#251: Dog Soldier - Shadows of the Past (1989)

 

Studio: Animate Film

Director: Hiroyuki Ebata

Screenplay: Shou Aikawa

Based on the manga by Tetsuya Saruwatari

Voice Cast: Akira Kamiya as John Kyosuke Hiba; Daisuke Gouri as Masami Fudou; Mika Doi as Catherine "Cathy" Magley; Norio Wakamoto as Makoto Allen Takemura; Yūsaku Yara as Sachio Takechi

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

What am I? Spider bait?

Back in the day, Central Park Media licensed an anime called Minna Agechau (1987), a softcore comedy, only for the 1991 release to be cancelled. The story has developed Chinese whispers around it, but it can be summed up as thus: CPM licensed the title, promoted it with their future habit of playing to anime's mature side, as they released Urotsukidôji in the USA, and whilst there were mainstream media on this "smutty cartoon", such as L.A. Times on 29th August 1991 publishing Japan’s Latest Export: Soft- Core Cartoon¹, and a pair of (cardboard) panties promised to be included², the issue was as much its licensor Sony wanting to not present a terrible image in the United States. Back home, when this was a tie-in to a nineteen volume manga, which got a 1985 live action film by Shusuke Kaneko, future Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (1995) director, Sony would have probably not cared, but they hastily intervened and prevented the release³. For the cost of this, CPM did however get a title licensed to them for free: Dog Soldier.

The titular dog soldier is John Kyosuke Hiba, a Rambo stand-in who, at work at a construction, is a former soldier pulled back into combat when a fire fight transpires. It also brings back into his life Cathy, a girl he grew up with in the slums of L.A., part of a ridiculous melodrama that is tied into a very badly regarded anime. Only over forty plus minutes long, Dog Soldier is ridiculous cheese of the highest order where, with his friend and fellow ex-soldier Fudoh, John is brought into a conspiracy where the McGuffin is an AIDs vaccine, absolutely of its time and the one cringe worthy detail. It is eyed by Phantom, the up and coming death merchant whose desire to sell it for biological warfare to the highest bigger is contrasted by being Makato, the childhood friend of John and Cathy who went the extreme path as an illegal arms dealer after living in the slums of L.A. with them.

Considering the author of the manga Tetsuya Saruwatari penned Riki-Oh, where the 1991 Hong Kong live action adaptation is entirely faithful to the source but barely covers a longer work which gets weirder, you would expect Dog Soldier to be ridiculous. With "grenades strapped to bunnies" one thing I can confirm about the manga⁴, Dog Soldier the anime is however its own separate thing, part of a legacy of "lame anime" poorly regarded for its clichés and being silly. It is appreciated by someone like others like me in that, despite its dry clichéd plot, its goofball touches make it entertaining, like the abrupt Cup Noodles reference, or when meeting Cathy in a baseball stadium, John decides to pitch slide on their first meeting as adults like a dork. The one thing, as mentioned, of the era is that the McGuffin is an AIDs vaccine, which reflect the era, where stigma and unscientific fear and lack of knowledge was there, this a historical footnote worth using to point this out from the ignorance shown. It is not a great work from Shou Aikawa, who whilst known for infamous titles like Urotsukidôji was also to become a much more well regarded screenwriter, making this one of those embarrassing earlier scripts for touches like this. Not wanting to be too tasteless, and I apologise ahead if this is for some, not only would it be the least practical choice as a biological weapon in the first place, but barring the taboo the name evokes, you could replace this with something also trivialised in pop culture, like Ebola, and the McGuffin is entirely a prop which needs to exist but has no direct connection to the production. It is merely the nod to the period there which shows the ignorance from the anime production team.

Also crammed in, for a work only forty plus minutes long, is the amount of back-story of drama which is po-faced in seriousness even if very silly. It is macho melodrama, where one can monologue about their back-story even when there is a knife in the brain, and Cathy's divide in loving Makoto, who is manipulating her, and to John is pure soap opera, leading to the least scientifically logical knife battle in terms of distance and space travelled. The end song, out of place lyrically, is yet perversely apt, a tale with the possibly un-pc English translation name, from Okujou no SISSY, of "Sissy on the Rooftop", which is about a teen contemplating jumping off the school roof with lines like "My heart is strangled in my school bag". Dog Soldier is too short and over the top to hate, a quirky oddity from the past whose infamy thankfully keeps it alive despite never returning past the VHS era. Its connection to Minna Agechau is the pink panty wearing cherry on top of this curiosity, tying the pair in a curious history and as an unconventional double bill. Dog Soldier is ridiculous, without a doubt, not great artistically but the story is too goofy to hate it but within the OVA and in how the United States got it in the first place.

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1) Japan’s Latest Export: Soft- Core Cartoon : * Video: Adult-oriented animated erotica, a billion-dollar business in Japan, tries to shed its cult image in the U.S. Some predict American resistance. Written by Chuck Philips for the Los Angeles Times and published August 29th 1991.

2) All About 'I Give My All', written by Mike Toole, and published by the Anime News Network on September 17th 2017.

3) Minna Agechau's trivia page on Anime News Network.

4) Example from the manga of this transpiring.