He may have less charisma than a pet rock, but after 32 years and over 60 bestselling manga volumes, you can't
keep him down. Fifteen years after director Osamu Dezaki first brought mangaka Takao Saito's suave, stoic anti-hero
to the screen in 1983's "Golgo-13" (retitled "The Professional: Golgo-13" in the U.S. to match the title of Viz
Comics' adaptation of the manga), the esteemed director of anime classics such as "Tomorrow's Joe" ("Ashita no Joe")
and "Rose of Versailles" ("Versailles no Bara") returns to a character who, judging by the director's commentary on
Urban Vision's recently released DVD, obviously still fascinates him -- the themes of sex and death so indelible to
the character are ones the director can talk about at length (especially sex). With frequent collaborator Akio
Sugino ("Black Jack") handling character designs and art direction, Dezaki again brings his characteristic "anime
noir" styling to the steely-eyed lady-killer.
Here, as in many of his works, Dezaki makes liberal use of oft-neglected techniques such as split-screen shots
and transitions from cel animation to dramatic watercolor still frames. Also, as in his first "Golgo-13" feature,
he experiments with CG. Technology has, of course, improved tremendously since the primitively designed choppers
that clashed with the drawn art of the '83 film - the CG in this more contemporary OVA is integrated far more
seamlessly with the cel-based animation. The computer artistry here serves admirably to spruce up scenes rather
than calling attention to itself.
But Dezaki does not wander far from what has worked for him in the past. The traditional animation looks
uncannily identical to that of the '83 feature creating plenty of room for improvement. Dezaki's frequent reliance
on "triple pans" (when the camera pans across the same cel three times in rapid succession) to convey action comes
across like a budget-saving device rather than a deliberate artistic decision. Still, Dezaki's highly stylized,
deft direction gives the illusion that the video is much better animated than it probably truly is.
Urban Vision has even gone another step, and included a running audio commentary track -- in Japanese with
English subtitles -- by Dezaki and executive producer Mataichiro Yamamoto. This commentary is punctuated with
many long silences, which become far more obvious due to the lack of any "soft" (lower volume) audio from the
feature playing in the background, the kind that does underscore most Hollywood releases with director
commentaries. Despite these pauses, several of Dezaki's comments -- most of which have something to do with sex
-- illuminate what he was attempting to accomplish and why some scenes play as they do.
Dezaki was much more interested in fleshing out (no pun intended... maybe) Queen Bee, a powerful woman who
sleeps with whomever, and however many, she wants. In this moody pulp action thriller she comes the closest to
becoming a fully realized character. Togo himself remains a cipher and a wholly static character. A homosexual
subplot involving running mates Hardy and Waltham was chopped at the last minute, leaving them generic amoral
politicos. The maniacally vicious Lt. Benning would be completely one-dimensional if not for the fact that he is
first seen in the relatively delicate act of playing a piano; in fact, he appears to be an amalgam of two similarly
freakish antagonists from the earlier "G-13" movie. Togo and Benning could just as well be characters in a
particularly violent video game, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that "G-13" has been made into a video
game at least three times.
