Audience reviews
6 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
AnimePaps
This is a really stupid movie. The plot is nonsense, the action is nonsense, there is no substance. The most remarkable thing is scene where the main character leaps fifty feet into the air to catch a helicopter as it's hover overhead while firing machine guns and missiles. He's totally fine after this. Multiple scenes of animation are reused multiple times to no effect. There is nothing really redeeming about this outside of the entertainment value. What you get is a very entertaining 45 minutes of anime. If you dislike this movie you dislike fun. The only line I remember from the movie is when he screams, "I am the Dog Soldier." I couldn't make this up if I tried, you really just have to watch this.
Read at the sourceMandalorian
Here's an anime you can ignore. It's weak and boring, it lacks action (yeah there is some, but it's quite lame), the plot is nothing special and the main character is a cheap Rambo knock-off, but not as cool and without the charisma of his genuine counterpart. So yes, basically the only things he shares with Rambo are the physical appearance, the attire and being a former special forces military guy.
Animation is quite choppy, art is ok on par with other obscure OVAs from the 80s/90s, characters are mostly flat and the soundtrack doesn't shine; there's really nothing in this OVA that makes it worth watching. I can't recommend it because you probably won't enjoy it, it's not good by any means but it's not awful enough to fall into the "so bad it's good" category. I've seen a lot of terrib…
Read at the sourceKamezuki
“Dog Soldier” is an ultra-violent ‘80s OVA... without the ultra-violence. Sure, there’s fighting, and there’s a little blood here and there, but most of the 46-minute runtime is spent on dull conversations or flashbacking to scenes multiple times without rhyme or reason.
The gist of the story is Hiba, the main character who used to be a Green Beret but quit and is now a construction worker in Japan, gets forcefully recruited by the government to stop a shady arms dealer from weaponizing the vaccine to the AIDS virus. He refuses, but once he finds out that his childhood friends are involved, he’s suddenly all in, along with his fellow soldier-turned-construction-worker friend, Fudou. Their involvement takes them to Tokyo Dome, and later to a remote tropical island. There’s a lot of shootin…
Read at the sourceBohemianRhapsody
Before I start with my review, I have to say that action anime from the 80's and 90's, despite not having much of a storyline, are a guilty pleasure for me. Secondly, I'd like to say the this review is going to have some spoilers. They aren't very important, since this anime is just 45 minutes, but hey, you can't be too careful with this stuff.
Now, without much further ado:
"Dog Soldier" is an anime that promises a lot, but does only a little. Just from the poster, you can notice the character looks like Rambo. Since the main character, John Kyosuke Hiba looks and fights like Rambo, one might expect the anime to have more Rambo-ish characteristics. And that's where it falls flat.
The story of Dog Soldier isn't that good, but given the type of anime it is, the story is only there to give…
Read at the sourceApollokun
I wrote a much more scathing review on my Atlanta Fried Critic blog, but given that I can't go all-out on this site, I'll tone it down a bit. It's important that I do this, because you need to know never to watch this OVA. Everything about it, from the laughable story to the dreadful animation to the complete jumps in logic that apply to both of those things, is awful.
Let's start with the laughably named protagonist, John Kyosuke Hiba. The characters can never decide what to call him. In the same sentence, they'll call him "John", then "Kyosuke." What's up with that? Did they forget his name in a split second? Is it really that hard to just stick with one name? I don't know, but it makes absolutely no good sense.
Anyway, John is an ex Green Beret who now works a mellow construction job…
Read at the sourceWTFHachs
When one thinks of Dog Soldier ~Shadows of the Past~, quality isn't the first thing that comes to mind. Well, aside from "Quality" being with a capital 'q' and only in the instance where that indicates a mistake of real quality in a piece for irony. Looking at the scores assigned to this review, it's pretty mediocre with one shining moment; however, looking at my own personal view of it, it's an abysmal 3. One's final opinion is all in what is expected from the viewer, which is probably it's greatest strength.
If you're looking for a serious adventure about a man's fight against a military industrial complex, you're going to find an anime that rounds out to that 3 I assigned it. This anime is bad. The art style is decent; it's a bit clunky and it shows its age but it is not so horridly ug…
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