I've been looking for something to help me through the hot 'n' humid summer months and what better way to beat the heat than to stay indoors watching questionable anime and playing questionable games based on said anime? For a rundown of this little project, check out the first episode.

Guess what's back for another summer? This site can't keep the anime away no matter how hard it tries so welcome to Season 2 of Game OVA: a semi-educational trip through the anime, and their video game adaptations, of yesteryear. Same general schedule plan as last year's season of Game OVA: six individual properties, and any number of anime TV shows, OVAs, movies, and video game adaptations for each that I feel like covering. Be sure to follow that link back to the first episode to get the more in-depth rundown here along with the rules we'll be following, but suffice it to say I'm irrationally excited to watch some old, bad anime and play some bad, old games based on same.

The Property

Mamono Hunter Youko, localized as Devil Hunter Yohko, is a '90s anime about Yohko Mano: a high school girl that becomes the 108th Mamono Hunter after her grandmother Madoka retires from being the 107th. Naturally, a high school girl has plenty to worry about already without taking on the mantle of a generational warrior that has been magically-enhanced to fight all manner of monsters, demons, and yokai. So far, so Buffy the Vampire Slayer; the show even has a similar mix of seriousness and levity as Yohko tries to balance her academic, romantic, and anti-demonic lives. I just hope the Buffy connection doesn't go so far that the OVAs suddenly write off a major female character because her actor dared to stand up to the showrunner's abusive bullshit. Wait, sexism doesn't exist in Japan, what am I worried about?

The Cast

• Yohko Mano: The protagonist. A regular teenage girl that becomes a somewhat irregular champion of the forces of good. If she takes down the Demon King, will senpai finally notice her? (Unless senpai is the Demon King, in which case things will get aaaawkwaaaaaaard.) Her most notable physical trait are the onion rings in her hair.
• Madoka Mano: Yohko's grandmother and the previous Devil Hunter. Her decision to retire is a semi-reluctant one; she is still fully capable of handing a demon its own ass, or multiple asses depending on the type. If she and Yohko have a training fight, would that be a Mano-a-Mano battle?
• Sayoko Mano: Yohko's mother and Madoka's daughter, passed over for the role of Devil Hunter due to her getting knocked up which I guess is against the rules or something. Has a very sex positive mindset, possibly because her own sexuality saved her from having to risk her own life fighting scary monsters every night.
• Azusa Kanzaki: Yohko's useless apprentice/sidekick. Still in training as a Devil Hunter, she does her best to assist Yohko in battle with an enchanted spear.
• Chikako Ogawa: Chikako, or simply Chi, is Yohko's best friend at high school and a normie. That is, she's a normal person that doesn't fight monsters with magical weapons unlike most of the cast, but also a normie in the sense that she's way into romance and is looking to hook Yohko up with one of the school's many hunks. Also a total nerd, which in true stereotypical fashion is helpfully demonstrated by her enormous glasses.

Since Mamono Hunter Youko started as an anime, unlike most of the other properties I've covered for Game OVA, there's no further background to delineate so I'm going to cut this part short and move onto the relevant sections.

The Anime

The six Mamono Hunter Youko OVAs were released across 1990-1995 by Madhouse, one of the most prolific anime studios ever founded. It began in the 1970s (it turned 50 last October, in fact) and continues to produce highly-acclaimed anime to this day. Recent shows include the first season of superhero parody One-Punch Man, fantasy brawler Hunter x Hunter's recent 2010s adaptation, sci-fi body-snatcher gorefest Parasyte: The Maxim, and last season's romantic slice-of-life My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999 (which, cute as it was, didn't really give them the chance to show off their legendary combat scenes). As for their dalliances with the world of video games, those include anime adaptations for Devil May Cry, Sakura Wars, Gungrave, Chaos;Head, and—perhaps most vitally—the Kirby cartoon Kirby: Right Back at Ya! with its breakout star Escargoon.

Famously, at least among occidental anime fans of the '90s, Devil Hunter Yohko was the first to be localized for North American audiences by ADV Films. ADV Films would later find greater fame bringing Gainax's Neon Genesis Evangelion to leagues of bewildered western otaku and subsequently the likes of Azumanga Daioh and Full Metal Panic!, but they had to start somewhere and that meant Yohko's Japanese producers Toho taking a chance on this fledgling localization and distribution company down in Houston, Texas. The rise and fall of ADV Films has been thoroughly chronicled in other parts of the internet, but I've no doubt I'll be relying on their translations a few more times for this feature.

