Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re swerving into the second half of Yasuomi Umetsu’s Mezzo Forte, a stylish slice of exuberant sex and violence from one of anime’s premiere grindhouse titans. The first episode of this OVA featured dynamic action scenes aplenty, from a negotiation prematurely ended by an exploding sex robot to an eight-lane gunfight at a local bowling alley. Along the way, our so-called heroes kidnapped corrupt baseball team owner Momikichi Momoi, only to discover they’d somehow killed him along the way.

I imagine that won’t sit well with Momokichi’s psychotic daughter Momomi, meaning we’re likely in for a Terminator-style manhunt, as Mikura and her companions evade Momomi’s clutches while attempting to divine the connection between them. Regardless, I’m expecting a fresh slate of inventive, smartly constructed, and beautifully executed action setpieces, sequences demonstrating an understanding of cinematic action language that goes far beyond “fluid motion and fight choreography.” Great action scenes tell a story, using their environmental variables to create successions of challenges for their stars to overcome, and perhaps even expressing a sort of visual communication through the divergent styles and approaches of their contenders. Let’s see what madness awaits as Mezzo Forte rides towards its cacophonous conclusion!

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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!

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