Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re checking out another unique artifact of anime history, from a creator with a truly singular career track: Mezzo Forte, the two-episode turn-of-millennium OVA directed by Yasuomi Umetsu.
Umetsu has jumped between production studios frequently throughout his career, serving as animator and character designer for a variety of productions before making his directorial debut with the exceptional “Presence” segment of Robot Carnival. That sequence is Umetsu at his best, demonstrating his distinctive, detailed style of character art alongside his exuberant, almost gaudy approach to color design. Since then, Umetsu has proven himself an exploitation cinema auteur, with his on-hands approach to every aspect of production marking works like Kite and Wizard Barristers as indelibly his. There is a solemnity and playfulness in Umetsu’s work, but these instincts share space with prominent threads of indulgent erotica and chaotic action; it is little surprise that Tarantino loves his work, and even less of one that Tarantino has not been able to win him a cultural reassessment on the scale of Battle Royale.
All of this is to say that Umetsu embodies the distinctive strangeness of anime as a medium, a man wholly dedicated to his grindhouse vision, and whose talent in design, direction, action staging, and animation are so undeniable that his works carry his obsessions into the spotlight. Whether they flatter my genre wheelhouse or not, I am always eager to expand my understanding of anime’s true originals, and Umetsu emphatically qualifies. Let’s see what awaits us in Mezzo Forte!
Episode 1
We open with a broadcast of a baseball game that already demonstrates several of Umetsu’s aesthetic proclivities. This batter is conveyed through heavy shading and realistic musculature and facial design, emphasizing the unexaggerated solidity of this world. Though Umetsu’s women tend to feature exaggerated eyes with pronounced eyelashes, his male characters feel like they could come out of a Satoshi Kon or Mamoru Oshii film, attesting to his education within that era of grasping towards realism. Of course, while they would set their sights on making psychological and political thrillers, Umetsu’s passions run more towards John Woo movies
Low-angle and partial body shots ratchet the tension as pitcher and batter face off. Umetsu is famous for micromanaging his productions, and as a result they all tend to possess a specific cinematic language, a choppy, intimate style of boarding that occasionally gives way to longer shots for big action scenes
The batter gets a home run. Both their forms are lovingly, realistically rendered as the pitch is made
We cut to the losing team’s owner, who’s sitting in box seats with his daughter Momomi. Momomi is currently bouncing a baseball off one of their employee’s heads
Momomi demonstrates a variety of Umetsu’s sensibilities regarding female characters – distinctively round heads, large, detailed eyes, heavy color contrast, and frequently unusual haircuts. Meanwhile, these male characters are like squat golems, with heavy square frames and boulder-like heads. Though the designs are a tad more realistic than the anime standard, they still fulfill clear visual roles: his heroines are intended to always stand out, while these thugs are envisioned as implacable pillars for said heroines to nimbly demolish
Tegami suggests torturing their failed pitcher herself
Momomi’s father beats the pitcher with a baseball bat until Momomi eventually shoots him. There’s a distinctive angularity to Umetsu’s art style; characters are composed of smooth lines that resolve into sharp, jagged angles, everyone is constructed out of striking geometric sub-shapes
We then cut to our presumed heroine, featuring the same bright colors and large, eyelash-framed Umetsu eyes
Her partner has an incredible haircut, with a bunch of hair twists looking like fuses emerging from his otherwise close-shaven head
This girl’s name is Mikura. When a patdown gets extremely handsy, she busts the guy through a window
Nice character acting as she gets combat-ready – I like the brief transition between martial arts stances, as well as the ostentatious cracking of her neck. She actually seems like the kind of person who regularly gets in fights, not just a dainty maiden who happens to also be a combat expert
Their spotter Kurokawa is met by another private investigator
Our leads appear to be selling a sex robot to these two thugs
Love all this lively animation going on in the margins of the action, like these two girls in raincoats who come to examine Kurokawa’s Volkswagen. Yes girls, I too miss the days of traditionally drawn cars
Our leads are betrayed, but the robot is a bomb. Impressive cuts as our pair dive out of the building and down to the car, featuring some great smoke animation and a remarkable sense of continuous force. I particularly like how the Volkswagen actually sinks a bit as the two land on it and push off, an effect that makes the weight of their landing feel far more convincing
Umetsu has said that he has trouble getting his productions completed because there simply aren’t enough top tier action animators for what he has in mind. Watching this, I can see what he means – there are lots of impressive modern action animators, but they tend to embrace a sort of weightlessness in their cuts, the flashy yet insubstantial exchanges of something like Jujutsu Kaisen. There are far fewer animators who could manage the sturdy, weighted action of something like this or Mamoru Oshii’s films – and I imagine fewer still who would want to adhere specifically to Umetsu’s vision, contributing action animation but having no say over the storyboarding
Mikura seems fun; she immediately shifts into foul-mouthed belligerence whenever anyone pisses her off, clearly occupying the team’s wildcard role