Since there's just the six half-hour OVAs to watch here, I'm just going to blitz the whole thing below:

Episode 1

The first episode is a little longer than the rest at 42 minutes and introduces the characters and setting, the rules of being a Mamono Hunter, and just how damn horny this show intends to be. I mean, I kinda already figured with the whole "only pure maidens can be Mamono Hunters" pitch but this whole episode's "modus oppai-randy" was about getting as many boobs on-screen as possible. I'm assuming this prurience doesn't carry over to the games so much—at least not the Mega Drive game we'll be covering; the other two are PC Engine CD games and anything went on that depraved system—but it was probably a big value add to the thirsty folks at ADV Films looking for something saucy to let us unsuspecting westerners know how differently the Japanese do things when it comes to animation. (There was a lot of that back then by the way; overseas distribution companies almost always focused on the violent and salacious properties to establish Japanimation as this niche acquired taste for the more discerning pervert. Meanwhile in Japan anime was 90% kid shit like Doraemon and Anpanman.)

As the show begins, Yohko has no idea of her grandmother's underworld career as a Mamono Hunter. She is raised in a somewhat odd household, as her man-hungry mother and traditional grandmother tend to fight often. Physically. With weapons. Yohko doesn't think much of it though and spends her time daydreaming about her crush Hondo while the weedy childhood friend (and early Xander ersatz, which means I already don't like him) Osamu pines for her from afar. Osamu is called into the Principal's office where he's summarily seduced by the whip-wielding MILF running the school, who of course is actually a demon. The demon's goal here is to have a newly rizzed-up Osamu then take Yohko to a love hotel so she loses her burgeoning Mamono Hunter powers due to the virgin clause, but grandma shows up in the nick of time to cockblock Osamu and remove the demonic possession that turned him all macho and confident enough to win over his longtime unrequited love. I'm sure he appreciates that.

This then leads to grandma Madoka giving Yohko the whole spiel about Mamono Hunters: a role passed down from ancestor to descendent in the Mano family, with their powers awakening in their adolescence, whereupon they become humanity's heroine against the forces of evil. Yohko's not particularly keen on any of this, especially the "no sex" part (though it's implied that once she's fully developed her powers she's free to bone down all she likes; they do need to continue the bloodline, after all) and learns why her mother skipped this wonderful opportunity to be demon chow: teenage promiscuity. That's a good lesson for the audience. Yohko's on a deadline as the demons are looking to resurrect their Queen on the next full moon (because that's when the Demon Moon aligns with the Regular Moon; except I thought the Demon Moons were safely orbiting Mars. Y'know, Phobos and Deimos? Is Yohko going to get a chainsaw at some point?). She has to quickly acquire her powers and stop this ritual in time or the world is doomed.

The demons continue to be proactive however, with Principal MILF ("Mamono I'd Like to Fight") kidnapping both the handsome Hondo and the comic relief best bud Chi in order to draw Yohko to the creepy clocktower building surrounded by a dense forest that every normal Japanese high school has. Poking around the forest, Yohko finds a tied-up Chi—tied up in a sexy shibari way, by the by, because this show can't help itself—who is also possessed and quickly captures Yohko with what I hope is a thick spider web. (Is this something Chi could always do? I mean, she is the school nerd, who's to say she's not also the local Peter Parker for this part of the world?). The nearby Principal MILF then explains the demons' plan while Yohko is seemingly powerless to intervene: the Queen of Demons, revealed to be fellow student Reiko, will suck Hondo dry (fortunately they mean his blood this time) and use his sacrifice to bring the Demon Plane to Earth. Once again, deus ex grandmachina strikes and Madoka shows up to exorcise Chi, who pulled an axe out of somewhere to chop Yohko up, and hops down in her ninja outfit to see off the overconfident MILF demon with a holy sword she can materialize through her magical powers. Sadly, Madoka takes a fatal hit during the fight and dies after handing Yohko her sick Hot Topic sword-summoning skull ring, leaving Yohko to deal with Reiko and any other demons that might be lurking around. Nothing like learning on the job.

