Review of Golgo 13 The Professional: Special Agent Edition

Introduction

It`s been a while since I have a little retro anime enjoyment, so it`s just good timing that Manga Entertainment are due to release a special edition of Golgo 13: The Professional. This title and its kin take me back to the heady days of the nineties during the last anime invasion, when 18 ratings were the norm, sex and violence were practically obligatory, and headline rants in the Daily Mail only served to increase sales. That said, I had never seen Golgo until last night, and really didn`t know what to expect, that`s despite this being its second release on DVD in the UK. The original release was a barebones disc, with a non-anamorphic transfer and a simple stereo English dub. With this 2-disc special edition release there are more than a few extras, as well as the UK debut of the original Japanese soundtrack. The title was also resubmitted to the BBFC, and this new version is a couple of minutes longer than the original, although much of that may be the restored opening credit sequence.

To get an idea of what Golgo is about, it helps to know that the creator of this long running manga, Takao Saitô was responsible for the manga adaptations of the James Bond and The Man From U.N.C.L.E films back in the sixties. When Golgo began in 1969, there was more than a touch of the secret agent about this assassin, and that style pervades this 1983 anime film as well (There`s a live action Golgo film starring Sonny Chiba if this piques your interest).

Golgo is an assassin with a conscience. He`s picky about the jobs he accepts and for good reason. Killing the son of an oil tycoon seems a simple enough job, but by doing so he has made a powerful enemy. His next job is to eliminate the head of a Sicilian mafia family, but when he is attacked, the hunter becomes the hunted. Soon there are rival assassins dogging his trail, agents of the CIA, FBI and the Pentagon, and unlike Golgo, they aren`t too bothered about collateral damage. If he wants to stay alive, he`ll have to find out who it is who wants him dead so badly, and turn the tables on them.

Video

Golgo 13 gets a sweet little transfer. The 1.85:1 anamorphic picture is clear and sharp. There is a hint of grain, but the 24 year old film has aged well, with nary a suggestion of print damage. The only thing that is noticeable is the old fashioned look of the animation. If you`ve seen Fist Of The North Star, you`ll be familiar with the style. There is none of the elegance of modern animations, and the character designs have a hand drawn feel. Balancing this is a strong attention to accuracy, as nearly everything is drawn to the smallest detail. On occasion there is so much going on that you can revel in some scenes.

This film is noticeable for some early CG imagery. It sticks out like a sore thumb of course, but for 1983, what this film accomplishes is pretty stunning. It`s almost on the level of The Last Starfighter albeit for just a couple of minutes

Audio

We get the regular Manga melange of soundtracks split across the two discs. On disc 1 you`ll find the film with DD 2.0 and DD 5.1 English and Japanese, while on Disc 2 the film is presented with DTS English and Japanese, as well as a DD 2.0 English track. Given the age and original sound format of the film, there is little that can be done with it, but the surround upmixes do give the film a greater presence, if not much in the way of sound separation. The English surround track sounded a little odd to me, in that when the characters spoke there was a hint of echo to their voices. This was absent in the stereo mix. As usual I opted for the Japanese track, sampling the English track for a taste, and I must admit that for an old dub, it isn`t as bad as it could have been.

Unfortunately, the only subtitle track with the film is a dubtitle track, following the English dub word for word. Depending on the translation, this needn`t necessarily be a problem, but in this case, captions appear when no one is speaking in the Japanese track, or occasional Japanese lines go by without translation. It`s an annoying irritation in an otherwise splendid presentation.

Features

The discs come with some nifty animated menus, which see scenes of the film presented in the style of a comic book, complete with CG "POW!" and "KERSPLAT!" bubbles.

Disc one contains the usual cohort of Manga trailers, but more prominent is the audio commentary from Jonathan Clements. Clements is to anime commentary what Bey Logan is to Hong Kong movies. You get 94 minutes of information dense commentary that is interesting and enlightening. Not surprising really, as he is the co-author of the anime encyclopaedia.

Disc two offers a brief 4-minute interview with Mata Yamamoto, producer of the film, and he offers his viewpoint on it.

Finally there is a 7-minute sneak peak at the forthcoming Hellboy animation, Sword Of Storms. This is in the form of completed animation, as well as storyboards set to the film`s soundtrack.

None of the extras are subtitled.

Conclusion

Golgo 13 isn`t exactly my cup of tea. You can see the Bond influence plainly, although this is the unreconstructed Bond of the novels. Golgo is very much a boy`s own adventure story. He is a man`s man, taciturn, strong and silent, and about as emotional as a brick. The artists have obviously taken inspiration from Charles Bronson, as he never once changes expression. He looks like he`s doing the Times Crossword regardless of whether he is committing murder, having sex, being shot or locked in mortal combat with a highly trained killer. And in this film, that`s basically his script. He kills people or he has sex with them, and on at least one occasion he has sex with someone before he kills them. Thankfully it wasn`t vice versa. While the film is action packed, what induces tedium is that it is played so straight. It takes itself utterly seriously, remains dry throughout, without an ounce of humour. Just a wisecrack or two would have eased the monotony. Instead Golgo remains as tight lipped as a Prime Minister refusing to announce his departure date.

What could have made this interesting was Golgo`s status as an anti-hero. After all, unlike Bond he`s not serving Queen or country, he`s simply killing for money, a paid assassin. There`s some salve in that he picks and chooses the cases that he takes on, but otherwise he is utterly amoral and mercenary. The plot of the film could have been an exploration into this. A bereaved father seeking revenge on his son`s killer could, and should have been handled with more ambiguity than it is here. But this film comes from the era of good guys versus bad guys, and when the main protagonist is someone like Golgo, then your villain has to be absolute scum. Leonard Dawson turns out to be a complete slug that sacrifices his surviving family in his desire for vengeance, and if that isn`t enough, the industrialist is shown to be holding the United States to ransom through sheer financial might, and he is also responsible for some heinous crimes in the past.

Golgo`s appeal is obvious, he kills a lot, and he has copious amounts of sex. Unfortunately, that is also the film`s main drawback, as there is very little else to it. This release will certainly appeal to the retro audience, who enjoyed it the first time around, but anime has moved on in the intervening decades, and current fans of the medium may find it lacking in comparison to more recent efforts. Still, the animation is strong, and it certainly has that feature film feel to it. If you`re in the mood for a little Bond style action, without a sense of humour, and with a complete cipher for a main character, then this could be satisfactory. I doubt I`ll give it a second play though.