Hmm... where have I seen the story for Armitage III before..? Oh yes, everywhere! Armitage III certainly won't win any awards for originality, but it more than makes up for it with excellent action sequences, a nice romance story, and a truly interesting villain. Also, the premise behind Armitage III may be a stinker, but the execution and the mulitude of plot twists help rise Armitage III from the barren wasteland of mediocrity.

I was somewhat impressed by the animation and music in the OVA. They were both quite well done for an anime created in 1994 and the music had a nice techno feel to it. Unfortunately, the music is played pretty infrequently over the course of the anime, and the some of the songs that were played were less than spectacular. There are a few gripes I have with the animation as well. I didn't really like Ross's character design. He's clean-cut, tall, statuesque, and surrounded by some of the ugliest looking men I've seen outside of Kite. The character itself was one huge cliché as well, from his personality to his development.

Then there was Armitage. Of all of the robotic girl anime I've ever seen (that's a lot of anime, believe you me!), she easily transcends the rest of the heap with her personality, design, and background. I found her to be immensely interesting and the her background was even more intriguing. However, there were many occasions throughout the series that I was rolling my eyes at the overacting. Scenes that could have been really emotional became tiresome and uninteresting (at least, until the next action scene came around).

I also wasn't impressed by the ending at all. The fourth, and last, episode builds up so much steam and then... something just happens. It just ends right there without any explanation at all. Explanations like "Where the heck did Ross get those WEAPONS?" were needed. In addition, the epilogue only made things worse. It was so predictable and mind-numbingly cliché that I was embarassed just by watching it. Scratch that, "embarassed" is not strong enough to convey what I was feeling. I was rolling my eyes so much from the ending that they popped right out of my sockets, it was so predictable and embarassing!