Inspiring ideas color a rather derivative work. But "Goku's" dark noir-style keeps director Yoshiaki Kawajiri's work above the grade.

Goku plays a single note throughout, never engaged emotionally in the action. He's cool, but ultimately flat. The story whirls around the genetic battle Ryu wages with himself.

Kawajiri earns his stripes here, immersing his work in a dark, captivating world. He sets up shots like a film director, but allows himself the kind of flexibility that only the animation medium can offer.

"Goku's" script boasts fluid English and cliché but effective use of idioms - a concerted effort to adopt the noir language of the rogue cop, which Steve Blum tackles with aplomb. All other voices embody the characters but the meter fluctuates with long passages spoken with inappropriate, elongated pauses.

Heavy violence quotient, sexual situations, bales of nudity.

Never since "The Rape of Lucrece" has a woman been so pointless and ineffectual.

He's just cool. Wears a tie without a shirt, crops his hair so it turns inward around his jaw, Batmans his already cool Corvette into an even cooler supped up super vehicle ... I bet he's gay.

Love it? Hate it? Buy it.