Crimson Wolf Image 60 minutes English/Japanese No Subtitles 11/03/1998

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The perils of money management are a dangerous thing. So now I find myself looking woefully at my copy of R-Type: Delta while my electricity bill cries out for payment with the moans of a thousand PECO energy workers crying out for my blood while simultaneously banging down at my door. As such, I'm devoted myself to trying to sell off some of the less favored DVDs of my anime collection in order to keep my head above water. Or for the ability to have and use water, as it were. Crimson Wolf was one such casualty of this and though I feel like a moron for selling off something that's out of print (even if it is out of print CRAP) for $10, it did enhance my drive to watch it before mailing the thing it to some poor sap who didn't know what he was getting into. You know who's a big fan of having the Japanese language track without subtitles? That's right... NO ONE. I'm sure Image thought it was a grand idea to include the original language without any way for the "otakus", the true fanbase in America whose word must be law (according to them anyway), to figure out even close to what the hell they're saying. Did you ever watch those Hong Kong action flicks on TV that were still in their original language because nobody cared enough to dub them? Well I watched those things at least twice a week and *I* never learned Chinese, so how the am I to be expected to understand what the hell is going on in a Japanese show without subtitles? Screw it, it's Streamline dub time for me and you.

And you know what? It's not something that's going to keep you up at night anyway, because Crimson Wolf doesn't have much of a plot. It certainly LOOKS like it does and if you read the back of the cover you might get the idea that the creators had a pretty good thing going for them... until they started writing the show and screwing it all up royally. The beginning, in a very Spriggan-esque way, has three archaeologists running around some tomb in Mongolia. Soon they uncover the mummified body of Genghis Kahn, seems old Kahn isn't content to just sit around and rot, he's gonna shoot three arrows into the sun and warn those slant eyed gooks (his actual words) that there will be a great plague in a thousand days that'll cause the Asian people's woman to become ugly scanners and the men to overrun the "blue eyed people of the west", presumably to accomplish the rape of their women. Now, do you know how many girls I know with "eggroll fever"? It's ridiculous. What I'm saying is those girls could have all the milk they wanted, but it wouldn't exactly be free. To put it in a way that makes sense and leaves no room for possibly sexual euphemisms, they'd ride those baloney ponies without a question in their mind. It's not gonna be rape it's gonna be a mustard and mayonnaise sandwich free for all. The great Kahn warns that this will occur unless the three people with the marks of the Crimson Wolf on their bodies are found and killed.

It's just a quick hop to Beijing. The current Daiyo wants the martial arts master Yen Pow Ling, voiced by the impeccable Mike Reynolds, for some reason or another. Lucky for the incredibly old and short man, his trainee Kai skateboards in to his rescue and beats the evil people with guns until... their heads blow up. That's pretty much a deciding factor in anime, how fast and how many heads blow up is inversely proportional to how good the anime is. One or two heads I can deal with, but a whole slew in the first half hour does not a good anime make. And just how hard do you have to squeeze someone's face to make their teeth explode anyway? When Kai isn't making people's heads explode -- or hanging out with his bike gang that vanish as quickly they appear -- he's palling around with Mizuho, the girl who spends more time naked than she does clothed. A shower scene in anime isn't exactly uncommon, no, but honestly... who gets their historical revelations while sitting at a computer in their underwear? I mean, seriously lady, put on some freaking pants before you uncover a major plot point! Far and away that's not the only major nudity gaff that Crimson Wolf makes, but there's only so much space for me to type here and there's one more character to examine before I decide to call it a night. Kai eventually finds himself on the run and meets up with a black market smuggler named Lu Kodan is probably the most normal character in the show, but he has this incredibly odd penchant for hosting lesbian orgies in his giant palace in China. Oh, if only I'd known the life of a smuggler was so sweet! The creators try their very hardest to keep it a secret that he's the third Crimson Wolf but it's pretty obvious when he shows Kai, the first Wolf, the unconscious (naked) body of Mizuho, the second wolf, and says "It seems like it was fate that she was brought to me".

I'm sorry if I just spoiled the "intricate" plot for you. From then on in (after a brief stop where Lu Kodan shivs a man, then nonchalantly reveals that he was his brother) the wolves band together to destroy the evil computer that houses the spirit of CHAIRMAN MAO who has now been enhanced with JEDI MIND POWERS. If someone proposed something like that to me, even while drunk, I would kick them in the freaking teeth. I mean, seriously, EVIL CHAIRMAN MAO ROBOT COMPUTER GHOST?! What the hell are you talking about Japan? I know there's no love lost between you and Japan but... jeez. Chair Mao aside, I'll leave you with this final question. You and your buddy are trapped in a cave, it's not a particularly cold cave or anything. It's just a cave. You, the girl are naked (as always!), your buddy, the guy, has his tighty whities on and it's a good thing to because he's packing one HELL of a gun for such a small guy. What do you do to keep him alive because he's apparently freezing to death? (a) Massage his body to prevent frostbite? (b) Lay over him and try and share your body heat? (c) Try the laying thing for a couple seconds and then just say "Aw screw it" and immediately let his unconscious body deep dick you until he wakes up. If you chose (c), then, I don't know, maybe Crimson Wolf is for you. But I find shock therapy to be just as viable an alternative.