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Dogs: Bullets & Carnage
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7.28(30K votes)
Ranked #3176Popularity #3118episodes
4
Type
OVA
Status
Finished Airing
Aired
May 19, 2009 to Jul 17, 2009
Studios:David Production
ActionDramaSci-Fi
Synopsis
It is sometime in the future, where a certain European city extends far underground, even secret, dark levels that have the key to the past. Ex-assassin Mihai has returned and is living with Kiri, who now runs a restaurant. Sword-wielding Naoto, Haine (white hair), a mysterious product of genetic engineering and his sometime partner Badou (eyepatch). (Source: ANN)
64,045 Members
Worth Watching? â Global Verdict
6.1/10
Average Review Score
50%
Recommend It
16
Reviews Worldwide
International Reviews
kiriska
Recommended
7
This short, four-episode OAV corresponds to the DOGS prelude, Stray dogs howling in the dark (I have no idea why MAL has it labeled as BULLETS&CARNAGE, because that's not what this is), but while it captures the sequence of events well enough, it fails to communicate the oddly charming harshness and raw energy of the manga. STORY - The story for the first volume of DOGS has always been a little loose and haphazard; each of the four sections focuses on a different character, and the lot of them are strung together almost forcibly as their individual stories donât necessarily mesh meaningfully with the others aroundthem. The mangaâs presentation did manage to find some kind of connecting thread between the four though, and each story also worked well enough as a standalone chapter. Unfortunately, while the OAV preserves the presentation order of the characters, each episode felt incredibly disjointed from the rest â actually, they felt disjointed in and of themselves as well, though Iâm not exactly sure why that is. Strangely enough, even at fifteen minutes a piece, the pacing in each episode isnât noticeably rushed. It feels pretty scene-for-scene for the most part, but in the end, you really feel like youâre missing something. Was the story really so short and inconsequential? So⊠uninteresting? There is a lot of action â gunfights, swordfights, wild chases â and the action is highly entertaining and fun to watch, but the story beyond the action is sorely lacking. Mihai is a retired assassin called back to his past, but the episode skips along too quickly for you to endear yourself to the character and the events that unfold are less emotional as a result. Badou collects information to sell and finds himself tangled up in a mob bossâs unfortunate business. As his section was always the most comedic of the bunch because of its sheer absurdity, the OAV counterpart didnât suffer as much, but the humor did seem cheaper somehow in animated form. Naoto was raised with only hatred and revenge on her mind, but her narration in the anime flattened the story and I found it more difficult to sympathize. Lastly, Heine saves a genetically modified girl and confronts the haunting fringes of his own past in the process. Though his section is the one that explains the least, itâs also the one thatâs most relevant to the on-going series. But Heineâs episode was surely the choppiest, and instead of exciting the viewer towards a continuing story, it seems to end on a note re-emphasizing its own precariousness. Sure, DOGSâs strength never really lay in its amazingly thoughtful or unique story; indeed, the prelude does little more than introduce some charactersâ pasts and other charactersâ current lives, laying the groundwork for something bigger. But as Iâm not left excited about the potential or possibility of more in this anime, DOGS has thus been reduced to a mindless hour of action with no beginning or end. CHARACTER - Like the story, given the near-exactness of the presentation, Iâm not quite sure why none of the characters have the charm they do in the manga, and I canât say for sure whether my distaste is just because I was disappointed overall with this production. Perhaps the shortness of each episode has something to do with it after all â even if the sequence of events is the same, you watch through the episode faster than you would read through the chapters and you thus donât have as much time to really care about the characters; you are less inclined to pause and rewatch the seconds of intriguing footage than you are to pause and reread a few interesting panels or pages. Mihai is an older man with a sad past. So what? Badou is a good-for-nothing with an amusing tobacco addiction. So what? Naoto is a young woman with a sad past. So what? Heine is a mysterious freak. So what? Sure, all of these characters still have the potential to be interesting, just like their manga selves, but that potential is less obvious this time around, and I was easily bored. ARTSTYLE & ANIMATION â Shirow Miwaâs art is gorgeous â his energetic character designs, incredible action sequences, and highly detailed environments are together the greatest strength of the manga; I can forgive the somewhat plain story and slowly-developing characters just because I can look at that art. As such, I spent many months worried about how all that style and detail would translate into animation. I wanted to be optimistic, but it seems that optimism was ill-placed after all. (Figures, right?) Itâs a given that much of Miwaâs careful detail will have to be sacrificed in animation, but DOGS was a much lower budget production that I would have imagined. For almost all long to mid-range shots, characters are drawn in a lazy, oddly elongated manner; their facial expressions are a joke. Most action scenes move along too quickly for this to be noticeable, but as soon as it slows down, it gets embarrassing. Close-ups are crisper, but really donât fare that much better, especially for Heine and Badou, who appear strangely generic and without any of the attitude found in their manga counterparts. For them, animators really donât seem to have bothered too much in capturing Miwaâs style and only replicated the most basic aspects of his character designs. Mihai and Naoto are less of a dramatic departure, but that may be because both designs are less unique to begin with. Thankfully, many of the backgrounds are actually pretty all right. The cityscapes are still vast and grungy, and many shots are still taken from all sorts of interesting angles. Still, theyâre not amazing by any stretch. MUSIC - The little opening theme, if you can call it that, is endearing at first â a little reminiscent of the jazz tunes of Cowboy Bebop or Baccano!, which would be appropriate enough with all the action in DOGS. But considering the rather serious and depressing themes of three out of four stories, the upbeat and cheerful melody quickly feels inappropriate. The rest of the soundtrack for the series is incredibly negligible. Many scenes are simply silent with most of the music accumulating in the action sequences, but thereâs nothing really memorable. VOICE ACTING â The OAV uses the same cast as the drama CDs, which I thoroughly enjoyed. A few fans have criticized the use of âbrand nameâ voice actors like Akira Ishida and Takahiro Sakurai but I think both do a fantastic job as Badou and Heine respectively. They give some much needed emotion to the characters when the animation fails utterly, and both depart significantly from their previous voices so even though Iâve heard Ishida and Sakuraiâs voices many times before, hearing them here doesnât invoke thoughts of their other roles. I also really like Akio Ohtsuka as Mihai; though the actual acting isnât nearly as impressive as the former two, the voice suits the character very well. Naoto I find to be the least impressive, but that could be a mixture of my indifference towards the character and the generic narration she gave for most of her episode. Also, I think itâs worth noting Toshihiko Seki as Bishop, the blind priest, who has some hilariously delivered one-liners. OVERALL - The DOGS OAV has been a huge disappointment for me, though in retrospect, Iâm not sure why I had such high expectations. Still, aside from the poor technical aspects (mostly terrible animation and lackluster music), most of this animeâs drawbacks are uniquely difficult to pinpoint. The story and characters are almost exactly as they were in the manga, so why do they feel so different? For the first time, I theorize that DOGS might just work better as a comic and the anime only serves to overemphasize the weaknesses that were already present in the source. Though the same events are covered, the anime does feel strangely rushed, the most important consequence of which is that you donât feel very attached to the characters. It isnât as intimate, and without that connection to the characters, much of the interest and potential is lost â unfortunate, as the potential is what I found most appealing about the DOGS manga⊠along with the art. That Miwaâs art was bastardized as much as it was undoubtedly adds a bit of bitterness on my part. So if youâre a fan of the manga, youâll likely be disappointed. If youâre not, youâll likely be indifferent â enjoy the action scenes for what theyâre worth and then forget about it because it wasnât actually that interesting.