Soukou Kihei Votoms: Case;Irvine

Case;Irvine is a stand-alone spinoff from the mainline Votoms storyline, being one of the only entries in the franchise that truly has a self-contained plot. But is it any good? The story of Case;Irvine is fairly simple and straightforward, drawing on several facets of the known Votoms world like the recent war, barely underground arena battling, and the acid rain seen in Woodo. There's not exactly enough time to tell a truly original or groundbreaking story, but a lot of background explanation can be skipped because the viewer is likely aware of the setting. This allows just enough time for the characters and arcs to work, even if there's a lack of depth or real originality. Where Case;Irvine shines is in it's surprising animation. The votoms franchise swapped to CGI mechs in 2007's pailsen files with pretty bad results, though later entries were more acceptable. Case;Irvine goes back to regularly animated mechs with pretty decent results, giving us some of the best AT action in the entire franchise, even if the scale and duration remain limited. I don't know why this entry got special treatment, but i'm happy the AT action got at least one good non-CGI representation in the modern era. Overall Case;Irvine is a short story that'll work for fans of the franchise, but it doesn't offer much else. Released shortly before Votoms Finder it appears as though the creators were trying to find out if a full spinoff was possible, but Case;Irvine will likely go down in history as an expected but decent entry in a very weird franchise.

Case;Irvine is a stand alone VOTOMs OVA. Irvine is a retired soldier working as a battler... when things get a bit out of hand. While not strikingly original, the protagonist and antagonist are drawn and motivated sufficiently for material thats 45 minutes long. The setting is essentially a place like Uoodo, with no development and not making quite as much sense. Everything is basically "just enough" to set things up for whats an action packed 45 minutes. And it is action packed. Theres a lot of fights, and they are all pretty good and enjoyable. This is an OVA to watch for the action, and its worthwhile on the account. In a sense, this is a shame; the basic characters and set up are all pretty decent and with double the running time this could be an interesting story with great fights, rather than just enough scaffolding to put the fights in. On the other hand, it still works as intended. This is shallow, but its fast, breezy fun with lots of battles between two custom scopedogs, which are nicely animated and have good choreography and lots of use of the signature movements we expect in VOTOMs. It may be slight but its enjoyable for any franchise fans.