Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we\u2019re diving into another property by Yasuomi Umetsu, the distinctive director of Kite, Mezzo Forte, and Wizard Barristers, alongside an eclectic scattering of OVA contributions and other projects across the last few decades. Umetsu\u2019s unique aesthetic style and dedication to kinetic action drama mean that although his works are few in number, they\u2019re all extremely reflective of his art design preferences and narrative interests; he composes action with the playful mastery of John Woo or Shinichiro Watanabe, imbuing his worlds with a weighted sense of physical conflict and a vast assembly of character-rich background details.<\/span><\/p>\n Having already screened the two-part OVA Mezzo Forte, we\u2019re now diving into the franchise\u2019s followup television drama, Mezzo DSA (short for Danger Squad Agency, the optimistic title of our main trio\u2019s operation). The OVA era was likely a perfect fit for Umetsu\u2019s mixture of perfectionism and incidental erotica \u2013 a fifteen year stretch where you could fund an intricately animated passion project, just so long as there was a sex scene to promote on the cover. With that era now ceding to the late-night TV paradigm of the post-Evangelion market, I\u2019m intrigued to see how Umetsu adapts his style to the more limiting confines of weekly episodes, as well as simply happy to check back in with this charming trio of mercenary miscreants. Let\u2019s get to it!<\/span><\/p>\n Episode 1<\/b><\/p>\n We open with a man named Asano handing off cash to a cybernetically enhanced giant known as \u201cBlack Scissors.\u201d I assume this is the illicit trade our heroes will soon be crashing<\/span><\/p>\n The world of Mezzo Forte seems pretty close to that of Cyberpunk, with designer bodies and synths at the high end, and endless ranks of disenfranchised unfortunates at the bottom. But we haven\u2019t actually learned much about how society works here, and I frankly appreciate that. Even if you\u2019re proud of your worldbuilding, holding it in reserve, letting the characters in your world take the circumstances of it for granted, and only gesturing towards most aspects of your society all make your story feel that much more solid, more genuinely lived-in. Authentic characters aren\u2019t constantly explaining the circumstances of their own lives \u2013 plus, worldbuilding that only expresses itself incidentally, through the unquestioned differences between our society and the one on-screen, always feels more convincing and alluring than ideas which are presented right to the audience\u2019s face<\/span><\/p>\n That handoff is contrasted against another, as two young girls bully a third into giving them her money<\/span><\/p>\n The girl being bullied is Asami<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou could make the money immediately if you went to some dating website and picked up a pedophilic old man!\u201d No sex scenes for a TV release, but Umetsu\u2019s crass take on hard-boiled urban drama remains. His works tonally hew towards a sort of late-adolescent fascination with the scandalous, much in the way Tarantino movies revel in grindhouse shock. It\u2019s not necessarily realistic, but it is authentic to a certain dramatic sensibility, which is frankly more important; I don\u2019t exactly share their tonal preferences and dramatic preoccupations, but I respect their dedication to their aesthetic<\/span><\/p>\n Incidentally, you could sum up a great deal of online criticism with \u201cI don\u2019t share the artist\u2019s preferences and preoccupations.\u201d Though of course, this itself is banal commentary; obviously critics are going to incorporate their preferences into their critiques, with the true trick being to find critics whose preferences are complimentary or at least interesting to you<\/span><\/p>\n Handoffs converge as one of the Black Scissors is flung through a brick wall, Mikura swiftly following behind. Seems she\u2019s kept that pigtail look from the end of Forte<\/span><\/p>\n This action scene is excellent, and still largely maintains Umetsu\u2019s style in spite of his limited resources \u2013 heavy shading for the character art, a great sense of weight and careful physical choreography, and restless, active camera movement keeping the audience attuned to the action. Also impressed by the consequence of every blow here, the careful animation of each wall and pillar being smashed into