The name's Duke. Duke Togo.
Due to the events of the Quirino Grandstand Hostage Taking, I suddenly remembered a certain assassin, a sniper to be exact named Duke Togo aka Golgo 13 who hits all his targets in whatever distance 100% accurately. Thanks to my LSS, Take the Wave, the first OP theme of the anime, I decided to download episodes 1 and 7. Here is the review of its first episode.
The series kicks off in a plain in which a guy wants to go the bathroom, but since the plain is about to experience turbulence and as we all know, everyone must return to their seats, wear their seatbelts but this guy, wants to go to the bathroom. After being confronted by someone, it turned out to be he is a hijacker and hijacks the plane. He wants to go to Colombia but the plane needs to refuel so, they took a stop over in Dallas.
Meanwhile, in a US prison, an Asian was freed because someone needs his skills and his name is Duke Togo. Opening credits starts to roll. If you watched the TV5 ANiMEGA telecast this year, you might noticed the rather neat editing they did on the opening sequence. Want to know why? There is a scene in which we saw a lady’s butt and there is one scene in which we saw nipples of a blonde lady which in the TV5 telecast, they simply grayed it out to make it look like that the blonde girl was never focused.
After the OP credits, let’s go back to the plane. The police now surround him and the plane is being refueled. Back in the prison, we saw Duke left the building and welcomed by a CIA and a FBI agent. After their brief introductions, the agent then asked Golgo to kill the hijacker. It turned out to be he is an informant of the Pentagon regarding on drug syndicates and the like. In exchange on his services, they gave him military info little did Pentagon know that he is planning to sell military secrets to other countries. Due to the tight passport check in international flights, he decides to hijack a plane for domestic flights so that he would not take those inspections.
At first, Duke wants to decline the offer even if the agent offered him his minimum fee, $ 3,000,000, yes, that is his minimum fee, but because of the challenge of the agent about him being a professional assassin, he accepts the offer. On a secluded area, inside a pink car has all the information Golgo needs for the mission… and leaves the area with. His. Pink. Car. O_O
Back at the hijacker, the police want to kill him right now thus someone suggested on using snipers but because of the distance and they do not know who can shoot on a long distance, that suggestion was dropped. Back at Golgo, he went into a bar rides an elevator going down along with an aide, and was pointed to Dave a gunsmith.
After Dave gave him his best gun, Golgo uses it to practice it. After saying the problems about the gun, and asked him to fix the gun for three hours, in which according to Dave is impossible. This where he starts to screw the rules because he has money and so, Dave accepts the job offer thanks to amount offered by Golgo.
Back at the hijacker, the idea was again put into consideration but this time, the agents from earlier are back and said that there is someone who can do it and he is busy preparing right now. This is where in the TV5 telecast the censorship ensues and they have a good reason for it!
While Dave is fixing the gun, Golgo is busy having sex with a prostitute! As we saw Dave fix the gun, flashes of Duke doing the deed are seen on the screen. In the TV5 edit, those scenes where remove and instead we have a scene in which Dave is fixing the gun. Ladies and Gentleman, TV5 is safe from MTRCB!
After doing the deed and the prostitute demanding for more in which Golgo declines (This scene was aired in the TV5 telecast BTW), the mafia who demands that certain Asian’s head because he killed a mafia boss prior to the series knew Duke’s location and starts shooting his door! After we saw Golgo’s gun skills, he left the building with the prostitute, bewildered on the events.
Meanwhile, the refueling is over. To give Golgo more time, they decided to use the snipers to shoot the tire. Because of the flat tire, it gave them more time to wait for Golgo.
Back at Golgo, he receives the gun from Dave and upon seeing the laptop that the direction of the plane is different, Golgo was just silent and leaves the place. He is the guy who never leaves his mission. Cool. Back at the airport, a small plane arrives from the tarmac of the airport. Golgo has arrived. He positions himself, loads the bullet, aims and hits the target on the head. The hijacker is now dead. Everyone is safe.
Wow. Golgo Broadcasting! Wow. Errors in a US Broadsheet in the Header!
The next day, we saw on the newspaper the headlines. According to it, an FBI agent killed the hijacker. Dave knew that Golgo was successful and just smiled.
On to the review, when I first watched it with some cuts (which was necessary considering they aired a seinen/adult anime title at 7pm!), it never ruined the fun factor of episode. The episode tells us on how badass Golgo was. It tells us most on Golgo’s personality. He is cautious thanks to his personality that he wants a person to came in a car first before he will enter the vehicle.
Aside from learning about Golgo’s personality, we learned that the mafia hates him because of what he did proper to the series and based on what I remember, this is not the last time we will see them. We also learned about his knowledge in the use of guns. He is specific in terms of his rifle, the weight, the proper calibration, the recoil, everything that is related to it.
We also learned that this is not the first time in the assassin business considering that the CIA and FBI know him and he knew that those two agencies never worked together nor cooperate to each other. In addition, we learned about his reputation as an assassin and that he is someone you should not mess with.
My problem with the first episode is that the first few parts are boring especially the parts that they are talking about the demands of the hijacker.
Overall, the first episode is great to watch if you are into assassins and snipers, this is the show for you. However, if you were a younger audience, I would not recommend this show for you due to those “scenes,” even if they were just random shots of Duke doing the deed… with no reaction. I am dead serious he is worst that Yuki Nagato in terms of their facial expressions.