Dog Soldier

I wrote a much more scathing review on my Atlanta Fried Critic blog, but given that I can't go all-out on this site, I'll tone it down a bit. It's important that I do this, because you need to know never to watch this OVA. Everything about it, from the laughable story to the dreadful animation to the complete jumps in logic that apply to both of those things, is awful. Let's start with the laughably named protagonist, John Kyosuke Hiba. The characters can never decide what to call him. In the same sentence, they'll call him "John", then "Kyosuke." What's up with that? Didthey forget his name in a split second? Is it really that hard to just stick with one name? I don't know, but it makes absolutely no good sense. Anyway, John is an ex Green Beret who now works a mellow construction job. He gets involved with an international conspiracy involving Chinese weaponry and AIDS. In the middle of this, he dresses up as Rambo and starts blowing crap up. Oh, yeah, that's right, this is Rambo with AIDS. Throughout the whole thing, we're treated to a terrible backstory involving him and the female love interest/antagonist/protagonist, Cathy, as well their childhood friend Makoto, who now goes by the incredibly clever villain name of "Phantom." Oooh, Phantom. That's almost as original as Shredder from "TMNT" or Doctor Claw from "Inspector Gadget." Just almost. So, we've got a half-baked conspiracy plot, a half-baked backstory, and a thoroughly terrible military thriller. It gets worse, though, thanks to the animation. Oh, lord, the animation... if you could even call it that, that is. A whole scene gets repeated with different music, character cels are used for minutes on end, and when there is movement, it's stiff and unconvincing. Even by 1989 standards, this is some of the worst animation possible. The only good thing is the music. It's not amazing, but it's easy to nod your head along to while zoning out. And trust me, you're going to want to zone out while this garbage is on-screen. As a funny little side note, the ending theme is called "Sissy on the Roof." Sounds kind of like a mid-90's gay adult video, doesn't it? I think it does, at least. "Dog Soldier" is awful... actually, that doesn't begin to describe it. Given that the LaserDisc is rare and costs around 50 bucks, the unauthorized DVD release runs 10-15 bucks, and the VHS is hard to find in general, the universe seems to be telling you something about this. That thing is that you, under any circumstances, should watch never this trash heap. It's not the worst anime I've ever seen (that honor belongs to "Harmagedon"), but it's darn close. Avoid this trash. It's barely even good enough for a cheap laugh, and the only thing I'll ever remember about is being "Rambo With AIDS."

Before I start with my review, I have to say that action anime from the 80's and 90's, despite not having much of a storyline, are a guilty pleasure for me. Secondly, I'd like to say the this review is going to have some spoilers. They aren't very important, since this anime is just 45 minutes, but hey, you can't be too careful with this stuff. Now, without much further ado: "Dog Soldier" is an anime that promises a lot, but does only a little. Just from the poster, you can notice the character looks like Rambo. Since the main character, John Kyosuke Hiba looks and fightslike Rambo, one might expect the anime to have more Rambo-ish characteristics. And that's where it falls flat. The story of Dog Soldier isn't that good, but given the type of anime it is, the story is only there to give the main character a justification to join the battle. John has to save a scientist, as well as retrieve a virus for AIDS, which has fallen into the hands of a arms merchant who intends to use it as a weapon. However, this is not the most interesting part about the story. (spoiler warning) The most interesting part is that Johnny, the scientist, as well as the arms merchant, have once been childhood friends. This revelation would make the character interactions more interesting than a normal "good guy vs bad guy" plot, however, the anime does not manage to pull it off well. Instead, we have too many flashbacks and too many useless dialogue, while the action scenes, which are supposed to be the main part of an anime of this kind, do not last very long. This makes the whole project fall apart in the end, making this anime not good enough. As for the art, it's typical of the era. However, there are several scenes, especially flashbacks, that get recycles. As for the soundtrack, I have nothing against it. Overall, this anime could have been much better, but it fails to deliver on the action scenes, as well as the character interactions, resulting in a lackluster final project.

Here's an anime you can ignore. It's weak and boring, it lacks action (yeah there is some, but it's quite lame), the plot is nothing special and the main character is a cheap Rambo knock-off, but not as cool and without the charisma of his genuine counterpart. So yes, basically the only things he shares with Rambo are the physical appearance, the attire and being a former special forces military guy. Animation is quite choppy, art is ok on par with other obscure OVAs from the 80s/90s, characters are mostly flat and the soundtrack doesn't shine; there's really nothing in this OVA that makes itworth watching. I can't recommend it because you probably won't enjoy it, it's not good by any means but it's not awful enough to fall into the "so bad it's good" category. I've seen a lot of terrible anime that provided some genuine laughs because they were so poorly made to become fun, but this is not the case. It's just a barely acceptable OVA with little to nothing to offer.

“Dog Soldier” is an ultra-violent ‘80s OVA... without the ultra-violence. Sure, there’s fighting, and there’s a little blood here and there, but most of the 46-minute runtime is spent on dull conversations or flashbacking to scenes multiple times without rhyme or reason. The gist of the story is Hiba, the main character who used to be a Green Beret but quit and is now a construction worker in Japan, gets forcefully recruited by the government to stop a shady arms dealer from weaponizing the vaccine to the AIDS virus. He refuses, but once he finds out that his childhood friends are involved, he’s suddenly all in,along with his fellow soldier-turned-construction-worker friend, Fudou. Their involvement takes them to Tokyo Dome, and later to a remote tropical island. There’s a lot of shooting and explosions. Truth serum is used. A room full of gold bars is shown hidden behind a painting. The damsel looks more disinterested than distressed. This is that kind of anime. The main issue with this OVA is that the main characters’ backstories are integral to the plot, but they are barely explored. There are flashbacks to their pasts, but in one case, the same flashback gets used several times without explaining what’s going on in the scene. Other flashbacks are similarly given little context. Naturally, character development also suffers from this lack of storytelling. By the time the OVA is over, we know very little about the characters, and thus it’s difficult to empathize with them. There is a lot of dialogue, but no one’s really saying anything. The conversations just drag on and feel inorganic, and do only the bare minimum to drive the plot forward. As for technical aspects, the direction isn’t good. The animation is subpar; sometimes characters would be drawn in a cartoonish style as an attempt at showing comedy, but the scenes weren’t funny at all. The character designs are okay, but they don’t leave an impression. The music (both the background music and the ending theme) is fair, but forgettable. The characters are voiced by a strong cast, but their talents are wasted here. Due to the stilted dialogue, it feels like they’re phoning it in most of the time. Regarding objectionable content, there is some violence, blood and death, but no gore, and the violence depicted is surprisingly muted. Overall, this anime is subpar on just about every level. If you want a “Rambo”-esque violent action thriller, there are better anime out there — most notably “Riki-Oh,” which is created by the same person.

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