Licensed by Royalty – Mission File 2: Targets
Picture:
C+ Sound: B- Extras: C Episodes: B
One of
the more unintentionally amusing Japanese Anime series is Licensed by Royalty, which wants to bring the Spy genre to Animé. Why then is the Japanese track with actors in
regular Japanese accents, while the English version offers everyone with
British accents? Who knows, but both
countries do have royalty, so American accents would not fit, but this is all
still amusing. The middle episode acknowledges
MI-5 as a separate entity, so with the British accents, I am surprise it is not
isolated as a sister agency instead of a separate one.
As it
stands, this is one of the more well-written of all Anime shows, in part
because it has to be real enough to make its Spy storylines work. There is no fantasy, magic, or hauntings of Hiroshima here. There is some near-future Science Fiction
here, as we get interesting gadgets, if not always of the James Bond
variety. The agents of Cloud 7 (the L/R
of the title) are called in when a very efficient sniper is on the loose taking
out key targets, especially within the top of the government.
Give or
take a few storylines in the vintage Speed
Racer episodes, and the backstory on Racer X (which has never been told
right), this is a welcome intrusion into the repetition of the Anime
formula. It also gets points for not
trying to be James Bond, but it also does not go far enough into new directions
Anime would give it the opportunity to do.
Remember James Bond Jr.? It was aimed at young kids and though this is
for ages 16 and up, it does not achieve much more. This is not to say I was expecting the
original Mission: Impossible
or The Ipcress File, but some of
that would not have hurt.
The
episodes here are as follows:
5) Tear
Drop
6) Lost
Recognition
7) Ivory
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is on the soft side, which is a
combination of the look of the show and the transfer itself. I wonder what this would look like if it were
not. Either way, this is passable, and a
bit annoying. Oh well. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has some Pro
Logic surround information, but is nothing spectacular, though the Japanese
version has more fidelity and clarity than the English version. Billy Preston performs the show’s theme song,
“Go Where No Ones Gone Before”. English
subtitles are often smarter than the English dub. Extras
include
an art gallery of 13 pieces, plus trailers for this and 10 other Geneon Anime
DVD releases.
So if you
like Anime, or have been very disappointed by its offerings and want to try
again, Licensed by Royalty could be
for you. By the way, about that title,
the producers could have made a more British show (drawing of the characters
notwithstanding) by knowing how the British spell. As even a James Bond film title demonstrates,
License is spelled Licence with two “Cs” when it is British, but it is now too
late to change that, and the Japanese version is in Japanese, so they could
have got points there. From the trailer,
you can tell they debated on how to finalize the title.
- Nicholas Sheffo
