Go Go Golgo 13 – This Week in Anime

Jean-Karlo and Steve reflect on one of the greatest comic characters of all time, Takao Saito‘s beefy assassin Duke Togo. In the film Golgo 13: The Professional the killer that never misses his mark is brought to life by none other than Osamu Dezaki. If you like the style of this film, you might what to check out TWIA’s previous Dezaki columns: Dear Brother, Black Jack, and Tomorrow’s Joe.

This series is streaming on RetroCrush

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

WARNING: This column is NSFW! It includes things like graphic violence, frontal nudity, and cartoon characters have S-E-X.

Steve

Hey, Jean-Karlo! I have a proposition for you.


Because the film we’re watching today is streaming free-of-charge on RetroCrush, of course.

Jean-Karlo

Wait, you mean there’s anime streaming for free?


Man, thanks for telling me, I gotta run home!

And everyone lived happily ever after.


Man, that was one of our shorter columns, but also probably one of the most informative. Good work!

Hehehe. “Everyone lived”. That’s a good one…

Takao Saito was an old warhorse of the industry. At 84 years young, he was still cranking out new missions for Duke Togo and his trusty modified M16. The man used cigarette smoke to dry the ink on Duke’s massive eyebrows, which became a meme signifying stoic hardcore badassery in the realm of anime. There’s a hole in the anime industry where Saito used to be, and he will be missed quite deeply.

Yeah, prior to watching this film, I really only knew him by reputation. But what a reputation.

The 1983 theatrical adaptation of his manga, Golgo 13: The Professional is indeed a heck of a rip-roaring time with sex, violence and dated CG the likes of which you only really could make in the 1980s. Content warning for blood, boobs and 1980s-style chauvinism. This is adult animation.

It’s a wild ride, not just in content, but in form. Like, I already paused the movie and tweeted this, but I’ll repeat it here: it’s like Osamu Dezaki asked, and answered, “what if an entire Bond movie were as artfully and colorfully composed as its opening credits?”



Hot damn is that gorgeous.

There are intense aesthetics at work in this movie from the word “Go”, (‘cuz it’s “Golgo 13“, get it?). This movie is a museum piece, but what a museum piece it is.


But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. Golgo 13 is a long-running manga series about a mysterious gunman-for-hire. Known to all as either Golgo 13 or the alias Duke Togo, he’s known for doing the impossible and completing all of his jobs with his trusty modified M16 rifle. He lives hard, loves hard, and works hard—his jobs have a starting fee of $3 million USD.

To that point, the movie is very quick to show the audience that Duke Togo has two modes: fucking and killing. Tho you wouldn’t know those were distinct if you were just going off his facial expressions.

It’s borderline comedy how this movie shows women writhing on top of Duke while he’s just planking like a dead fish and glaring back up at them. Jotaro’s thinking of dolphins and starfish, what’s Duke’s excuse?

My favorite shots are the ones where he’s just lying on top of the woman ass-up, stiff as a board (in more than one sense, I’m sure). I don’t think he ever moves during intercourse. Not even an eyebrow twitch.

Maybe he’s a Mormon and he’s just into soaking?

Ugh, I really wish I could go back one week, before I knew what that meant. But I’ll give Duke the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he’s just preoccupied with thoughts about his next kill? While I’m no professional assassin, it doesn’t seem like it’s a very easy job.

Indeed, the life of a contract killer can be a challenging one, and you can easily find yourself knee-deep in the mess caused by your last job. Which is where this 1983 theatrical adaptation finds itself! Subtitled “The Professional”, after the 1981 French film directed by Georges Lautner, the movie opens with an otherwise-unrelated-to-the-plot job Duke pulls off before the titles roll, and it sets the tone and mood for this stylish hardboiled caper so hard.

No words exchanged. No plot developed. Just a bullet slicing through a skull in the sickest way possible. And then we get the opening credits, which ape Bond films in the best way possible: with a stop-motion skeleton and gun.

Duke Togo only wears the finest suits from Da mothafukin’ Sharez0ne

It also utilizes some of that aforementioned beautiful 1983-vintage CGI. There’ll be more of that later, but aesthetic-wise, it doesn’t get any better than this.


I know I feel ready for the spooky season now.

