Background: When most people think of anime, they automatically assume it means giant robots, magical girls, futuristic dramas, or a limited few other genre-defining types of stories. Interestingly though, many anime fans know that this is simply not the case as anime is merely the medium for the story and not the actual genre itself. While splitting hairs a bit, the idea is the same; you can find as many types of anime as live action show, albeit with a lot more variation as to how they are presented on the small screen. That said, today's review is on a show that slipped under my radar when it first came out in episodic form, now bundled up to be Yugo the Negotiator: Complete Collection; a series about a guy that tries a different style of handling problems, generally a style that shows the character on the receiving end of a lot of pain.
Series: Yugo the Negotiator: Complete Collection is the story about Yugo Beppo, a private citizen that gets contracted to make deals for people. By using his services, his clients avoid diplomatic indelicacies that could result from trying more formal channels; typically with militant factions of people not too keen on those of us in the developed countries. As with anything, the laws of supply and demand dictate his value to a client so he is generally considered more than a deal maker by people; generally coming across as a private investigator too. The boxed set is actually two sets of OVA episodes totaling 13 episodes; the first mission dealing with a hostage negotiation in Pakistan and the second with a Russian treasure worth $200 billion.
In the Pakistan series, lasting 6 episodes, the show started off at a snail's pace. Apparently, a daughter wanted Yugo to deploy his skills to free her innocent father as he was being held in a political game of chess by some guerillas not happy with the government. They had already killed the last guy sent in and the military had taken a hard stance against them so all hope seemed lost until Yugo takes the case. When he is captured, they torture him but his determination and will to survive impresses the natives and he shows a stubborn aptitude for making it through "one more day" against all odds. Needless to say, as he uncovers the truth about everyone's side of what happened, he manages to save the day where all others would fail. To me, the story was written for a vastly different audience but had just enough material to keep me watching the rest of the show.
The second half of the show dealt with what seemed at first like a courier mission. Yugo was to escort a young girl to Japan by a mysterious employer that he simply did not trust. The case intrigued him and as it unfolds, the truth becomes obvious that the gal holds the key necessary to unlock a fabulous treasure in the form of tons of gold bullion. This being what Yugo's employer was after in the first place, it puts him in danger as much as the gal since they will let nothing stand in their way to recover the tons of gold lost for all time by patriots. Yugo's main opponent is a brute named Viktor and as with the first volume in the series, Yugo bears the brunt of the torturous machinations of the thug. Needless to say, Yugo doesn't give up the goods so his mad quest to find the gold and restore order to the gals' life is put in jeopardy. As with the first volume, Yugo manages to bring down the bad guys to a deserving fate but this is definitely an acquired taste so I rated it as a Rent It.
Picture: Yugo the Negotiator: Complete Collection was presented in the original 1.33:1 ratio full frame color as shot by directors Takehiko Matsumoto (Pakistan) and Kenichi Imaizumi (Russia). The first set of episodes looked grainy and had numerous visual flaws with it, rendering it a chore to watch at times. The aliasing and edge enhancement aside though, even the camera angles used (the animation tried to mirror a mainstream movie in terms of the kinds of shots used) seemed to leave something to be desired. I thought at one point that the show must've been from the late 1970's or maybe early 1980's but it did get better with time. The second set of episodes seemed to come across as better in a number of ways but still had a relatively slow pacing that limited the appeal to me. The frame rate jumped up in the latter part of the series (the Russia episodes) but it was never equal to that of the higher budget efforts on the market at this time.
