Bounty Dog is a not well know animation and even few people know that Masamune Shirow has worked on it. He has created many rough designs (you can find examples inside the Appleseed Hypernotes) like "spider" combat mecha, Seburo guns, cyborgs who can transform into motorbikes and buildings which can grow up like bubbles.
Official Blurb
"In the future, mankind has colonized the bleak expanses of the moon shining cities which stand proudly where once was only desolation and emptiness. But there are forces that do not want mankind to succeed. Forces that have only hatred for the brave men and women who have transformed the face of the moon. Strange waves of power emanate from deep below the surface of the moon, where a centuries old alien power, known only as The Sleeper, waits for the day it can arise to spread destruction. Only one man can stop this power; one man whose fate and destiny have brought him to the moon - a member of the Bounty Dog Investigation Unit, a high-tech cybernetic mercenary team.
The Bounty arrive on the moon to investigate the strange waves of energy, only to find themselves caught up in a desperate attempt to destroy The Sleeper before it awakes and obliterates all traces of mankind on the moon and on earth.
The Unit race to uncover the ancient evil on the hidden side of the moon, while the forces of The Sleeper begin to emerge, bringing ever closer the ultimate catastrophe that only one man can prevent - if he can get there in time!"
Original Story: Zero G Room
Director: Hiroshi Negishi
Screenplay: Masayori Sekijima
Character Design: Hirotoshi Sano
Mechanical Design: Atsushi Takeuchi
Year: 1994
Running time: 60 minutes
Copyright: Zero G Room, Star Child,
Toho Ltd., Movic Inc.
Plot
The action takes place on the Moon during the 21st Century. The planet has been colonized by mankind and big corporations have facilities there. Because of the discovery of anomalies in the Moon gravity field, the mercenary Bounty Dog team is given the responsibility to investigate. They arrives onto the Moon disguised as tourists, thinking that Constans Corporation is developing a new weapon. The members of the team are Shoko (the only girl and the leader of the group), Yoshiyuki (the main character) and Kei. After their arrival, Yoshiyuki encounters Ines, a young girl who reminds him of Yayoi, his girlfriend died 5 years earlier. Really this girl is an ancestor of Yayoi and one of the many clones of The Sleeper (an alien being discovered by Constans).
Ines has explored the Earth many centuries ago and, loving the planet, has started to protect it, even against The Sleeper who now wants to destroy the mankind. The only possibility is to kill the alien being before she awakes, but many evil Ines have to been eliminated before catching her, deep below the surface.
Comments
I think this OAV is not so bad. It is one of that kind of movies who initially confuse the audience and later explain a mystery after the other. Unfortunately this time the confusion feeling is strong. There are also problems about the quality of the animation (sometimes it's really bad), but I like the drawings and the originality of some ideas. For example The Sleeper wants to repair her body (damaged by Constans) using Yayoi's genetic information, contained inside a biotechnological tattoos (a sort of copy of Yayoi's mind) printed on Yoshiyuki's hand. But why she cannot use her clones? Of why there are so many military vehicle on the Moon which should be a demilitarized planet?. These are some of the doubts about Bounty Dog plot.
But for you (who are visiting Puto's) and me there is another major problem: Shirow's preparatory drawings have been quite ignored. Only if you watch carefully the OAV it's possible to discover some particulars which could resemble them. Even the obvious spider mecha (top of this page) looks vaguely like a Shirow's creation. For a brief moment is possible to see a "bubble building" or the spaceship used by the characters to arrive on the Moon, but I haven't recognize anything more (if you have, please mail me!).
Note: Italian official credits quote Shirow only as co-author of "Mecha Design". Luckily this time he hasn't been used as a bait, the contrary of what's happened about Landlock (looking at the advertisements, you could think that it was made entirely by Shirow, whereas he has drawn only few images).
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Pictures Copyrights
From the Top: 1) Appleseed Hypernotes ©1995 Shirow/Seishinsha, Bounty Dog ©1994 Shirow/Zero G Room/Star Child/Toho/Movic. 2-3) Bounty Dog ©1994 Zero G Room/Star Child/Toho/Movic
Left: Orion ©1991 Shirow/Seishinsha. |
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