The movie begins in earnest with Duke carrying out another job, this one targetting the son of a powerful oil tycoon, Leonard Dawson. Mere seconds after Robert inherits his farther’s position in the concern, Golgo’s bullet finds its mark…

And just look at the sauce the film adds here. You’ve got foreshadowing flower language. A close-up of the bullet penetrating the brain. A mirrored crucifixion pose. And a coffin-shaped glass bottom on the boat. Not a shred of subtlety to be seen. I adore it.

And the artistry doesn’t stop there. Duke finds himself hired again in short order, this time by a bishop seeking revenge. Dr. Z, a figure in the mafia, had targeted his family, and the bishop is so desperate for peace for his troubled soul he kills himself after Duke accepts the job to snipe Dr Z. This is also interspersed with shots of Duke with a lover, also some informant sitting around and watching the action while he gives Duke the dirt on Dr Z. This movie does not waste time or pull punches.

It’d be very generous to claim Golgo 13: The Professional has a “structure.” I mean, it kinda does, but it’s really just Duke moving from one target to the next, killing dudes and banging babes along the way. And it works because the film has zero pretensions outside of that. That’s literally the entire film. Duke gets his intel mid-coitus and nobody bats an eye. That’s how Duke rolls. I love this movie.
Speaking of which, it’s been two minutes, so here’s Duke’s next love interest.


And here’s her enjoying some naked wine time in front of him. Don’t look too excited there, Duke!

The ladies just can’t resist a guy built like a fridge who has a chronic case of Resting Bitch Face. Especially when he can kidney-punch their armed posse.

Besides name-dropping the subtitle, Cindy here is ostensibly the only connection Duke has with Dr. Z, so he gets close to her in order to get close to the target.


But that’s lame, so here’s another scene of Cindy getting nude while Duke uses an exploding watch to figure out that she’s been the brains behind the operation this whole time.

It has nothing to do with anything, but my favorite part of this “arc” is how her butler just EXPLODES from a single gunshot.

Remember: it’s never wrong to have the US government as your movie villain. It is always morally correct.

Especially when they’re hiring creepy boneless sexpest killers like this snake-guy here.

Cleverly named:

His introduction is another gorgeous highlight of painterly ultraviolence, killing Duke’s watchmaker friend. And boy howdy, does Dezaki get mileage out of the clock motif.



I forgot to gif it, but there’s one part where he’s just spinning in his chair spraying glittering rivulets of blood from his neck. It’s schlock poetry. Can I also say I love the almost chiaroscuro way that Dezaki uses darkness and heavy shadows throughout the movie? It’s very noir-like, but for a movie about pure id.

It’s a tough art style to use properly without muddying stuff up, but Dezaki has a fantastic use of bright neon 80s colors to really contrast against it. Top-notch stuff.

Maybe my favorite example of the way the film utilizes negative space is how it shows Duke’s getaway from the burning church, using the light from the CIA’s attacks to briefly illuminate his boat.

Dezaki is a master. And again, I must stress, this movie is literally only about killing and fucking. Yet it’s still given the same amount of care and finesse as he gives his adaptations of shoujo melodramas. That’s why he’s the best.
Not that I want to sound like I’m disparaging the film’s script, because it’s sublime.



Not every character can punctuate a sentence with a pack of Parliaments, but Duke Togo sure as hell can.

Yeah, Rita up there helps Duke prepare for his next job, and then asks him to also jump her bones. I wanna take a moment to point out how Rita is kinda nonconventional for a starlet in one of these movies, having a double chin and the curly hair. She looks like a character actress from an actual live-action film, which I appreciate; it helps her stand out from all the ethereal models Duke bangs on the side.

She also wears a 69 shirt, which makes her the nicest character in the film by default.

Just… don’t get too attached to her…


I get this is a movie from the early 80s, but it really does suck how all of the women in this movie are only sexual conquests or victims of violence, to the last one.

Yeah, unfortunately, getting any enjoyment out of the movie means having to accept those ickier parts. So it’s definitely not a film I’d recommend no-strings-attached. But if you’re already familiar with and fond of ’80s action films, then this iteration of Golgo 13 is, at the very least, a novel take on those tropes. Even if it doesn’t challenge any of the worst ones.

At the very least, Rita does good work because Duke is not only able to pull off a job sniping a Nazi through a building, he also manages to get away from CIA operatives with chain guns and rocket launchers. Crimeny, Rita, what did you put in that thing…

I love that shot of him holding the car at gunpoint so much. Tremendous energy. Even if doesn’t go quite as smoothly as Duke planned.


