Get Backers: Volume 1

Review Date: 2005 April 29 19:40

Reviewed by: Spike

Released by: ADV Films UK

Age Rating: 12

Region: 2 - UK

Volume 1 of 10

Length: 125 minutes

Subtitles: English

Audio: English 5.1 Surround
Japanese 2.0 Stereo

Summary

All of us, at some time have had something stolen from us, sometimes it's something unimportant like a mobile phone, but sometimes it's something important, something that means something to you, and something that you'll never have returned. Unless, that is, you enlist the help of Ban and Ginji, the Get Backers, a duo who live by the motto "If it was taken, we'll get it back". These two will take any case, no one refused (well, at least until they've paid off their enourmous tab!) and will stop at nothing to recover whatever property has been taken, no matter how much mayhem they may cause along the way!

Review

Get Backers looks great, with a fantastic use of colour and shadows used to highlight the use of dark and light in the show, highlighting and discriminating between the more humorous moments in the series and the more serious. The audio here is mostly modern jazz, leaving the show with a definite sense of style, even the unusually relaxing J-pop intro theme isn't quite out of place. As ever, for an ADV title, the subtitles match the dub well and are almost indistinguishable from each other. The two main protagonists play a sort of good-cop, bad-cop routine, with Ginji as the soft-hearted push over, and Ban as more of a realist, usually wanting to turn some form of profit, rather than helping people out of a sense of honour. Fortunately, the duo aren't entirely alone in their various tasks, they have special powers to aid them along the way. Ginji has the ability to generate electricity inside his body. Ban has a 200 Kilogram grip combined with the strange ability called the Jagon, which allows him to hypnotise people into believing an illusion of reality for a short time.