One entirely too gratuitous magical girl transformation later (I'm sure every male animator was keen to do something similar after Sailor Moon hit it big), Yohko fights Reiko swords drawn and is easily outmatched by her, at least until she's hanging off a cliff and pulls some miraculous Obi-Wan shit to flip over and stab Reiko right through the top of her shoulder. This of course somehow damages Reiko's costume enough to reveal a solitary boob; I guess this is the show's idea of reining it in sufficiently for a tasteful death scene. Reiko tries to tearfully embrace Yohko to show her remorse but it's just a ruse to get bitin', and Yohko flings her backwards onto a strategically pointy clock hand to end the demon threat once and for all (for this episode, anyway). Episode 1 then ends with Yohko emerging unscathed (not her dress though, for depressingly obvious reasons by now) and finding her grandma perfectly fine and celebrating Yohko's "graduation" with Chi and a visibly drunk Osamu. She also lets Yohko know that now she's fully accepted the Mamono Hunter role the whole virginity thing is moot and she can get busy with impunity. I'm sure the later episodes won't make a big deal out of that or anything. (Also I guess Hondo just dies? He gets bit by Reiko and kinda fades away after she croaks and the whole interdimensional ritual zone starts falling apart. I don't think the guy got a single line. Is there such a thing as getting dudefridged?)

Episode 2

The second episode quickly introduces the very eager Azusa Kanzaki, a would-be Mamono Hunter who has come down from her remote mountain village to study under Yohko whom—with Chi's help—has already become a dab hand at dealing with monsters. Coincidentally, we're also introduced to Manotama Forest, home to various divine beings that is currently under threat from real estate developers working the land 24/7. The spirits there are getting restless, to put it mildly, and render an investigating construction worker catatonic after he bumps into and knocks over a shrine. More supernatural happenings occur later that night, including taking down the power grid, inspiring a way-too-excited Azusa to go check out the spooky forest in the middle of the night without her Mamono Hunter jewelry. This bodes well for her future career.

Azusa is immediately captured by two sinister samurai ghosts, requiring Yohko to step in and save her. However, they were just the henchspooks of the real threat: the Demon King Onra, who is capable of quickly regenerating damage with the power of the forest and its roots. Yohko's on the ropes, but Azusa comes through with her own transformation (no nudity this time, since she's younger) and the duo manage to overpower Onra's regeneration and deal a decisive blow with their Double Attack. They see the sorry state of the shrine and decide today's moral is that Mamono Hunters should let sleeping gods lie if they don't want to be swamped with work and fix up the shrine to appease any other slumbering deities in the vicinity. Then Chi appears to exclaim that she's putting off her diet and we're back in familiar sitcom territory.

Honestly, this does feel like the crew behind the show settling into a formula. The first episode stands as its own self-contained thing more or less but they may have been testing the waters for a possible serialization. It might also explain why the nudity was scaled back much more for this episode, beyond Yohko's transformation and an unnecessary scene of Yohko and Azusa in the bath together (which I guess is normal enough for the cousin-like relationship they've developed). Still, it's even less eventful than the first: we fight two samurai dudes and then a bigger samurai dude with tree powers and that's about it for the whole half hour, besides a whole lot of build-up and Azusa bumbling. Chi's role has been expanded to Yohko's one-person Scooby Gang (Osamu's nowhere in sight this episode, nor are Yohko's mother and grandmother whom are on vacation according to Yohko's narration) and there's some jokes about Chi's enthusiasm in getting some Mamono Hunting advertising out there to drum up business, which is a fun Ghostbusters riff I would've liked to have seen more of in future episodes. (Except we already did anime Ghostbusters last season with Ghost Sweeper Mikami, huh.)

Episode 3

This episode starts with another of Yohko's prophetic dreams, this time about some handsome Hikaru Genji type of dude with long hair who woos a familiar-looking "Princess Yohko" before being sealed away by a pissed-off Chinese Myth Dragon. He leaves behind a keepsake bag, which mysteriously appears in Yohko's bedroom after she wakes up and just as mysteriously teleports her through the floor to the nearby Azusa's surprise (she, Yohko, and Chi were planning to go bargain hunting that day; I guess they're going to be a third off this time). Yohko's been sent back through time, or through dimensions or something, because now she's dressed like her dream's namesake and escorted to where Biryu, the man of her dreams in both senses, awaits to meet her. She's instantly smitten, but before she can seal the deal with some awkward make-outs she has to deal with a sudden monster attack. Handily squishing the mantis demon creature, Biryu nonetheless glitches out of existence and his attendant informs Yohko that the real Biryu can only project a phantom image due to being imprisoned in a sphere by the dragon god.

