Urban Square: Kohaku no Tsuigeki

A lesser known work from Kazunori Ito, more popularly known for his work on Ghost in the Shell, among many others, this is a straightforward crime thriller about an average Joe getting caught up in a criminal conspiracy. Personally, I love these kinds of movies, so
I was already inclined to be generous, but this is just a really nice little movie. It moves along at a brisk pace, the animation is solid, the soundtrack is filled with bitchin' 80s guitar solos, and the action scenes are appropriately ridiculous and fun for the genre.

There are certainly some bits and pieces here that you can nitpick. ... Yuki is kind of superfluous, the plot is pretty conventional, and the length is a bit too short (under an hour even if you include the credits). But this is a very fun and easily watchable movie in spite of all that. One which could have fixed most of its flaws simply by adding on another 30-45 minutes of content and expanding into a feature length film.

A fair-to-middlin' OVA action/murder/mystery from the eighties.

From a time when practically every other anime movie or OVA featured characters with mysterious extra-sensory powers, it's actually refreshing to come across a story that features REAL people behaving in REAL situations, doing REAL things. Well, the story does get a little over the top at times, but what I mean is there's nothing supernatural in this story. A rarity in eighties OVAs!

Granted, the plot of the story is a little far-fetched, as a mild-mannered writer gets unwittingly involved in a murder mystery, faces off against a honest-to-god ... Bruce Lee karate guy in his apartment, hard-boiled detectives, hanging from a helicopter by one leg, and, well, you get the picture. No more ridiculous than, say, Die Hard. This short story is definitely not lacking in money-shots.

That being said, there is an actual plot and an actual resolution, regardless of some of the implausible twists and turns along the way. And the artwork is, well, pretty decent. As is the animation. Although it pales in comparison to another similar OVA, Hello Hedgehog -- Urban Square ain't so bad by itself.

This was infuriating crap, holy shit was it stupid. The MC is fucking retarded. In the 80s/90s you get these goofball MCs. The joke with these idiots is that they're always trying to cover their ass, and it seems they are getting into trouble but the god awful scriptwriting always saves them. Every bullet fired misses the MC and the bad guys seriously never win cause the scriptwriting demands they are always fooled. If you wanna know what's so bad, you can read my forum post. The MC is stupid. The good cop is stupid too if he knew what was so wrong, but would ... always be one step late. It is kinda ridiculous really, two instances, he was there but somehow late to open the door and another instance which he knew the criminals were coming but didn't even warn his officer of the danger. It's tragic the action stems from god awful scriptwriting and come from awful characters with bad art, (though the funny thing was the gunner actually looks like Askeladd from Vinland Saga, but without a beard LMAO) cause the action was actually OK.