As you can guess from the rating this OVA has on just about any site where you can rate stuff, Mars of Destruction (or Hametsu No Mars) is bad and it gets just about anything wrong that an animated movie (no matter the length) can.
Story - The story starts out with two astronauts talking about getting wasted while on the mission and subsequently get blown up. Flash forward to people who are supposedly part of an elite team to defend earth (even though it's questionable whether they're in high school yet by the looks of them) fighting some aliens (which mostly involves pointing their guns at them and not shooting). I'm not sure if anything from here on out could be considered a spoiler but I'm not taking the risk. The story makes no sense whatsoever and the out-of-nowhere plot twist doesn't help it. Character development is non-existent with the exception of one small scene that shows that the main(?) character has problems with his father. As a consequence, there isn't the slightest reason to be emotionally involved or even remotely care about anything that happens Bottom line, there isn't the slightest bit of value in this story, no originality, no ideas and the execution is below poor.
Animation - Taking a glance at a screen shot of this might make you think "eh, this is all right for a low budget 90s production". However, for something released in 2005, the visuals are unacceptable. Nevermind the boring art style or the emptiness of the world. What makes the animation unacceptable is the stunning lack of, well, animation. Hardly anyone ever bothers moving, the fighters spend more time just looking at the enemies than actually firing guns. the main villain never does more then grab someone and holding them up in the air for a couple of seconds. It's almost unbearably boring to watch and makes you wonder why you're looking at it at all.
Sound - While the voice work adds up for the most part, the sound department definitely doesn't get a pass either. Sound effects are dull and do little to nothing to draw you into the scene and the absolute absence of any sounds at all during most scenes may go along with the visuals but that doesn't make the whole thing any less boring. The biggest joke however is the music. It's not bad, no. In fact, it includes some of the most memorable pieces of music ever written but they're all sub par versions of classical music pieces and don't even remotely match anything that is going on. It's laughable at best.
All in all, Mars of Destruction offers nothing. It's about as dull and irrelevant as animation can get. it's not even funny either unless you have someone to make funny remarks about it with. If you look at how much emotion, creativity and entertainment film makers have been able to show in 20 minutes, it could almost make you angry at how little this OVA seems to care but trust me, it's not worth it. I can honestly only recommend it so you can appreciate whatever other productions give you (or even try to give).