While Yohko is teleported again to the lair of the first of two possible demons holding onto the dragon ball (wait, wrong show) that keeps Biryu trapped, her friends look for a way to figure out where she went. I guess Azusa just happened to know about an inter-dimensional tracking spell used by Mamono Hunters and the two get working on that while Yohko destroys something vaguely resembling the first on-screen Angel from Evangelion. This fight was neat because Yohko showed off how her sword could be disassembled into a knife for emergencies, say if the main blade got stuck in the body of a demon while the demon's true form snuck around from behind. Instead of Biryu popping out from the demonic artifact though it's Princess Yanagi, a beautiful and humble priestess who was also trapped by the same dragon. Yohko, not quite putting two and two together yet, is disappointed that it isn't the sexy androgynous guy she's keen to get to know better. Soon after, they're attacked by the other demon she was sent to slay, which is this flying bat shapeshifter thing. Upon defeating it, after it briefly became a topless harpy (because this show knew it was forgetting something), the two Stooges show up and interfere with Yohko's ball retrieval, giving the shapeshifter a chance to regroup (literally, since it pulled its two disembodied halves back together) and fight Yohko and Azusa together. The latter gets knocked away, and Yanagi—already keenly understanding how useful either of them are in a fight—send both Azusa and Chi through another portal back to Earth.

Yohko's left to fight a now empowered dragonman and, after taking a few tactical cuts to her clothing, decides to hit him with the old Mamono Hunter patented laser tethers (???????) to trap him in place long enough to stab through where the orb is, destroying the creature for good. Biryu is freed and calls out to his Princess Yohko... and Yanagi runs into his arms to embrace him, with the nearby attendant revealing that this was all a ruse to convince Yohko to help using the age-old "dangle a potential sexual encounter on the end of a stick" trick. Since neither Biryu or Yanagi look like they're about to tell Yohko that they were watching her from across the bar and really dig her vibe, she decides that she'll need to wait a little longer before the magic can happen. But then magic does happen, though sadly only the type that teleports her back home where her friends are waiting. They all decide to go look for hunks. The end. I kinda liked this one because it both reverses the damsel in distress trope and gives Yohko more agency over what she wants (hunks) and how she intends to get it (by hunting mamono). We are setting a precedent that every handsome guy she meets is either going to be possessed, killed by demons, or is already spoken for due to a 1,000 year love contract, but I guess they need something to hook the show on beyond "this next Demon King is even stronger than the last one fr fr".

Episode 4

What... what even is this? The best answer I can give is that it's a tribute series of music videos set to either static artwork of Yohko and the gang, chibified animations, live-action performances, or clips from the previous episodes. It's like DVD extras before DVDs were a thing, but what perplexes me most is that we're already in clip show territory after just three half-hour OVAs. Many of these songs were used as ending tracks—all three prior episodes had different ones—so I'm curious if producing a lot of music was part of their marketing for these OVAs and, if so, this bonus collection starts to make a little more sense. But this isn't some fifteen minute extra they stuck in between episodes, it's labelled as the fourth full episode and is just as long as any of the others.

It's not that I'm irritated by this random clip show—if anything, it's definitely more interesting on a conceptual level than another fight scene where the demon tears off half of Yohko's yin-yang cheongsam again—just a little curious about the story behind it. The songs are a mix of female-empowering rock songs and sappy love ballads, so maybe the OVAs saw an unexpectedly significant female audience who wanted to add the show's songs to their karaoke repertoires? Maybe it was a promotion to hype up the fifth and sixth OVAs? The OVAs were all sold separately originally (the ADV Films version compiled them onto one VHS) so I'm supposing that gave them the freedom to produce one-offs like this. No new lore here to consider, anyway, so let's move onto the fifth episode.

