SUPER DIMENSION ROMANESQUE SAMY MISSING 99
ICONIC SCENE: Samy harassed by demons
RELEASE DATE: July 5, 1986
1. So let’s rewind five months from Rall II, and take a look at this OVA, which (unlike Rall) uses the “Super Dimension” title using the same kanji (“chou jikuu” 超時空) used for Macross, Orguss, and Southern Cross. That said, it’s completely unofficial, with no connection to any previous (or following) Super Dimension series.
2. The plot of the OVA is fairly simple, although it comes burdened with a huge amount of backstory involving a massive war between gods and demons that has lasted millions of years, and also picks up Biblical and Buddhist references as it goes on. But fundamentally, it’s just a story of a high school girl who gets pulled into an alternate dimension where she has to fight evil monsters. Along the way, she realizes that she is actually FROM this alternate world, and her character design completely changes as she recovers her original identity. As she and her comrades fight the demons, she gets killed, but is resurrected as a Bodhisattva. The demons are defeated, and she gets sent back to earth with no memory of what happened. Text at the end promises a sequel, but none was ever made.
3. So it’s all fairly average for a mid-‘80s OVA. The most distinctive stuff (like the references to Alice in Wonderland and the rather pretty fantasy world backgrounds) all gets thrown out by end, which is just a dull fight in a desert. The designs are generic and the animation isn’t high-quality… except for a short scene showing Sami’s chakras as CGI globes, which must have been rather expensive in 1986.
4. The OVA was created, written, and directed by Seiji Okuda, who is probably best-known as the director of Super Bestial Machine God Dancouga. There, the sense of mythic grandeur kinda worked; here, it feels distracting and irrelevant.
Back in the ‘80s, I was part of several groups circulating copied anime VHS tapes, mostly OVAs, so I saw a wide swath of what was available at the time, and you’d meet people who would champion the oddest, most obscure stuff. But I never came across Samy, and I never heard anyone ever talk about it. It seems like it was little-noticed then, and mostly-forgotten now. And it’s easy to see why.
5. And that, my friends, is the last original anime to feature the words “Super Dimension” in the title, thus bringing this rewatch to a close. Kind of a depressing way to end it, I admit. The three official “Super Dimension” shows (and their sequels) are at least worth watching, if not consistently excellent, but Rall and Samy aren’t at all rewarding.
In 1993, Leiji Matsumoto started a manga called “Super Dimension Battleship Mahoroba” (although the official English title is either “Cosmo Super Dreadnought Mahoroba” or “The Ultimate Time Sweeper Mahoroba”), and in late 2011 announced an anime adaptation of it, but that has so far failed to appear. So I think this is the end, at least as far as non-Macross “Super Dimension” shows go.
Of all of these titles here in 2021, Macross is clearly the healthiest, with two new movies due out in October, and (FINALLY!) potential world-wide distribution in its future. Cream Lemon gets revived every once in a while (although never connected to Rall), and thus may return at some point in the future. Orguss will probably remain dormant-but-fondly-remembered, and the blu-ray of the original series just came out from Discotek, so it might gain some new fans. Neither Southern Cross nor Samy have come out on blu-ray (yet), so it seems most likely that Southern Cross will be forgotten in Japan, but remembered internationally as just the second generation of Robotech. Samy will, I’m sure, continue to be forgotten everywhere. Again, kind of a depressing way to end, but there ya go.
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