Really delightful background art, a textured array of faded cityscapes replete with details speaking of the drifters who inhabit this region. Every frame offers us more context regarding this world purely through its background details; a testament to both the excellent background artists and well-considered initial boarding. This is one of the things modern anime tends to be worst at; with backgrounds often constructed out of CG geometry and unconnected to the foreground drama, the sense of visual continuity is lost, and with it both the vitality of the background and the assurance that our characters actually exist within this world
This sense of characters truly occupying their environment is bolstered by their body language; Kurokawa seems entirely at home within their double decker apartment, while Mikura lounges and pops her head into the frame from above, offering a playful suggestion of the second floor’s layout
This unusually long held shot forces the audience to focus on the character acting, demonstrating how all three of our leads feel at home within this environment, and through its stability of framing inviting us to share their sense of peace
Like most private investigators, they mostly spend their time bickering about money and food
A bearded man named Emoto stops by
Love their janky analog x-ray setup. Bubble era animation imagined the future as a glittering cybernetic facade over a core of rot; by 2000, it’s understood that the future will look precisely as decayed as it actually is
Elsewhere, Momomi has casually murdered two baseball executives. It seems she has some kind of psychic connection with Mikura
Tons of fun layouts as Momomi and her father later compete in bowling, like this one where the “camera” is actually set up inside the ball’s finger holes. Momomi herself remains charmingly visually expressive, inventing her own victory dance when she makes a clutch throw
“Momokichi rocks!” Her dad gets his own bowling victory dance too. I get the impression Umetsu just really wanted to have a scene at a bowling alley
Meanwhile, Mikura’s team are attempting to use a remote ladybug robot to drop some kind of poison in Momomi’s father’s drink
The poison’s actually a laxative, allowing Mikura to isolate him in a bathroom stall
Apparently Mikura’s been seeing this man in her dreams. Seems she may secretly be the sister of Momomi
Getting some good comic mileage out of this bathroom setup. The expressiveness of the characters allows Umetsu to mine fine humor from our pair looking increasingly annoyed as they wait for an onlooker to stop peeing and leave the bathroom
Animated comedy can be a tricky thing, because physical/visual comedy generally requires distinctly expressive artists or sumptuous character acting, while spoken comedy often relies on expectations that vary from culture to culture. Here, the extreme expressiveness of the team and their carefully animated body language facilitates a good number of incidental gags, demonstrating the power of quasi-realistic animation as convincingly as any action scene
Our next action sequence once again takes advantage of the distinct physicality of its venue, as our two kidnappers grapple with one of the owner’s men among the pipes and ducts of the bowling alley crawlspace. This OVA is consistently demonstrating the importance of designing fights with their environment in mind, which increases the tactical complexity/intrigue of the encounter while also bolstering the sense of weighty, physically powerful players interacting in a coherent, believable space. I have my issues with realism as a goal in animation, but this OVA is demonstrating the best advantages of such a pursuit
And at last, Momomi and Mikura spar. Excellent, convincingly weighted combat choreography as the two show off some genuine martial arts expertise
Then an excellent contrast of speed and power as she dismantles the heavy goons. Really impressed by how well all of this flows while still maintaining the brutal impact of her various strikes
Deliciously foreshortened shot as Momomi spins round with a shotgun, really emphasizing her derangement through this one wildly exaggerated eye. The fundamental choreography is quite grounded, but there are also some well-chosen embellishments like this
Hah! Fantastic spectacle as our team escapes in the VW, with explosions sending bowling balls flying and crashing into the lanes. Just incredibly sumptuous mayhem, made all the more thrilling through the clear weight and physicality of all the objects in play
Oh my god, this preposterous animation of the VW basically jumping up a staircase
We then jump to an entirely incongruous sex scene framed as a “dream” that Mikura apparently experiences. I guess we gotta get that promised adult content in here somehow
We finally get the Peach Twisters’ owner’s full name, Momoi Momokichi. “Momo” means “Peach,” so his name is basically Peach Twisters’ owner Peach Peachy
Welp, turns out they killed him
And Done
Dang, that was some high quality action! The sex scene felt as tacked-on as it presumably was (I imagine it was designed from the start to be removable from non-adult releases), but everything else here was a delightful slice of gorgeously animated spectacle, featuring elegantly constructed combat encounters, terrifically executed fight choreography, and playful, engaging characters who all possessed an easy mutual rapport. Umetsu’s passion for complex yet coherent action scenes resulted in some remarkable sequences here, and I particularly appreciated how fully realized this world is, with each frame offering fresh details regarding the nature of this city and the people who populate it. Mezzo Forte plays like a grimy action movie directed by a master stuntman, and I’m eager to see what Umetsu blows up next.
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