If you think getting shot in the heart will stop him, though, then you have not been paying attention to the film so far.

It’s here that we see the curtains pull back, revealing the mastermind behind the attacks on Duke: Leonard Dawson, using his vast fortune to personally hire reps from the CIA and FBI to take Duke down. He’s a man after revenge, at all costs–even if it means kidnapping his own granddaughter to raise her to be a killbot and letting a creepy snake-guy assault his son’s widow.


No joke, the movie implicates Dawson behind the Kennedy assassination, for Pete’s sake!

It’s not like that last one worked, anyway.

I love this world too, where Duke shoots a guy in the middle of an airport and walks away like nothing happened.
The man knows how to make an exit…and an entrance.

It’s here where everything comes together. The various cartoony murderers Dawson hired from the government move in against Duke, and Dezaki ups the stakes by using then-cutting edge 3D graphics to render the city and a platoon of helicopters. As Jeremy Parish put it, it’s aged like milk on a warm day, but this is the first instance of computer graphics in an anime film.

It looks so bad, but it’s literally the first time they tried doing this, so I can’t help but be a bit charmed by the film briefly turning into Star Fox.


It also generally shies away from mixing the CG and traditional animation together, which was the smart call, imo.

It’s the same climax of every good action film: the hero busts the skulls of some weird henchmen and gets bruised and bloody himself. But the execution is more than stylish enough for Golgo 13 to blow your mind.



And his mind, for that matter.

The twist is also a really good one: as it happens, the hit on Robert was ordered by… Robert himself. After a life of only being built up to be his father’s successor, Robert felt incapable of moving outside of his shadow, influence or legacy–and so resolved matters the only way he felt he could. This whole movie has been Leonard Dawson raging against an immovable object, knowing that there was only one way this could end…

Dawson, finally realizing his folly, casts himself out of the top of his skyscraper to atone for his deeds.


But that ending sucks, so as one final “fuck you,” Duke scoops his brains out midair.


Absolutely the rudest thing he could’ve done. I love the Duke.

Huh, he and Lady Une must’ve spent time at the shooting range together…
The movie ends with the final tragic loose straw: Robert’s widow turning to prostitution after everything that’s happened to her. She was an unfortunate victim in all this, losing her husband and daughter to her father-in-law’s temper tantrum and even being sold off by the man for his own ends. Doesn’t stop her from trying to kill Duke once she recognizes him, but the movie simple ends after that gunshot…

It’s like only in its final five seconds does the movie attempt to exhibit anything close to introspection, but it’s way too little too late to have any effect. It’s a cool note to end on, I’ll give it that, but this movie is still 90 uninterrupted minutes of nothing but sex and death. And I respect that, in a way.

There really isn’t much else that can be done for a Golgo 13 movie, because to do anything else would betray the nature of the character. Duke Togo is meant to be a mysterious man; to delve into his character would ruin the mystery. He is a man who gets the job done, no matter what it takes; to delve into his inner conflicts over it would betray his resolve. And to have him love means that, well, he’s dead, and it wouldn’t be a very satisfying Golgo 13 mission if the guy just croaks in the end.
This movie might be thin on the writing, but at least it is outright stunning in its presentation. Golgo 13: The Professional was given a theatrical release in the 80s, and it’s easy to see why: there is raw artistry at work here. I can only imagine how shocking it must have been to see a movie where such care is given into seeing bullets loaded into a rifle.

Yeah, the film understands what makes Golgo 13 cool, so the film is in turn cool, with all of the seedy and schlocky baggage that comes with it. But I wouldn’t tell you to turn your brain off to enjoy it either, because when I wasn’t having a gut-busting time with the stone-faced ultraviolence, I was entranced by the artistry. High-brow techniques in service of low-brow material. Golgo 13 is just plain cool. I don’t think there’s a better word for it.

It’s for this reason that Golgo 13 has endured for so long as a series, even with its incredibly formulaic backbone (Duke gets a job, he finishes it). It’s a mark of Takao Saito‘s creativity that he was able to create such an enduring character. By all means, Golgo 13: The Professional is a definite must-watch, but on the condition that you understand this movie is more about the visual artistry than anything else. I dunno, keep it on while you grind your dailies or something.

tfw you get a rare drop.