Karas: The Revelation bears a strong resemblance to a big, colorful lollipop: it's pretty and fun for an afternoon, but after it's done, all that's left is an empty stick and gooey fingers.  The second and final installment of the OVA, Karas: The Prophesy, Revelation continues the story of Otoha, the new Karas, on his quest to save Shijuku city. 

The first OVA, Prophesy, introduces the Karas, a sort of spirit that protects the human inhabitants of the city from demons.  The two live alongside one another, but the demons remain unseen.  It's the Karas' duty to make certain the two races live in harmony.  The Yurine, who represents the will of the people, directs the Karas' actions.  Eko, the former Karas, has gone rogue and decides that humans have become too arrogant and self-centered to be worth protecting.  He plots to take over the city, bending both humans and demons to his will.  The city is in need of a new Karas, and Otoha takes on the job.

Eko has been very naughty over the course of the two OVA's, turning demons into machines that feed on human blood.  As Revelation opens, Otoha has lost his Yurine, and is nothing more than a human man.  He still has his sword, a last, tenuous connection to the Yurine, but isn't quite a match for the ancient and much more powerful Eko.  In spite of his human frailties, Otoha never gives up the fight.

Woven in between this tale of good versus evil are any number of threads.  There are glimpses of Otoha's recent dark past, revealing that even morally ambiguous people can step up and try to save the city.  A police detective, the only one who believes his daughter's insistence that demons exist, leads an investigation of people who have been mysteriously drained of blood.  Nue, a demon who has been turned into a machine by Eko, searches for his missing brother while resisting his mechanical (and bloodsucking) urges.  A plucky newsgirl refuses to leave the city, even after experiencing demonic horrors firsthand.  Unfortunately, these subplots get lost in the big picture, and muddy the story-line.  There's so much going on, and new story elements seem to randomly drop out of the sky, as though the writers were trying to make the characters more three-dimensional, but weren't too sure how to go about it.

This is an action flick.  There's nothing wrong with that, but be prepared to accept pseudo-scientific, comic book explanations--when there are explanations.  It's all about the action, leaving the plot and characters to fall a bit flat. 

Revelations, however, delivers on the eye-candy.  The backgrounds are detailed and lovely.  The character designs weren't all to my taste, with a few too many effeminate men, but they were all unique and nicely drawn.  The sepia overtones in some of the scenes were a very nice touch.

That said, I had a huge problem with the action.  Maybe it doesn't bother everyone, but mixing CGI with traditional animation can get messy.  In these instances, the difference is jarring, and takes away from the enjoyment of watching two nearly indestructible beings beat the crap out of each other.  There are these lovely animated backgrounds and bystanders, and then the CGI demon and Karas (he gets fancy armor in battle-mode) drops down into the ink and paint.  It looks like a fight from a video game has been superimposed over the traditional animation.  Some of the special effects, like the demon's and Karas' ability to stop time, are very cool.  The CGI works well in these instances, but the fights (and strangely, the Karas' armor) reminded me of something from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

My own CGI issues aside, an aspect that makes the OVA fun to watch is its heavy borrowing from the visuals of The Matrix.  Perhaps it's a bit overdone, but I got a kick out of the ridiculous use of slow-motion and tracking bullets.  It fit the sci-fi nature of the OVA and made me want to pull out The Matrix and watch it again.

The English dub is a decent translation, but I preferred the subtitled version with the Japanese voice actors.  The original voice actors gave a somewhat more nuanced performance than the English folks.  Now, this being an action eye-candy OVA, none of the actors were but so nuanced, we're not talking Shakespeare here, but the lines didn't seem quite as cheesy in Japanese.

For extras, the dvd offers footage of the English voice actors in the voiceover booth, rough cut excerpts, the trailer, and still shots. 

Like those big, pretty all-day lollipops, Karas: The Revelation isn't for everyone, but for a bit of mindless entertainment, it's not bad eye-candy.