rubble<\/span><\/p>\n Even a neat little circular panning cut as Mikura readies her gun. Those are ridiculously tough in animation, since shifting perspective relative to the shot\u2019s subject necessitates redrawing that subject in each frame for every new angle<\/span><\/p>\n Mikura saves Asami, but is not particularly gentle about it \u2013 she actually flings Asami out the window before rappelling down and catching her at the bottom. An excellent introduction to our heroine\u2019s particular brand of quasi-justice<\/span><\/p>\n Once again, an exploding robot woman is the DSA\u2019s calling card. Umetsu is clearly praying to one day be murdered by a beautiful woman<\/span><\/p>\n The OP is energetic and playful, with a song that verges on Riot Grrl energy, an excellent choice<\/span><\/p>\n Love Mikura\u2019s martial arts poses. You can tell she was choreographed and animated by people with a real love for the kung fu classics<\/span><\/p>\n We return to Kurokawa getting a haircut at the barbershop below their HQ. Turns out the barber was actually invested in the handoff they blew up<\/span><\/p>\n This world is so full of details, from all the faded posters adorning their walls to this absurd bounty of snacks Mikura apparently bought with their winnings. Even in this TV format, it feels like Umetsu came up with almost too many visual ideas to fit in the frame<\/span><\/p>\n They are leaning more into broad comic exaggeration with Mikura\u2019s expressions relative to the OVA, which makes sense. Realistic facial character acting requires a ridiculous level of nuance and precision in animation; broad, goofy faces are inherently appealing, but one of the big reasons they\u2019re so widely adopted for animated expression is that they\u2019re a lot easier to embrace and duplicate than the thousand nuances of muscle and bone movement that convey an actual human smile or scowl<\/span><\/p>\n Ooh, love the color design and lighting as they meet with their client, who tells them the drug they stole was actually a fake<\/span><\/p>\n Their client is Ms. Kisami. She tells them that the drug is with Mr. Asano, who plans to kill a man named Takizawa<\/span><\/p>\n They might have been adopted for pragmatic reasons, but these pouty Mikura faces are still excellent<\/span><\/p>\n Fifteen years ago, Asano was a fellow medical intern of Takizawa, a relentless womanizer. Takizawa ended up dating Misaki, Asano\u2019s crush, and Misaki was weeks later found dead, with Takizawa\u2019s fingerprints on the murder weapon<\/span><\/p>\n Oh, this is fun. Asano wishes to get Takizawa convicted before the statute of limitations is reached, but Takizawa is afflicted with early-onset Alzheimer\u2019s, and thus Asano needs a drug to help Takizawa remember his own crimes<\/span><\/p>\n The shadows of these railings beside the party do an excellent job of evoking prison bars, emphasizing how time is running out for the DSA and Takizawa alike<\/span><\/p>\n Kisami doesn\u2019t want Asano to become a murderer, so Mikura helpfully volunteers to kill Takizawa herself. \u201cThe cute girl is the belligerent heavy\u201d is one of Mezzo Forte\u2019s most reliably charming contrasts<\/span><\/p>\n Beyond the focus on synthetic bodies, the particular neon grime of their world also reminds me of Cyberpunk 2077, which is a good sign; I know the game had a rough release, but I entirely fell in love with its world on my recent playthrough, and now feel an enduring fondness for Night City<\/span><\/p>\n Oh no, Mikura\u2019s got a shotgun, what will she do<\/span><\/p>\n They catch Asano in the lobby of his apartment, and Mikura immediately starts complaining about how it\u2019s annoying she can\u2019t just shoot him<\/span><\/p>\n God, so much luxurious smoke and rubble in these fights! There\u2019s no separation between the animated objects and their backgrounds; the constant deterioration of the world around them demonstrates how everything is in play, making the conflict feel that much more tangible and consequential. Basically the opposite of the weightless, entirely divorced-from-background sort of digital effect spam you see in some modern productions, where it looks like the characters are fighting in front of a scrolling fabric of unrelated scenery<\/span><\/p>\n They chase Asano to a condemned building, where he\u2019s already brought Takizawa for the confession<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s my job, so I tried to stop you. If you want to shoot him, then shoot that loser.