Starship Troopers (1988 OVA) | Retcon_404 (Anime Retrospective) 

I was today years old to learn that Starship Troopers had an OVA and now I kinda wanna track it down and watch this for myself.

The Halo devs have stated in past that they based the Mjolni helmet off it and Studio Bones based the power armour from the prototype Halo OVA off the marauder as well

As someone who HAS read the original novel... this adaptation is surprisingly faithful in numerous places. The training, the scene with Rico and Kitten out on the town, the power armor... Interestingly, the OVA actually features an opening in High School at a sports game for Rico that is almost identical to a scene from the later Verhoven adaptation. Oddly, though, this OVA lacks the political commentary of the novel, which Verhoven's film maintained, yet it also was more faithful in terms of narrative.

In the books, during training, 1:500 rounds was live. The idea being that the recruits would keep their heads down…and if they didn’t AND were particularly unlucky, well 🤷🏻‍♂️ If the recruits were sloppy in training, the drill instructors would threaten to lower the ratio.

Starship Troopers is to Heinlein what The Prince is to Machiavelli. Doesn't matter what else they ever wrote, they'll be forever remembered for that.

"Gets by on vibes alone." Also an accurate description of the Book. Very very vibey.

There’s a bio-mechanical space plague in the game Homeworld: Cataclysm, that is known as “The beast”. It corrupts and assimilates other ships, and gets smarter as it’s biomass increases per assimilated vessel.

This power armor also is featured on the Japanese edition of "the forever war". Edit: the designer is Naoyuki Katoh

In terms of anime -- Macross Frontier does the "giant alien quasi-biomechanical bug swarm" thing with its central antagonists. Though Knights of Sidonia antagonists are closer to the Starship Trooper ones, as horrifying Lovecraftian biomasses in space.

Blue gender has the same space bugs that can survive space and also features mechs after like 5 episodes

Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet Trust me it’s fucking sick right up your alley

I had only known of the Roughneck Chronicles CGI series. I really liked it, and it had an abrupt, cliffhanger ending due to being cancelled. Will have to check this OVA out as well.

1:50 The movie is more of a Satire of the ideas Verhooven thought were expressed in the *first five PAGES* of the novel. Since he openly said he stopped there. Screenwriter did read a bit further though.

As far as giant organic spaceships go, check out the Yuuzhan Vong from the Star Wars lore if you're not familiar - they have "worldships" which are like moon-sized organic space stations they use for extragalactic travel and staging invasions.

I'm kind of amazed that you didn't mention Helldivers at all among the other IPs with bug-enemy influences, considering the enormous amount of references to Starship Troopers, notably the whole Terminid race of evolved bug enemies. I genuinely assumed the timing of this was intentional alongside Helldivers 2 being a hot topic in the gaming world right now.

I spent years looking for this anime and eventually found it on the shadiest, most pop-up filled russian website imaginable.

This Channel has helped me so much to catch up to Mecha Anime I missed growing up over the years.

Here’s to hoping we get a Gundam Thunderbolt review

I highly recommend Starship Troopers. The novel is great and is quite insightful about military training and why soldiers fight.

I wasn't even aware that this OVA existed! Thanks for sharing your perspective and analysis as always ❤

Tbh, this is more faithful to the book (despite many things being changed/altered) than the live-action 90's version; that movie changed the perception of the story so much that people only think of the movie and not the book. And showing the power suits alone makes the Japanese OVA version superior.

KNIGHTS OF SIDONIA If your really interested in checking out shows with "bio mechanical" like alien threats against humanity in space where the alien threat seems almost too powerfull at some points, IMO anyways. If you havent seen it or have just heard about it and havent watched, i would deffinitly recomend it. theres a scene in the very first episode that sold me, and its just ...well lets just say IYKYK.

Finished re-watching Roughnecks the other week. I'm a little embarrassed to say that I've never watched the 1988 OVA

There's a really good audio version of the book that was recorded in the 70's I think. It's here on the toobs. Definitely worth checking out.

Halo and 40k references in one video. We're eating good tonight boys!

This was a pain to find on Limewire back in the day.

