There is undoubtedly some perverse fun to be had in witnessing Togo take out whole squads of elite commandos single-handedly, not to mention watching every nubile woman he encounters shed her clothes and get freaky with him for no discernible reason. The production values, dual 5.1 channel soundtracks and the commentary track add to the value of the disc.

The story is certainly not original or believable. It's nearly impossible to relate to any of the characters - particularly Togo himself, who is an exaggerated abstraction of the male ethos. On the plus side, director Osamu Dezaki tells a fairly entertaining self-contained story in 60 minutes with a satisfying resolution.

Sonia's character shines among this batch of archetypal corrupt politician, bloodthirsty ex-soldier, stoic secret agents, etc. Togo himself has about four lines in sixty minutes, and never once changes his facial expression (the animators must love this guy, to say nothing of his voice actor).

Akio Sugino's character designs, detailed and realistic, compliment Dezaki's modest budget know-how. A judicious use of computer effects - such as a star field in the background of one scene - punch up the visuals even more. The action sequences, however, suffers from a low ratio of actual movement to pan shots over stills.

Well-timed subtitles and naturally flowing dialogue. The English dub is a close approximation of the Japanese, but not exact. Some of the more colorful language on the Japanese track was changed in the dub.

Urban Vision's transfer of this recent (1998) OVA is crisp, and devoid of any blemishes (scratches, nicks) on the print or compression artifacts; the visual presentation on the DVD is superior to the company's seminal releases of "Vampire Hunter 'D'" and "Wicked City," which were created from much older source materials. (This proves that the problems with those releases were due to the source materials, not Urban Vision's encoding of those DVDs.) The audio on the DVD has been remixed to Dolby Digital 5.1 for both the English dub and the Japanese language track, a rarity among domestic anime DVDs -- the number of region 1 anime DVDs with 5.1 Japanese tracks can almost be counted on one hand (unless one is wont to count each volume of Bandai's "Blue Submarine No. 6" individually). There is not a lot of directionality, but it is a pleasing enough mix. The menus are quick to respond and simple to navigate.

The mass carnage only lets up to allow for the frequent sex scenes. In one scene, Queen Bee even blows someone away while having sex. In other words, "Golgo-13" would put a slug between the eyes of a Teletubbie without batting an eye. Put the kids to bed.

At one point, a character declares that "the tomato has f***ed the cabbage" and that "we'll be the ones to put the cucumber up the cabbage." This may be the most ridiculous line heard in an anime since ... well, since the infamous "pull my trigger" line in the 1983 "Golgo-13."

Queen Bee tells Golgo-13 she wants to bear his love child. Would the kid emerge from the womb packing an M-16?

Love it? Hate it? Buy it.