\u201d Mikura has mixed feelings about this job. I feel like this series is actually giving her more chances to express her personality; the OVA was too plot-driven to ever really slow down for bickering between the crew, and also generally prioritized horny framing over characterization whenever it had a spare minute<\/span><\/p>\n Apparently Takizawa was embezzling funds from their facility, and convinced Misaki to steal the autopsied brain of \u201cPaul Lennon,\u201d clearly the unholy merger of Paul McCartney and John Lennon<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis asshole\u2019s an enemy of women!\u201d Mikura almost shoots Takizawa herself halfway through the story. With less of a high-stakes battle to deal with than in Mezzo Forte, Mikura is free to be a lot more useless and belligerent. I\u2019m happy for her<\/span><\/p>\n Asano is stopped by Misaki herself, their benefactor \u201cMs. Kisami,\u201d who asks him to seek his own happiness<\/span><\/p>\n The vision of Misaki fades with the morning light<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, then Takizawa starts blasting and the building collapses. We can\u2019t end on a somber note, this is Umetsu!<\/span><\/p>\n Oh my god, what a move. With Asano and herself in freefall, Mikura shoots an explosive barrel to propel both of them sideways through a window and into a different building. A sequence that embodies the power of Umetsu\u2019s approach to action boarding and choreography: because everything is so consistently grounded, an embellishment on reality like this feels genuinely spectacular, offering a reflection of the same marvelous \u201cwow, they actually did that\u201d thrill you might get from a classic Jackie Chan feature. The more weighted your drama and staging, the more impactful your embellishments; a sequence like this feels more dazzling than one of superheroes in active flight, because flight is not something we\u2019ve learned to take for granted<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s a shame that showcase animation in general seems to be moving away from this sort of massaged realism; hell, you can even see the evolution in the works of individual animators, like Yutaka Nakamura\u2019s shift from the strong fundamental choreography of Sword of the Stranger and the Cowboy Bebop movie towards the floaty, exaggerated highlights of My Hero Academia. And a lot of young animators are basically raised on those sorts of highlights, leaving them without the strong choreography fundamentals of something like this<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, that\u2019s not to say I\u2019m against expressive exaggeration \u2013 on the contrary, I think that tends to more generally embody animation\u2019s strengths as a medium. But nonetheless, I do wish there was more space for bravura realistic acting like this or Magnetic Rose<\/span><\/p>\n Our stinger offers the first hint of this season\u2019s apparent main plot \u2013 someone means to assassinate Kurokawa<\/span><\/p>\n And Done<\/b><\/p>\n That was delightful! I was frankly expecting more of an aesthetic downgrade from the polish of an OVA to the rigorous scheduling of a TV production, but at least for this first episode, Mezzo remains an absolute feast of beautiful urban design and sumptuous action choreography. Umetsu\u2019s action highlights are both conceived and executed with a nearly unparalleled understanding of action drama fundamentals, drawing on the cinematic language of live action film to create sequences that feel just slightly beyond reality \u2013 enough that Mikura\u2019s theatrics feel dazzling and larger-than-life, but never so much that you stop believing this is a genuine physical environment, where bullets hurt, explosions burn, and falls from great heights are quite likely to kill you. Frankly, without the secondary priority of offering some random incidental pornography, Mezzo actually seems more fully realized and cohesive in this format, even without the OVA\u2019s preposterously intricate character acting. I\u2019m eager for more!<\/span><\/p>\n This\u00a0article\u00a0was\u00a0mad<\/a><\/em>e possible by reader support<\/a>. Thank you all for\u00a0all that you do.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wrongeverytime.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/March26104014.jpg?resize=584%2C329&ssl=1\")
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<\/p>\nLike this:<\/h3>\n