Golgo 13 – Episode 4 – Pretty Woman

Ladies, don’t fall in love with assassins, it won’t work out well.

Below par animation for this story of the wife of a Mafia boss who hires Golgo to kill her husband. Also the wife is a truly annoying character, a one note possessive harridan, who were it not for the fact everyone else in this episode is also as one note, and her husband just as possessive, would come off as a misogynistic stereotype. They are passionate people in a world where stoicism is the ultimate virtue, so it should not be a surprise that their personalities are shrill grotesques.

The only non-Duke Togo character who comes off looking respectable is the character who is essentially there as a mirror to Golgo. Ultimately the moral of the whole story is if you show your emotions, you are less than Golgo 13, and you are probably going to die because of it. And even if you are like Golgo 13, he’s smarter than you and you’ll die anyway.

The weakest episode so far, the main interest is in the mechanics of the hit. And in the shootout that the screenshot above comes from. A lazy show wouldn’t have animated the time difference in when the guns were shot. You can’t see it when watching normally, but slow it down, and yes, Golgo does shoot first by a fraction of a second.

Yay for attention to detail.