The ending may feel rushed because this ends at the mid point of the novel. It's almost like they were planning at least three mire episodes, but got canceled. I don't worry too much about spoilers for a seventy year old book, but... Rico gets tapped for Officer Candidate School. We get more training montages and find out his dad sold the family business to enlist. Big fight with the bugs on Rico's cadet mission. He then gets commissioned as an officer and command of his own platoon. The book ends with Rico's Roughnecks preparing to assault the bugs' homeworld. His dad is the platoon chaplain, Zim is back as Rico's platoon sergeant, and Carmen is the captain of the ship the platoon is on.

I like the Starship Troopers for simply existing, being so 80s aesthetic, fairly obscure to modern or even 80s anime fandom, and for actually FEATURING POWER ARMOR

No, the Verhoven film is not a satire of the ideas expressed in the novel. What would become the Starship Troopers movie already had an existing script called Bughunt at Outpost 9 before Verhoven found out the studio he was working for had the rights to another bug fighting scifi work, the Starship Troopers novel. By his own words Verhoven said he never made it more than three pages into the first chapter before getting bored and tasking scriptwriter Ed Neumeier with adapting the book. All Neumeier was staple gun character names and places onto the existing script with the exception of two parts, the classroom scene debating force and the recruiting sergeant missing his legs. Both are heavily truncated abridged versions of their original novel counterparts. Apart from that almost all of it has nothing in common with the book.

13:50 : Well, in the TTRPG sphere, there is "The Swarm" from the 'Starfinder' RPG (yet another type of 'Space Locusts' 😅) In the 'Roughnecks' show (a CGI series based on the ST movies) They expanded on the bugs to a huge degree, and even had one 'bug carrier' which used 'dragonfly' like wings to assist in its take off (would include a link, but I hear that RU-vid removes comments with links now)

I think the Radam from Tekkaman Blade are a good in-between point between the aliens in this Star ship troopers OVA and the bugs from the movie xD

Wow, one I actually missed. Thanks for sharing. Looks like it’s here on the tube so after this I’ll check it out.

The power armor makes a debut in the CGI movie sequels for the Verhoven film and Casper van diem reprises his role as ricos voice not sure if he was in it for ST invasion but he definitely was in it for "Traitor of mars" and thats a great film

I never even knew there was a Starship Troopers anime.

if you havent checked it out i think gundam thunderbolt is a must watch series, would love to hear your breakdown of it

Zim was really out there slapping people like he lived in the Gundam Zeta universe.

I’m always amused at the changes they make from the book. For realsies you should read the book.

The Yuuzhan Vong from the old Star Wars extended universe traveled to the galaxy in living ships

How did I not know this was a thing???!!! *Head explodes

This powered suit's shape was designed by Kazutaka Miyatake, a Japanese visual artist and anime designer. This shape appeared in the novel illustration translated in Japanese in 1977 for the first time.

Nobody's going to mention the pole in Rico's bedroom? Assuming it's not for dancing (it's good exercise, he's entitled to have a hobby with no judgement) then everything that happens in his room is going to be heard downstairs. It's like a small child receiving their dream bedroom, only for it to become a nightmare once they hit puberty.

Thanks for the rundown on that show. I expected you to do the starship troopers cgi series. The power armor in that ova reminds me of the Maddox from metal skin panic. If you like that sort of alien menace I would recommend Megazone 23 pt 2 or the first Gall Force trilogy. A good show dealing with squad dynamics is Galaxy Railways

I watched the movie first, then the OVA back in 2017, then got the audiobook. The anime was closest to the original story. Maybe aduiobook it like I did? In the original, Johnny's father hated the fact he joined the MI.

This isn't the only Starship Troopers animated series released.

There’s something very GM about those power armor

Gotta love how all the RU-vidrs are playing ape escape music in the background now.

It's not directly analogous but the Flood from Halo kind of fit the bill, a biomass-based infection vector that replicates exponentially and can hibernate in the deep void of space.

Your soundtrack choice is amazing. level 0 is top tier👌

Quick primer on Heinlein for you: when he wrote Star Ship Troopers he was pretty conservative. It was _the_ quintessential "better dead than red" text. Heinlein's politics changed as he aged, though, and by the time he wrote Stranger in a Strange Land, he was under FBI investigation, suspected of being a communist. If anything, the movie was truer to Heinlein's politics when he died than the book.

