OK, what we have here is an OAV from 1991 called The Humanoid, which ended up on my netflix queue while attempting to find a much weirder thing of similar vintage and title. So essentially at this point I am just grabbing things absolutely at random and watching them. Let's see if I make any interesting Discoveries!
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OK, we've got a Star Wars text scroll, we've got an alien race called Megalos, they may or may not suffer from Megalomania... and now we have someone trying to be all deep about being in space... and wow. We have the thick lined art of the 80s and early 90s, combined with the disgustingly bad animation quality of today! It's ALMOST the worst of both worlds, but I like this sort of art. Now we have the crazy upbeat theme song as Clearly A Badguy is getting into his limo and driving across the countryside. Meanwhile, a pink bird lands on the shoulder of oh man the eyes! Female characters in this thing have huge freaking eyes even in the context of bad anime. Like, they go all the way out to the edges of their faces huge. That's Not Right.
Anyway, while I've been freaking out about eyes, the opening theme song has ended, and I guess the actual plot started up and I should be paying attention. Seriously though, the eyes are freaky. Mainly just due to the contrast of the much much much smaller eyes on all male characters. So anyway, this generic main character type named Eric is apparently going to visit his girlfriend on this here jungley planet, and for totally arbitrary reasons, his sucky spaceship starts to crash, so him and his token black guy partner have to bail out into an escape pod... which is then attacked by a pair of little fighter drone things, causing them to abandon THAT and dive into the river. Yeesh, SOMEONE evidently has overprotective parents.
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Cut to Evil Badguy, whose name is apparently Libero, being pleased that these totally random people were shot down and presumably killed. His advisor has a pretty awesomely huge bald noggin and a beard, and is saying what gives? Apparently, the local ruins have a lost technology awesome spaceship which apparently he just wants so he can salvage the power source on it... which really doesn't strike me as very good justification for killing anyone who wanders by the area. The second part of his evil plan is to bring back the Megalomaniacal princess to their homeworld, which again, doesn't really justify KILL EVERYONE YOU SEE as a policy.
Meanwhile, Eric and associate find the robot girl a bird was landing on the shoulder of during the intro when I got all freaked out by the eyes. Apparently Eric's girlfriend's dad decided to build an android out of sheer boredom or something, which is probably important what with being on the box art and being the titular character and all. Anyway, eventually Eric meets up with his girlfriend, who is EXTREMELY ANNOYING and they take their hover-80s-sportscar down to the beach. Robogirl tags along to perform a scientific analysis on what makes for an a romantic getaway spot, apparently.
OK, Robogirl is one of THOSE robots. "Doesn't your databank contain detailed records about your wife?" "Are [the people getting all lovey-dovey on the balcony] performing astrological observations?" This is going to get old fast. She's also go blue-on-blue eyes, which is giving me Dune flashbacks, and a metal skullcap instead of hair, which is random. Anyway, Eric gets bored of hanging out with his girlfriend and goes all "oh hey, remember when people were trying to kill us the other day? I'm going to poke around the ruins and see what's up with that." Now see, this is EXACTLY why it's a bad idea to try and kill everyone who happens to fly over your secret archeological site, especially since they didn't even really fly over it, or anywhere in the vicinity even.
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Anyway yeah, dig site. OK, we've basically got a bunch of boring normal forklifts tearing up the ground around the temple they keep the green Voltron lion under... with some patrolling robot guards. One goes over to Eric to, presumably, gently escort him from the premises (or squish his head like a grape) so he unloads 6 rounds from his laser gun point blank into it's face, gets in his bulky green hovercar, and tries (unsuccessfully) to flee, as some really awesome 80s-tastic chase music starts up... which then gets all distorted and grinds to a stop as the other 50 or so robot guards shoot him down.
