Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re 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’s unique aesthetic style and dedication to kinetic action drama mean that although his works are few in number, they’re 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.
Having already screened the two-part OVA Mezzo Forte, we’re now diving into the franchise’s followup television drama, Mezzo DSA (short for Danger Squad Agency, the optimistic title of our main trio’s operation). The OVA era was likely a perfect fit for Umetsu’s mixture of perfectionism and incidental erotica – 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’m 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’s get to it!