Green Legend Ran
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| Green Legend Ran | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Sci-Fi |
| OVA | |
| Director | Satoshi Saga |
| Licensor |   Geneon |
| Episodes | 3 |
| Released | 1992 |
Green Legend Ran is a ~140-minute long 3-episode Japanese anime OAV released in 1992, and by Pioneer Entertainment(later Geneon) in the U.S. as an unedited subtitled three-laser disc or VHS set. It is drawn in a style reminiscent of the Final Fantasy OAVs and directed by Satoshi Saga.
[edit] Plot
Green Legend is set in a science fiction-style post-apocalyptic Earth, which has turned largely into a vast desert after an alien invasion, in which six of the "Rodo" (a race of what appear to be giant monoliths) crashed onto Earth from space, somehow effecting massive climate change which has completely wiped out the oceans and rain. At the time, mankind was ruining the environment, making an apocalypse of some sort inevitable (similar to other environmentally-focused anime like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind; in general style, Green Legend is much like Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water and Future Boy Conan).
In this brutal new world, two polarized factions have arisen: the first faction, the "Rodoists" are a fanatical religious sect who worship the Rodo while practicing a hydraulic despotism; the other faction is a secretive revolutionary movement opposed to the Rodoists, called the "Hazard".
The protagonist (Ran) is a young orphaned boy who seeks to survive, to join the Hazard, and to find and take revenge upon the man with a scar on his chest who killed Ran's mother. He blunders into the middle of a battle between the Hazard and the Rodoists, during which he meets a strange silver-haired girl named Aira. Ran helps some Hazard scouts escape his town (every sizable town is located around one of the monoliths, as only around them is water in sufficient quantity able to be found), and joins them. Soon, the Rodoist army attacks tha Hazard base; Aira is forcibly evacuated against her will by the Hazards. Ran attempts to board the sand ship, but fails, and begins pursuing it across the desert. He eventually joins up with some travelling water and food merchants to rescue her. The rescue goes awry when the Rodoists attack the Hazard sand ship and recapture Aira as Ran and the merchants attempt to infiltrate the same sand ship.
[edit] DVD release
Green Legend Ran was among the first Region 1 titles released on DVD by Geneon (still known as Pioneer Animation at the time). Even compared to other early DVD releases, the Green Legend Ran release was extremely sparse, as it contained no menu to allow for easy set-up or navigation. Geneon has yet to release the title in a more user-friendly package.