Meanwhile, Libero is negotiating with the local human authorities, AKA Eric's Girlfriend's Dad, whose name is Watson (apparently, the deal is that this planet was colonized by both humans and Megalomaniacs, the only noticeable difference being that unlike Libero here, humans MIGHT not have blue as a potential hair color), and Watson addresses him as Governor Proud. OK, your name is Libero Proud. That's pretty amazingly lame. Anyway, he wants the keys to, I guess, the spaceship he's digging up, which the human governor apparently has... I suppose plan B is to hotwire it or something. Meanwhile robogirl is busting into the Evil Fortress of Evil because she uh... somehow knew Eric was being dragged in via helicopter, or was just getting bored waiting in the car during the meeting here. Upon seeing a robot guard, her eyes go all glowy, potentially commandeering it. Meanwhile Libero is all "Give me the key to the godly spaceship or the random dork who wants to marry your daughter gets it! OK, now, the execution setup here is pretty darn Noteworthy. We've got a robot guard facing him with a big ol' laser cannon, while he is... restrained... by a big black metal column, with robo-arms, that are hugging him. Rope is for pansies! So dorky girlfriend goes Robogirl has the key!
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Then Robogirl busts into the room, having stolen one of the guns from the roboguards, turns out they're actually machine guns that just look like big ol' laser rifles, and goes on a robot killing spree. Not even column-with-arms is spared! Libero defuses the situation by pulling a gun on girlfriend who, let's face it, makes a better hostage anyway. So they take the key out of the hidden pocket in robogirl's shoulder, hand it over, and are met with some good ol' fashioned maniacal laughter. Libero leaves via big bulky helicopter to do his thing. Apparently the remaining 3 roboguards are supposed to be some sort of threat, but not for long, because oh yeah, we have another character! Alan, the token black guy from earlier! He comes in with a big ol' spaceship, kills more robots, and rescues people. Girlfriend gets all whiny, so Robogirl just kinda gets this "oh @#$% this @#$%" look, grabs a nearby hover-bike, and heads out to stop the evil badguy. You know when your own robot thinks you're a bunch of whiny losers, it's pretty sad. Eric goes all me-too and uses the exact same plan, but Libero kinda has enough of a head start that the ruins are already exploding with spaceship emergence by the time they show up.
Turns out this is really for the best though, because the whole sequence of sticking the key in the magic box in the temple there? Yeah, that totally vaporizes everything above the ship. Including, you know, the temple... and Libero. This strikes me as uh... something of a design flaw. Anyway, Robogirl gets a semi-sappy hard rock song kicking in as she flies into the clothes disintegrating heat (which is in no way sleazy because she's essentially C-3PO with a sorta-human face glued on), jumps through the window, stares for a bit, and yanks the key out. Apparently it's stuck in there pretty good, so it takes a bit of effort. This causes what's left of the ruins to uh... explode more. Again, design flaw. Eventually she's left standing atop uh... ruins with a totally different architectural style. I'm guessing this is actually the protruding bridge of the big ol' spaceship because that's the sanest option available.
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Anyway, Robogirl hops off, lands bad, and sheds a tear. Eric, watching this, starts crying, and it also starts raining, just for good measure. I don't particularly see why he cares though, I mean, he's got a girlfriend, it's just a robot, and not even one that really has a personality either. Then the top of the ruins/spaceship sends up a big green light.
Then everyone leaves. Eric, Alan, annoying girlfriend, and possibly Watson, get on their spaceship (which I guess was easily fixed off camera at some point) and leave... and the big green light shooting up is clearly visible from space... and I guess uh... nobody really cares. Anyone who wants to can, presumably, wander on over, and help themselves to the most powerful spaceship in existence, because it's just sitting there with a big neon sign pointing at it.
Even weirder though is uh... that's the ending. We have a big evil dude who wants to find this ship and presumably be all evil with it, he accidentally kills himself, everyone leaves. All that business with bringing his princess back to their homeworld, that just kinda got dropped, the good guys honestly didn't really do much of anything at all. The situation resolved itself, pretty much immediately. It's like, they came up with ideas for a couple basic scenes, to be inserted into a proper movie, animated those, and then got bored and just went "eh, good enough" without getting around to an actual plot. Go figure.
Oh yeah, and here's a fun last minute discovery. The special features include something called "Fun Fact Video." It turns out this is watching the whole thing (with the better than you'd think dub), while along the bottom of the screen is a constant stream of random information, none of which has anything to do with The Humanoid, but is vaguely related to what's on screen. Frequently it'll just start listing off, say, "famous people with mustaches" and the like. So yeah, even the publisher seems to admit the plot here is... less than gripping.