Read the novel! It's honestly great, filled with interesting ideas and a fun story!

Damn... It took me 16 minutes to realize I watched that show. That scene at the bar was the trigger.

I don't remember if you ever covered Knights of Sydonia, from what you've said about Zergs/Tyranids I think it would be right up your alley

Found this on RU-vid a couple of years ago, pretty much had the same feelings.

I heard this one does a wonderful job of sidestepping the arguments about Heinlen's worldbuilding and political worldview by simply... Not having enough animation budget left after the fightscenes

Really like the tone of the retrospective,need to watch your whole catalog now. Thx

The Xenosaga series has an alien entity called Gnosis and they are capable of space travel. Larger ones are also referred to as ships that are just an amalgamation of the things they absorb.

Tekkaman blade has literally what you want in a space alien ship terrorizing the globe

The bad guys in Stargate Atlantis have spaceships that are living beings. There's an episode where one of the crew becomes infected with the virus that turns you into a spaceship. It's pretty wild

Awesome video as always my dude! It’s always bummed me out there wasn’t more of this or another attempt at it. A Tyranid unit the aliens remind me are the neurothropes and zoanthropes. Big ole brain bugs that also shoot mind lasers.

Never realized that the term “Jump Jet” from Battletech originated from the novel.

It seems the 1998 movie took more from this OVA than from the novel. I love the 1998 movie, but I'm hoping the upcoming film honors the source material.

The armour remunds me of the Mk. 1 Mjolnir prototype from the Halo anime Prototype.

So in the book, the mobile infantry power armor weapons are almost exclusively a small nuclear warhead launcher and a flamethrower attached to their left arm.

Well since you mentioned interesting Aliens in Mecha, you may want to take a look at the Muv-Luv properties such as Schwarzesmarken and Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse.

Had no idea this existed! There’s a subbed version on RU-vid so will watch that then revisit this! Thanks!

My old anime club used to watch this in AV Club at our High School. Back when anime was called Japanimation.

I've read the reason this never got a release is because Sunrise didn't secure the rights to the franchise but went ahead and produced the whole OVA.

I've read the book. The Verhoeven movie isn't really a satire of the book (though there are a few jabs, obviously) so much as a satire of the movie industry. IIRC Verhoeven has told journalists he hadn't even read the book when he signed on to do the movie, the resemblances between the two are actually pretty limited, and the general tone of schlock leaning into its schlockiest elements is shared with a lot of Verhoeven's other movies. Overall, the intended joke is not "Robert Heinlein is a Nazi". It's more like "all cultures that fight wars and make movies make movies about war the same way" or, in short "propaganda never changes". American movies glorify the American military the same way German movies glorified the German military in the 1940's, and this is so true that even in the 1990's (and honestly, probably still now) you could make something that was basically a Nazi propaganda film and Americans would see it as just a normal action movie. (And he was right--this is how it was marketed, and how a lot of people interpreted it, at the time. It took about a decade for most people to rewatch it and actually pick up on the satire.) He could have done this with any number of stories. It didn't have to be Starship Troopers. Starship Troopers just kinda happened to be on some studio person's mind at the time, from the stories I remember hearing.

I was just about to rewatch the ova and saw this new video lol

I find the PA in this to be much closer to Maddox Metal Skin Panic and the police/military PA of Bubblegum Cisis/AD Police.

The aliens on this interpretation of starship troopers reminds me a lot to the gaunas from Knights of sidonia and the galsctic bugs from gunbuster

Dino Crisis save room music in intro, Me: Time to dig out my ps1 catalog and boot up my old trusty ps2 again. Enjoy my like good sir.

i didnt know this existed, thank you and subbed!

I remeber watching this off a rented disc from extra vision when i was 8 to 9 it was dubbed (it could of been something else but i remember starship troopers in this type of animation)

Wait... Jonny? I have heard that in the books, the MC is Juan Rico. So did the movie know about and copy bits from the OVA or is it just coincidence, they changed the MC's name in the same way?