Episode 5

With Episode 5, the show remembers that Yohko has relatives and so we have ourselves an ancestral legacy arc. Specifically, there's a demon that Yohko's distant ancestor—the first Mamono Hunter, Haruka—sealed away who keeps coming back every generation only to be put in his place by the current Mamono Hunter. Personally, I'm all for a Castlevania plotline, if only because it means I can get my hopes up about the video game tie-ins. This sealed dude seems like a bad 'un, as he's introduced by having him possess the owner of a clock store (I guess if he's a self-resurrecting Castlevania Dracula type he'd be drawn to any building full of clockwork parts) and siphoning the lifeforce away from the buxom employee the owner was already sexually harassing. Sucks for that lady I guess. Grandma Madoka has the deets as always: this new big bad is Tokima (literally "time demon") and is capable of controlling time and space. As she explains all this to Azusa while setting up warding talismans around a shrine that seals Tokima's power, the demon in question moves from the clock store owner to the hunk-of-the-week Ryuichi Asakura, who briefly had a meetcute with Yohko in the school lobby.

Employing a level of rizz as mighty as his '90s mullet, Asakura!Tokima convinces Yohko to meet at her home later that night and suggests a quiet place that they can be alone like, say, a secret Mamono Hunter lair that houses the seal for a powerful (but handsome) time demon that may or may not accidentally get destroyed in the midst of their premarital lovemaking. Hypothetically. Yohko falls for all this because she's sixteen (and yes, I haven't forgotten how old she is) and leads him to said area, but the talismans do their job and force Tokima out of Asakura's body. Pissed at getting clamjammed once again, Yohko takes on Tokima in his true demon form as Madoka and Azusa lend support. Though he gets away after proving to be a handful, an errant attack on Madoka combined with the effects of the talismans have, for whatever reason, turned her youthful again. Wait, I know the reason: it's so the next scene can have her walking around topless as she marvels at her newfound vitality. A running bit from here on is that Sayoko, her own daughter, can no longer recognize Madoka and assumes she's one of Yohko's friends; albeit a friend that keeps insulting her and insisting she's an old woman that doesn't need to use honorifics around adults. As the grown-ups discuss a strategy for finishing off Tokima, perennial punching bag Azusa is left to clean up the room with the seal and, naturally, gets immediately possessed by Tokima into delivering it to him. Turns out possession isn't just nine tenths of the law, it's nine tenths of all the enemy schemes on this show.

Reaching Azusa in the nick of time, Yohko finds actually defeating her tougher than she expected—to be fair, she probably assumed Azusa would trip over and knock herself out—but eventually manages to send her flying. However, this leaves an opening for Tokima to stick his whole claw through Yohko's chest and kill her pretty damn hard, spitefully sending her corpse back through time as Azusa finally destroys the seal and unleashes his full power. Things are looking kinda bleak at this point, except Yohko's body just happens to land in front of her ancestor, Haruka, who then resurrects her from the dead with her own Hot Topic Mamono Hunter skull ring. (That's a Mamono Hunter power I hope is in the games too, seems useful.) Turns out some of Tokima's power was sealed in Haruka's ring after his first defeat and it's enough to reverse time but only in very specific circumstances like undoing a fatal injury which, I guess, sure, OK. Anyway, the two then use their rings combined like it's Captain Planet to return to the present and all four Mamono Hunters manage to fuck up the time demon, who is probably mentally calling foul on this contrived nonsense throughout. There's a neat if incredulous moment where Tokima splits into multiple shadow clones, but then Haruka uses the ring again to summon all 105 other Mamono Hunters through time to deal with them. Hope they're all treated to a family barbecue after this, at least. Anyway, Tokima buys the farm (it's implied this will be it for that dude; no coming back for Round 109) and Haruka teleports back to the past after Doc and Marty offer her a lift. Nah, just kidding, it was actually Bill and Ted. Yohko hands in her badge and skull ring with the defeat of the strongest demon, but then Madoka—who has transformed back to being old, status quos being what they are—lets her know there are still plenty of other demons around. Right on cue, King Ghidorah shows up at a construction site and Yohko's once again tired of this shit. Roll credits. (Also, Asakura didn't die, so that's a bonus. Guessing a girl that caused him to get bodyjacked by an ancient horror probably isn't in with a chance any more.)

