It’s taken me a while to get to Riki Oh, for what reason?
I don’t know.
I remember watching half the first OVA to review it back in like 2019..
And almost 5 Years later, here we finally are.

The Riki Oh franchise has a little bit more depth to it than your average trashy OVA..
And trashy may not be applicable to this, as it is one of the better lower budget stories and cheap action flicks.
Still not the best,
but seeing Riki Oh restored a feeling in me,
of a place nostalgic of one those first experiences I had several years ago when I first started watching this particular niche of anime.
Actually,


The OVAs are broken into 2 different stories, the first one dropping in 89’ covering the Prison Arc story from the manga.


Welcome to Hell,
the name given to one of the prisons in the network of prisons in the JP, which stands for Japan Prison Industry.
Whats going on here is pretty much politics.. almost business even as they need inmates to stay in the system to prevent a reduction in revenue.
This is similar to what hip hop music has been manipulated and used for in America for the past few decades now.
But that’s another conversation on a different channel.
Yeah there are 4 blocks, being run by a different volatile warden for each ward.. and collectively these guys known as the gang of 4..
and they’re job is to pretty much maintain DISorder inside the prison.


Now riki has found himself in there, and that’s what makes for a fairly interesting epic.
I would say Riki is a pacifist at heart.
But surface level he’s definitely not that, when pushed to a certain limit.
It’s not that that he’s the most righteous dude, but he possess a core that leans towards a positive moral compass.
Now if your paying attention you’ll notice I just ran in a circle saying that he’s not a pacifist..
Implying he can be quite violent, but I’m also saying he has a warm centered core.
The same way you’re confused is how I was confused trying to figure out what side of the tracks this dudes mind operates from.
He at times will blow someones head in..
And other times he does things that suggest that he believes in being food and doing the right thing by people.
These little instances of him killing or fucking up gang leaders or disturbing the flow of the correctional officers and higher ups doing their dirt..
Has made him an antagonist to the authorities in the prison.
In the first OVA people are constantly being sent to deal with this dude, and that individual is defeated every time, with riki walking away with some kind of good samaritan victory.

The reason they don’t really mess with him like that in there is cause his attitude and lack of falling in line with the evils intimidates the authorities cause it can inspire the other inmates to start acting up and pushing back also..
Which ultimately happen towards the end of OVA 1.

Riki, what’s up with Riki Oh?
He has a very solid background behind him, only child, rich merchant father, good mom..
So how’d he end up like this?
What’s his story?
That question luckily leads us to the purpose of the second OVA, 1990s child of destruction.
This breaks down the history of his childhood, the tragedies of what went down with his family.. detailing events regarding his parents, brother, yeah he’s a twin and his bro has a mark on his hand like he has the 6 point star, yeah so much more.
he’s journeying to go find the brother he was separated from young, and I know you already know what’s in store along the way.

What I found with the second OVA is that it was much more dramatic and at times even philosophical than the first one as far as the story telling goes.
Like the opening scene with baby riki oh and his bro and mom..
And the events leading up to the intro sequence.

I didn’t care for the characters they had brought into the story..
The setting fell off as quick as it attempted to create a cool little world.

So I’ll recommend you set your expectations low when u watch both of these for the second one.
There is a flashback memory tho where riki went to this fight to the death tournament thing..
Actually that’s pretty much a good chunk of the OVA.
Now that..
was crazy.

And I guess nows a good time to segway into this topic but The fight choreography for both of these episodes is what I call a fist of the north star lite style.
Where it had that same grittiness to how characters damn near explode when they get hit, but it stays within the realms of what I guess you can call reality..
And just has blood gush out and whatever.
Definitely one of the better ones when it comes to retro ova fights.
When watching this you can tell they really aimed to attracted young men who are in that shonen seinen phase and wanna see blood and fists..
Cause it doubled down on that in here.

I also dipped my toe into the live action film for riki oh, a hong kong adaptation called the story of riki.
I looked into it real quick, and look out of it, even quicker.

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