Have an upvote just for the AC3 music, good sir

Codex Alera is a fantasy series, but the main enemy of the entire series (and in each book) are basically the Zerg. ELementally powered romans have to team up with their barbarian enemies including Neanderthal Animal-Bonding Elves, Ice-powered Psychic Yeti, and Blood Magic wielding Wolf People in order to fight them. It's crazy fun!

Having read the book and seen this OVA as well the other adaptations. The OVA is closer and more respectful to the book. Albeit of course having differences from the source material, as well a toning down or absence of the political aspects. Though the book wasn’t as heavy in politics as many make it out to be, or fascist. I mean a 15-25 page comic book issue today is likely more political than the entirety of Heinlein’s book. Only big political take it goes with is being anti-communism in rather simple yet effective jabs; without needing a heavy diarrhea load of context like you would more modern writers. Mostly what I got out of the book with IMO its main points were Choice and Responsibility. An if freedom of choice along with the responsibilities of said choices, etc, is “fascist,” or the sort; then really that honestly says there’s a problem with the reader than the book. Also if you think the armor looks similar to Halo’s; you should check out Roughnecks Starship Troopers Chronicles, which came out 2 or 3 years before Halo. Armor is so alike; hell it’s even the same color of green.

Carmencita is a diminutive of Carmen, a common woman name here in Latin America. It basically means Little Carmen.

There are plenty of other book (series even) where there's a similar alien threat and humans in power armor fighting them. The ones that i've read and can recommend are Old Man's war from John Scalzi and it's sequels. Actually, read anything and everything by John Scalzi. Frontlines series from Marko Kloos, Armor from John Steakley, this one is also interesting that, arguably, the Jack Crow character might be an inspiration for Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of Carribean >_> And Ofcourse, All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. The basis of Edge of Tomorrow movie.

While the first movie, and while we're at it the second one as well, doesn't feature the Marauder Power Armor, ST3 and the 90s CG cartoon series does feature. In fact the Marauder power armor is the focal point in Starship Troopers 3, though it doesn't get a lot of screen time until close to the end of the movie

When I die it will be to rad synth music!

those suits looks like inner sphere battle armor from Battletech.. I'm assuming its another thing FASA 'Borrowed' back in the day :p

The ova felt far to focused on bootcamp and the power armor itself. Its missing the second half, is how I felt about it. Still good, and for trooper fans I do recommend.

"Roughnecks: Starship troopers chronicles" when?

Duuuuuude great job, you really need to watch Traitor of Mars if you haven't yet

the suits here are much akin to the ones in votoms to any other show. Also I want to see your opinion on the SiN ova in the future.

You never mentioned that this was clearly intended to follow the entirety of the book, rather than stopping off suddenly. You can tell because there's clearly a "to be continued" scene in the last episode.

I really enjoyed this OVA and other than my old roommate that had a copy if it i didnt know anyone else that had watched it.

I didnt check if you already did a vídeo of this anime, but i think you should Watch “Detonator Orgun”. Its another OVA from 90s that Aired on U.S manga. At least over here in Brazil.

By the way if your looking for a bio-mechanical suggestions. You should (if you haven’t already) check out Gall Force. More specifically Eternsl Story, Destruction, and Stardust War. Essentially those first three chapters tell of a war between the Solnoids (race solely of females) and the Paranoids an amorphous cyborg species that can fuse with various machines. There are three following story chapters (Rhea, Earth Chapter, and New Era), set in a future time. Which are also neat. Though the story of those is more Terminator’esque. Then there was an attempted rebooting; The Revolution. Which was okay but not necessary. But all in all the 6 are great watches; with the first 3 being the best IMO.

You should spend the day and read the book. It's good enough to be called a classic of SF/Speculative Fiction for a reason.

The movie NOPE has the kind of space terror you might like.

I'd say it's pretty spot on as an adaptation,it's much more closer to the book than the film

Imagine dying because you learned that bugs are living creatures or something. Sadness.

What's next? Full Metal Panic? Code Geass? Zoids?

I miss 80's and 90's ova's

It aint horrible but i do have to complain about the bugs being those odd mutant fleshy octopi with beaks that shoot lasers or plasma balls, instead of actual pseudo arachnids. The Powersuits are really cool though.

Man you just reep making vids on Anime i love lol

While the bug design is not as cool as the as the move. I do like how alien the bugs look.