I just watched a DVD: The Professional Golgo 13. I'd held off this one for a long long time, since it's released in the UK by Manga Entertainment. I'd seen the previews of it in their trailers and it looked godawful. Everything they released in the early days was primarily about blood, guts, gore, mindless violence. Plus, they released everything dub-only.
But now it's 2008, and there's a "Special Agent Edition" DVD that's dual-language and going cheap in a sale, there's a new series out, and the author of Golgo 13 mentored the author of Lone Wolf & Cub so there's history to explore, so I picked it up.
The DVD is a 2 disc set, with the film in stereo / 5.1 on disc one, and in dts surround on disc 2.
The subs seem to be dubtitles, though I was too lazy to check. Ok, I lied, I'm terrified to check because I've heard their "bunch of Welsh men putting on American accents" dubs before. And the dialogue they came up with was not only inaccurate, but ridiculously cheesy.
The film started up, and on the titles I saw "Directed by Osamu Dezaki" and went *_* since... well, he's probably my all-time favourite anime director. And the film is unmistakably his. It looks incredible. I'd rate it among the best, without hesitation. It's a great looking fim. Oh, except for one scene near the end where they went with CGI graphics. It must have cost a fortune to do in those days, but now it just makes the film look dated. It's got his trademark end-of-scene dramatic still images, and I was loving it for about the first hour until I realised... this is a Manga Entertainment type film, I don't actually feel anything about Golgo 13 (the character), it's not like I think he's really cool or badass, we're just watching him do his job. And watching various women try and motivate him into having sex with them (he seems to only notice after a good few minutes of them being in bed with him). Which might be really really cool to watch if I was someone who liked that sort of thing, but...
...and then about 2 minutes after I thought that, as though the film was listening to me, it became really good, right up to the end of the film.
So overall, it's a pretty good anime film. Bearing in mind that it's of a genre that I don't particularly favour, and is an anime film (and most anime films aren't great - longer series tend to work better). It's got a lot of style and great, crisp visuals. If only it wasn't released by Manga Entertainment, and I hadn't seen their advertisements for it, I'd have watched this a lot sooner.
