the same story (only the movie is SO MUCH BETTER). Throughout this review, I’m going to use some captions in words to emphasize how crazy some of this stuff happens, and to use some pop/video game culture punching references, so try and keep up kids. So lets Hebrew Fist our way into the wild and crazy world of Riki-Oh: The Wall of Hell OVA.

The OVA starts us off in the year 199x in Yokohama (and it would not surprise me if this was the same 199x as Fist of the North Star series timeline) as the world in this “year” is full of “high radioactivity rain” and “magnetic field warnings” on a daily basis (these are in the OVA I kid you not) where we get to a man in a camo poncho on a stoop blowing into a leaf to make music that most people can play from any toy recorder flute (its all in the tongue kids) as we seem him suddenly stop playing and stands in the middle of the road. While this “mysterious” man does this, we cut to a Cadillac driving down the streets of Yokohama with a fat old guy in the back trying to score some boob action from two honeys on his lap, when the driver notices the man in the street. Before the car can come to a screeching halt, we see the stranger raise his fist to his face with the Star of David etched into his backhand and proceeds to PUNCH INTO THE FRONT OF THE CAR!! This “Falcon” of a punch is able to turn the caddy into an accordion with the driver halfway out the front of the car in a bloody and disfigured mess. The old guy and some bodyguard of his get out to take on this stranger where we see the man in camo punches the bodyguard hard enough in the jaw to RIP IT OFF!! The old guy tries to shoot the man but is stopped by a flying high kick to shatter one of the legs and gets another “Busta Wolf” to the skull to leave a fist impression, killing the old man. We then know who this mysterious man is, which he goes by the one and only name of Riki-Oh Saiga.

For Riki crimes of being a total bad mofo, he gets the hammer of the Japanese judicial system and gets sent to Koboku prison for 9 years. After some shots of prison life with the prisoners making shelves and having a sentence of continuous woodshop class, we cut to the washroom of Wakamatsu being harassed by another inmate Iwata due to Waka getting out on parole. Iwata throws Waka into a shelf for no reason other than to be (one of) the alpha male of the prison. Waka looses his cool and attacks Iwata with a wood scraper, only to be tripped by one of Iwata goons and Iwata using the scraper to leave a nasty scar on Waka face. The guards come in, Iwata says “oh its an accident” and carry off the injured Waka. With Iwata talking up his victory to his running crew, we then see him trip and fall on a plank of nails facing straight up and Iwata gets his hand and eye into swiss cheese. It was Riki who set this up for Iwata and tells him to watch his step, and walks off blowing on his leaf. Iwata, having his eye, hand and pride poked “full of holes”, gets one of the guards to set up an ambush for Riki by using the fattest man there, Bandoh. During this Riki decides to pay his respects to Waka, by breaking out of his cell the only way he wants to, BY PUNCHING THE CELL WALL TO GET OUTSIDE! Once out, he meets the guards who are carrying the corpse of Waka off the grounds handcuffed. Riki states that his freedom is granted when he died and breaks the cuffs off, then Riki gives Waka the wooden train he made for his son and walks off.

Next day in the showers, Riki is confronted by Bandoh who states he is promised all the food in the world for his fat self to eat if he defeats Riki. Riki gets a backhand from Bandoh, only to laugh it off and punches Bandoh once for the deathblow. Iwata decides to jump in with a nail being used as a weapon to stab Riki. Riki counters this by using his hand to catch the fist, which then the nail impales into his hand while he crushes Iwata stabbing hand and sends another Jew Death Fist to Iwata body with enough force to have his entrails BLOW OUT OF HIS BODY FROM THE OTHER SIDE! With Riki actions in check from the corrupt prison guards, he gets sent to isolation for 30 days. We then see a dream or flashback of Riki at a grave site for someone by the name of Bi-Rei with the image of the Swastika inside the Star of David. Yes, in the year 199x, the Jews and Germans have put aside there differences of what happened in WWII and join there two beliefs into one, for the purpose of making the martial “of-all” arts of this dreaded decade. With Riki about to take his life, an old man approaches Riki and tells him about his destiny, and to stop him from killing himself and the dream ends. So what will become of Riki? Can Riki get out of this “Hell” alive? Find out… for yourself.

I am going to stop here in my review, because in this 45 minute OVA, I only talked about maybe 15 minutes of what happened. And boy, does it get crazier from there. Riki-Oh is about one of the many great things you will ever get to witness in your lifetime, and to me, it has one of the best stories you will ever get to know about (through the manga of course). I didn’t even get into the fights with the bosses of the “wings” in the prison Riki is at, or who the warden is, and the more ridiculous stuff that happens from there. Truth be told, the live action movie is actually better represented in the manga because the live action movie is SO MUCH MORE AWESOME than the OVA. I mean shoot, the Daily Show had a clip of the movie in their intros back in the day!!!!

So yes, I recommend EVERYONE ON THIS PLANET gets to witness Riki-Oh for the first and many times after the first time seeing this. Ill say watch the live action movie first, then the OVA. There is one more OVA after this that I have not seen, so I don’t know how insane that will get. If you have enjoyed this review and reading everything about Riki-Oh I care to mention, then feel free to comment, or bake me a cake, or a phone number for you ladies out there what want a Riki-Oh in there lives, its cool.

Thanks again for reading, and check my blog over at Anime of Yesteryear. See yea next time…

Final Thoughts: