Licensed By Royalty – Mission File 3: Broken Angel
Picture:
C+ Sound: B- Extras: D Episodes: B-
The Animé
spy series Licensed By Royalty takes
a more comic turn in Mission File 3:
Broken Angel. It also becomes a
touch misogynistic with its portrayal of a few neurotic women which does not
fit into the show at all. The three
episodes that comprise this segment of the show (meant for hour-long timeslots,
over 20% are for commercials!) and concluded the first season are:
8) Out Of Phase
9) Suspended Game
10) The Discard
The
introduction of sudden singing also seems like filler. The mission itself seems more hung up on the
melodrama of the royalty than the action that is supposed to be at hand, and if
this shift from the previous shows in the debut season was supposed to expand
the audience, that was a miscalculation.
The Spy genre in feature films has become silly beyond the Austin Powers franchise, including the
last two James Bond films (The World Is
Not Enough, Die Another Day)
being among the silliest and the most empty the series ever made. This show is recent enough to be affected in
some way.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is on the soft side once again, which is
a combination of the look of the show and the transfer itself. I still wonder what this would look like if
it were not. Either way, this is still
passable, and still a bit annoying. 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 only include 4
trailers for this show and 11 other Geneon Anime DVD releases, which is less
than the last DVD, reviewed elsewhere on this site.
So this
way disappointing versus what did work earlier, but we can hope this is some
temporary anachronism. We will see when
we return to more adventures of Licensed
By Royalty.
- Nicholas Sheffo
