Rarely do these imitations stick around. The three-part Green Legend Ran was one of Pioneer's first big releases in the mid-1990s, but it's seldom mentioned today unless someone's trying to remember a certain anime film once seen on the Sci-Fi channel. You know, the one with the goofy kid and the silver-haired girl, and they're out in the desert. Oh, and there are magical plants or something.

The goofy kid is Ran, a lad scraping by in a small village during a particularly bleak future. An alien presence known as the Rodo has drained the planet of nearly all vegetation and water, leaving a desert-covered world where humans worship the Rodo as a life-giving god. It's a blandly unpleasant place; the Rodoist humans are pale, blond fascist soldiers, and those chosen to serve the Rodo as priests are, in a twist straight out of Lynch's awesomely horrible Dune movie, mutated into huge-headed creatures. People aren't happy with this, of course, and a revolutionary group called Hazzard (yeah, the official copy spells it with two Zs, as in "the Dukes of") aims to bring down the Rodo through bombings and other terrorist sport. Ran wants to join Hazzard, of course. Not so much because he believes in the rebellion, but because he thinks they'll lead him to the scarred man who gunned down his mother.

The silver-haired girl is Aira, who first shows up to slap Ran across the street when she finds him questioning a dying Rodoist soldier. She's apparently a member of Hazzard, though the film never clarifies how she reconciles mercy for wounded enemies with the violence of her compatriots. Like most heroines Xeroxed from Miyazaki's sketchbook, she's basically sweet, good with kids, and secretly burdened by some past trauma; or rather, the lack of it, since she has little memory of who she is or why she has silver hair (yes, this is the rare anime that makes something of outlandish hair colors). Not long after Ran joins Hazzard and pals around with Aira, she's snatched up and ferried toward the Rodoist headquarters by the Hazzard leaders. One of these leaders has a scar that Ran recognizes.

Ran is amazed by Aira's silver hair and her command of basic motor skills.

Green Legend Ran starts off with some visually accomplished world-building, all arid wastelands and ramshackle towns dotted with hovercraft or other higher technology. Clashes between the Rodoist brigades and Hazzard cells come to explosive ends, animated with a fluid, twisting grace impressive for its time. By 1992, the days of generously budgeted direct-to-video releases were over for the anime industry, but Green Legend Ran manages to look fairly good despite some ugly cel quality, choosing smooth motion over particularly detailed character designs. Director Satoshi Saga even throws in a strange hallucination to hint at Aira's darker connections. At first impression, it's surprisingly harsh for a video series from AIC, better known for cranking out brightly colored pabulum like Burn-Up! W and forty flavors of Tenchi Muyo! during the 1990s.

Intriguing designs carry some of the first episode, even when it fails to make Ran anything but generic. He's a stock boys'-comic hero, with his single-minded goal, youthful pluck, and ability to get the better of armed, presumably trained adults. Aira, similarly, is a helpless object of rescue, mewling for Ran as she's bundled away to become the lynchpin in some terrorist plot.

It's routine I-wish-I-was-Miyazaki material, even if Green Legend Ran doesn't quite drop the ball until its middle act. As Aira discovers another silver-haired child and some of Hazzard's uglier secrets, Ran marches across the desert in search of her. He's picked up by the largely forgettable crew of a sandcrawler. Jeke, their brashly jovial captain, seems to recognize a necklace once worn by Ran's mother, and, for no reason, decides it's better not to tell Ran who his father really is. That's the sole point of interest during Ran's drawn-out time on the sandship, where the viewer's made to watch a procession of bland characterization and tired gags. Green Legend Ran is one of those unfortunate films where people spend more time looking at things than reacting to them or doing much of interest.

Meanwhile, Aira is snatched away from Hazzard by the Rodo navy. She's taken to the Rodoist headquarters of Green 5, where she's put in a Tinkerbell costume and paraded before the skeptical, huge-headed prelates of the Rodo church. Ran and his new friends show up just in time for a showdown between Hazzard and the Holy Mother that governs the Rodoists, with Aira smack dab at the center of it.

A strong finale might have saved things, but one never comes together. There's a not-so-shocking revelation or two about the Rodo, leaving Ran to rescue Aira from the Holy Mother and her own misguided intentions. Green Legend Ran doesn't draw its plot threads together so much as it just shrugs toward a climax because that's what cliché mandates. There's a jab or two at organized religion, though it seldom goes beyond using quasi-Catholic nomenclature and showing the Rodoist elite as bloated, cruel hypocrites. And the Archbishop is a giant dude who grows leaves out of his skin. Boy, I bet the Vatican's going to send out some papal bulls over that little barb.

The dub is an early one from Ocean Studios, with not-so-bad actors making the most of a woodenly translated script. The only standout is Gerard Plunkett, who makes certain that you know the blond-haired Hazzard leader is evil, evil, EVIL. The Japanese cast is solid, featuring Michie Tomizawa (Sailor Moon's Sailor Mars), Kikuko Inoue (Belldandy in Oh My Goddess! ) and other actors who went on to bigger things. Green Legend Ran is also an early Pioneer DVD, and while that may excuse mediocre picture quality, it doesn't excuse the lack of a menu. The disc still has chapter stops, yet the director's two-question interview and a pointless music video are bunched up at the end of the film.

While it gives off some energy at first, Green Legend Ran is just a little eco-fable with no heart to it. Constantly making lazy grabs for Ghibli-movie territory, it falls short and just gives up about twenty minutes before it's actually over. There's occasional punch in the animation and the desiccated world it explores, but that can't keep a sagging, hackneyed plot from being bored with itself. Yes, Green Legend Ran is seldom mentioned today, and it's easy to see why.