Garaga

Though not a great anime, Garaga was actually worth the rental price, featuring surprisingly slick action sequences with a decent storyline and characters.

Of course, one wouldn't expect this after seeing trailers of this title which feature the main character (Jay M. Jay, unfortunately one of the worst hero names conceived of in anime) slicing through a bunch of incommunicado apemen. ("Get the spaceman!")

It's not exactly like that, with the apelike Umlanga actually being a very important part of the plotline, and almost every character having some sort of ulterior motive or dark secret. Jay certainly has his hands full figuring out the secrets of the mysterious planet Garaga, and it's actually neat seeing an intelligent plot in a late '80s anime.

Unfortunately, the movie ends too abruptly, with an ending that's a bit of a letdown, but apart from that (and some utterly awful background music), it actually escapes being fodder for MST3K and ends up as a worthwhile viewing after all.