Armored Trooper VOTOMS - OVA 1

Director- Ryosuke Takahashi

Cast- Various

Country of Origin- Japan
 

Distributor - Sentai Filmworks

Number of discs –  1

Reviewed by - Scott MacDonald

Date- 06/20/2019

    I know this recent slate of 80s and 90's anime releases from Sentai are essentially standard definition releases on to the Blu-ray fomat, but being such a fan of 80's anime I am just excited to have them, and also in such a space saving format, rather than a giant DVD box set.  Their latest SD on BD release is the OVA series of Armored Trooper Votoms. This is quite the exciting release, as they have recently done the VOTOMS 52 episode series, and the OVA unlike many actually fleshes out the narrative from the original.

    The Blu-ray release contains 20 episodes across 5 OVA's. The OVA's include  The Last Red Shoulder, The Big Battle, Origin of Ambition, Brilliantly Shining Heresy, and Pailsen Files. It's hard to detail this in depth, as each OVA takes place all over the series timeline, with Brilliantly Shining Heresy taking place 30 years after the events of the original, and Origin of Ambition being a prequel before the series begins. With that being said all of these really add to the legend mythos of VOTOMS as a whole, and are quite compelling all the way through.

    Sentai Filmworks presents all the OVA series in 480p transfers. The first 4 are in the OAR of 1:33:1 while Pailsen Files is a 16x9 widescreen transfer. Like previous SD Blu-ray's the quality won't blow minds, but it depects the series without much issue, and is solid overall. Audio is handled by a DTS-HD MA 2.0 track in Japanese which is one of the other improvements the Blu-ray format allows. The track sounds great, and really stands out.  No extras.