Episode 6

The final episode sees Yohko once more pining for a handsome upperclassman, except this time Tateno—the basketball ace—is found to be dating someone else, saving him from the usual song and dance of being possessed by a malevolent magic-user out to defeat Yohko. Except the person he's with is the spitting image of Yohko: it's her distant cousin Ayako Mano, who has carried the grudge of her grandmother Chiaki whom was passed over for the Mamono Hunter role (that instead went to Madoka, her younger twin), and is determined to ruin Yohko's life and supplant her as the 108th Mamono Hunter instead. She does this by possessing (sigh) the guys Yohko is interested in, first Tateno and then the student teacher Sano-sensei (who, for some reason, has a hairstyle exactly like Charlie Nash from Street Fighter). Turns out Ayako is a prodigy both in her studies and in combat when wielding the Whip of Destruction, so even without the powers of the Mamono Hunter (though let's be clear, that ring does most of the heavy lifting) she's more than a match for Yohko. She even has her own Azusa, which the show helpfully calls Azusa 2, such is the amount of investment they have in Azusa as a character in general. Actually starting to feel sorry for her.

Ayako draws Yohko to a summit temple using Sano as bait, and the two duke it out—they even have competing transformation sequences, though Ayako's costume is black—leaving Sano knocked unconscious against a shintai rock. The rock then eats the poor dude and uses his body to resurrect a demon that was sleeping there, interrupting the fight between Yohko and Ayako. Ayako tells Yohko to stand down while she deals with her own mistake, but Yohko is adamant they fight it together due to its trick of freezing them in place but only one at a time. By combining their powers they're eventually able to slay the demon and free themselves, leaving their grandmothers to argue while they part on more amiable terms. Ayako acknowledges Yohko's skills as a Mamono Hunter but claims that she'll continue training and will challenge her again someday before vanishing to parts unknown. Of course, she won't, because this is the end of the OVAs.

So that's the anime in full. Riding that fine line between empowering and objectifying, maybe closer to one than the other, Mamono Hunter Youko tried to be something for everyone: a shoujo romance protagonist with her own agency and relatable insecurities but depicted with a seinen mindset that frequently mixed violence and nudity (though nothing too explicit, it should be said; we never got a Yohko vs. the Overfiend crossover, thankfully) to appeal to a young male adult audience. As stated before, ADV Films perhaps realized that they as a smaller underground distributor would have a better shot releasing this mostly unscathed than the Bowdlerization it would have to go through with any major outfit, for better or worse, making it an ideal choice for a first project. Is it any good? Well, it's not unwatchable; Madhouse is no slouch when it comes to animated conflicts (though the first episode was a bit rough, hence why they felt the need to jam fanservice into every crack, so to speak) and the show does strike the right balance of humor and seriousness, never being too goofy or too dour. The musical clip show was definitely a choice too. I might not go for something quite this licentious for the next Game OVA—it makes taking acceptable screenshots challenging—but it was a nostalgic glimpse into the early '90s anime localization scene where normally your best bet for something like this is a fan-translated VHS bootleg sold by a guy named Banzai Bob at some dank midwestern animecon.

Madhouse did not produce any more episodes after this and with the exception of a DVD remaster for its tenth anniversary and a Blu Ray for its twentieth (neither of which I forked out for, my B) there's been nothing new anime-wise since. There was a manga adaptation soon after the last OVA, however, that reimagines the basis of Yohko's powers—they were given to her by an ancestral ibex spirit, since she has no living relatives in this continuity—and has her adopt a black wolf pup she names Raigo. Raigo turns out to be a centuries-old demon that grew monstrous due to its hatred towards humans, but Yohko is eager to try to rehabilitate it with her newfound powers in spite of the mayhem it leaves in its wake.

The manga was written and drawn by mangaka Gaku Miyao (who I believe also created the character back in the 1980s with author Juuzou Mutsuki for an unused game design document) who is perhaps more famous for the desert fantasy adventure manga series Kazan. According to his Twitter the dude's also behind a few video game cover art images too, including those for Burning Force and Rolling Thunder 2. The manga's way more serious (and less lewd) than the anime given Yohko's orphaned status and how sidekicks like Azusa or Madoka don't appear (though Chi still does, her antics providing what little levity the manga has to offer). The manga also includes Haruka Mano in its backstory, this time as a miko who decides to raise Raigo when it was still mortal despite pushback from her fellow villagers due to superstitions around black wolves, and one of the video game-specific characters named Shouma who looks to be Haruka's magic-user husband in this continuity. Speaking of the games...

