Review of Yugo The Negotiator: Vol.2 - Pakistan 2 - Honor

Introduction

The first volume of Yugo The Negotiator was certainly interesting, offering a more mature anime series, with a degree of thought and intelligence at the heart of the story. It isn`t everyday that you get to see a show about a negotiator, and mediation is hardly the first plot point that comes to mind when it comes to action anime. It also seemed to do the impossible, set a story in Pakistan, with a focus on politics, fanaticism and religion, and do it all with sensitivity and an eye to realism, albeit with a very Japanese interpretation of things. It was very much half a story, making it difficult to evaluate with just those first three episodes alone. So I look forward to these final three episodes in the Pakistan arc, to get a better handle on the show.

It`s a thirteen episode series split in two halves, telling two stories. The final seven episodes will focus on Russia, but the first six are set in Pakistan. Yugo Beppu is the world`s finest private negotiator. He`s reputed to have never failed, and when a Japanese businessman is taken hostage in Pakistan, and the Pakistani government supported mediation violently collapses, Yugo is the only alternative left. The final three episodes of the arc are presented in Volume 2: Honor.

4. Hero
Leader of the dacoits Yusuf Ali Mesa can`t countenance a Japanese man having the heart of a hero, and Yugo won`t be accepted as a negotiator. He`s sentenced to death, and staked out in the sun to die. But the words of his mentor come back to him, his lessons regarding faith and religious fervour. When he starts reciting passages from the Quran, he gets the attention of his captors. Could God favour this faithless man? Meanwhile, the ruthless Colonel Shadle arrives in Sukkur to hunt for the dacoits and Yugo.

5. Trust
Having established common ground between him and Ali, Yugo begins to negotiate for the return of kidnapped businessman Iwase. But, the negotiations will be irrelevant if the money can`t get to Pakistan. The ransom payment and exchange will have to be done away from the eyes of the military, and with the army eavesdropping on radio transmissions, Yugo will have to be circumspect. Iwase`s daughter Mayuko arrives with Rashid and the money, and Yugo tells Ali that he will have to evacuate his village and find a secluded spot for the exchange. Ali is reluctant to leave, but both sides will have to trust each other. Yugo`s honesty becomes clear, when Colonel Shadle`s gunships arrive, and show that they have no interest in search and rescue, or taking prisoners.

6. Promise
Through subterfuge and sneakiness, the ransom arrives, and the exchange can be made, but that just makes Colonel Shadle all the more determined to erase all evidence of the kidnappers, the negotiator and the hostage. Soon they are pinned down as the army advances.

Video

Yugo the Negotiator gets a 4:3 regular transfer that is clear and sharp, with no problems other than a minor shimmer on fine detail. It`s not the most dynamic of animations, preferring to stick with style over action. The characters have an animated cell-shaded sketch look that works well given the high exposed look of the show, and the palette that tends more towards the pastels. It`s very much in the Otogi Zoshi school of animation, and the character and thoughtful art design balances the occasionally static feel to proceedings. This is a show where attention to detail is overriding, and the fact that the art designer travelled to Pakistan to research the locations really tells in the final product.

Audio

You get a choice between DD 5.1 English and DD 2.0 Japanese with optional translated subtitles or signs. Please, please avoid the English dub. I don`t know what it is about having a familiarity with an accent, but it makes it all the more obvious when they are mangled. The first Pakistani character on screen is a taxi driver that sounds like Apu from the Simpsons. It gets worse from there. It`s the subcontinent equivalent of Dick Van Dyke`s cockney, and it`s something I can`t live with. (I doubt I`ll have the same problem with the Russia arc though). It`s far better to stick with the Japanese track, and while everyone, regardless of origin speaks the same language, the cultural differences come through in the script and animation. It also means that the actors can concentrate on their acting, rather than keeping a wayward accent under control.

Another disappointment to Yugo is the music. Two credit themes that in no way suit the show are just a distraction, but the incidental music seems to have escaped from an eighties daytime soap melodrama. It doesn`t do the show any good at all.

Features

Once again there are sleeve notes that add to the depth of the show. You can see some of Yugo`s character designs, and read an interview with voice actor Takashi Hagino. The map and glossary of Urdu terms from the previous volume is repeated.

On the disc you`ll find the clean credits, the opening and all three closing sequences. There are trailers for Area 88, Get Backers, Samurai Gun, Madlax, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. There is a set of Personnel Dossiers here, with 5 of the characters profiled over six pages. The Pakistan arc music video is just that, with the full opening theme set to images from the show.

There is a 4½-minute interview with director Seiji Kishi in which he discusses his approach to the Pakistan arc. A 2½-minute interview with voice actor Takashi Hagino sheds more light on the Yugo character, and 3 minutes are given over to Character Designer Takehiko Matsumoto and Series Planner Kazuharu Sato.

The big contribution on this disc is the Japanese Depiction Of Pakistan featurette, which lasts 20 minutes. It`s in the form of a commentary from Cultural Advisor Nawaz Charania, and ADR Director Scott McClennen, played over selected images from the three episodes. It follows on from a similar piece on the first disc, but this time around the emphasis is on discussing the realism of the show.

Finally there is a brief preview of volume 3.

Conclusion

The Pakistan arc is very much one story, and I had found it impossible to evaluate the first volume properly without having seen the whole thing. While it certainly impressed in terms of story, authenticity and realism, all of that was just the build up, the setting of the scene, as we hadn`t yet met the antagonists and gotten to the meat of the story. It all hinges on how the story plays out in this final volume…

In that respect, the conclusion is a disappointment. The biggest shame is that all the hard work done in that first volume is undone by some very thin characterisations. For it is in this volume that we get to know Yusuf Ali Mesa, and also where Colonel Shadle is developed. The two of them are horrible clichés that render what looked like a deep story meaningless. Ali is a giant of a man, and has the `fee fi fo fum sensibility` to match. When he makes his entrance, I was half expecting ripples in a coffee cup, a la Jurassic Park. He growls, blusters and crushes heads through the show, and there is little to indicate the wisdom and charisma of someone who others would choose to follow. There is also a line between depicting a religion and depicting superstition, and in this volume Yugo crosses the line. The first volume did a decent job showing an Islamic state without the typical blinkers of the West, but Ali`s Dacoits are set up as simple, superstitious men, who are suitably impressed by Yugo`s grasp of Islam. There`s something slightly exploitative about the way he uses their beliefs against them, a sense of `smart civilised man pulling one over on the primitives` that didn`t do the story justice. For a negotiator, there was not a lot of negotiating going on, and it was with a weary sense of resignation that I watched him pick up a machine gun at the end of the story to face the army, and watched the show devolve into a generic action drama, and lose what intelligence the story initially had.

My intelligence was already strained at this point with a Pakistani Army that was solely villainous, led by a Colonel Shadle that had the look of a tinpot dictator in training, gnashing his teeth and throwing tantrums at the slightest setbacks, not beyond threatening his own men to achieve his ends, and desperate for a decent moustache to twirl. It`s a simple dynamic of freedom fighters/rebels as heroes, and tyrannous government military as villains, and while it works in Star Wars, it`s far too childish for something that purports to be as smart as Yugo The Negotiator.

The Pakistan arc of Yugo the Negotiator certainly promises much, a story with intelligence, and research and a degree of realism put into its design. But undercooked characterisations detract from this, and ultimately even the story in the final two episodes lets it down. On the bright side, the Russia arc that begins in the next volume has a different director, and is animated by a totally different studio. It may not make the same mistakes as this initial half. As it stands, the Pakistan arc is of academic interest only.