The Game(s)

Mamono Hunter Youko saw three video game adaptations that I can find (though our wiki mentions a fourth I've been unable to track down) and the first of those is Mamono Hunter Youko: Dai-7 no Keisho for the Mega Drive, which will be our focus this time. Dai-7 no Keisho ("The 7th Alarm Bell") was, like the other two Mamono Hunter Youko games, published by Masaya on behalf of their parent corporation NCS. Its developer was contract company Dual: this was Dual's one and only Mega Drive release, as they were more focused on the SNES, Game Boy, and the TurboGrafx. As it's a Mega Drive game, it's also been covered on my own Mega Archive feature (specifically, Part VIII) though I wasn't too impressed after the short time I spent with it back then. The game was released in March of 1991, so it predates all but the very first OVA (which was released in December 1990, while the second OVA was released in December 1992).

Dai-7 no Keisho is a side-scrolling action game that feels similar to Telenet's Valis series, as the titular protagonist runs around linear brawler-like courses hunting mamono using her sword and a handful of other powers. Her most notable combat tool in this game after her sword is a shield that can be projected outwards as a weapon or kept as a defensive barrier.

Does it do right by the anime? I guess so, since you have a Mamono Hunter right there that is hunting mamono and everything. It's beyond annoying with its difficulty though and feels kinda cheaply made on top of that, despite Masaya usually signing off on quality products. It did release three months after that first OVA after all, so that's worth keeping in mind. Visually it's not too bad for an early MD game (though its story is non-existent) and, for as much as I don't care for its Ghouls 'N Ghosts anti-player trickery, Capcom's spook-'em-up was probably a smart choice to emulate if you're looking to adapt a comic-horror anime license (along with Valis, given its emphasis on pretty heroines kicking interdimensional demon butt). I can't say I want to play any more of it, but it might appeal to retro "hard game" fans willing to dedicate the time to getting through its challenges without dying too much (and it's pretty generous with the continues besides, as long as you aren't hemorrhaging lives every scene).

Our other two Mamono Hunter Youko games to see us off are a pair of menu-driven adventure games, 1992's Mamono Hunter Youko: Makai kara no Tenkosei ("Transfer Student from the Demon World") and 1993's Mamono Hunter Youko: Tooki Yobigoe ("Distant Call"). They would've bookended the second OVA episode, except the second game is a direct continuation of the first game's story so nothing from that second episode is included (like Azusa). Said story concerns a handsome new transfer student, Shouma (told you he'd be back), who joins Yohko and Chi's class just as a sudden earthquake warps all three to an underdeveloped fantasy world. The second game picks up way after that as Shouma, Yohko and an unidentified hooded figure take a flying boat to a floating island for reasons I'm sure were explained at the end of the first game. Naturally, as text-dense adventure games written entirely in Japanese (and no localizations I could find; there's precious few for CD games) I wasn't able to make much progress in either of them, but at least we have some pictures to look at:

Do they do right by the anime? I'm going to say more so than the MD platformer. For one, being a pair of CD games means they can have CD music (including the anime's intro) and full voice acting, as well as a hell of a lot more story, which should draw in those that liked that first OVA. It's an original story too, albeit one that goes off the rails almost immediately with trips to fantasy universes, in a multimedia-ready genre that was a popular choice for the fledgling CD-ROM platform. Granted, I don't think either is the most challenging adventure game—most Japanese ones tended to have you systemically pick menu options until the story kicked back into gear and very little in the way of puzzles or roadblocks—but if you just wanted a game that felt like you were playing along with an episode of the OVAs I guess both are suitable for that.

That's going to do it for this exhaustive rundown of an early champion of the North American VHS localization scene. If you can excuse the constant teenage nudity, the show (and to a much lesser extent the games) are some fun, often goofy supernatural-fighting action stories from a female perspective that managed to pre-empt a certain other show about a regular highschool girl fighting monsters and trying not to fall for enigmatic hunks that were obvious bad news. Man, if I went to the same school as a girl that had a kickass Hot Topic skull ring that could summon magic demon-slaying swords and had an Atari Lynx at her house? I'd have been head over heels.