L/R: LICENSED BY ROYALTY MISSION FILE 1: DECEPTIONS - DVD review

I originally mistook the title to stand for "Left/Right" when I first looked at the DVD case. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it actually stands for "Licensed by Royalty". This DVD contains four episodes, "Be Traced", "A Taste of Secret", "A Girl Goes to the City", and "Sweet Enemies in the Same Desert".

The first episode opens with practically no background information on the main characters, Jack and Rowe. They're secret agents for the royal family of Ishtar (a fictitious country that is in every way identical to Great Britain, including a large clock tower) who work in the private sector. Between the two of them, they pretty much have the entire spectrum of secret agents covered—one is the suave, sophisticated, lady's man-type agent, and the other is the more scruffy, action-oriented agent. Admittedly, I only watched this disc once, but I can't, for the life of me, remember which was which.

I was left scratching my head for much of the first episode, as I just couldn't figure out where to place this show. It was sort of reminiscent of "Cowboy Bebop", minus the great character depth. Jack and Rowe are attempting to recover a royal artifact that a museum curator had stolen. After cornering him and his lovely assistant onboard a zeppelin, Jack and Rowe move in, only to find that the artifact is missing. "Maybe it's hidden in the assistant's ample cleavage," I thought dismissively. To my surprise, that was exactly where the treasure was revealed to be a minute later! And that was when this show clicked for me: it's a showcase for the most entertaining elements of the secret-agent genre, with spies hunting spies, international intrigue, some action, and occasional humor.

The second episode takes on a spy vs. spy feeling. Jack and Rowe take on a terrorist organization called Hornet in a race to prevent Hornet from blowing up several political leaders. This episode was interesting to watch, even if it doesn't help establish any kind of background for the series yet.

Episode three starts to provide some background detail. A princess in the royal family went missing at some point, so now there's a nationwide hunt for the Fifteen Year Princess, so-called because she would be fifteen years old in the present. Jack and Rowe are ordered to escort Noel, a failed Fifteen Years Princess candidate, back to her home island. So far, this episode stands alone as the only hint that there may be a little more to "L/R" than just an "episode of the week" type plot. I suppose that Noel will be back in later episodes, as she is in the opening credits after all.

The final episode showed off the more humorous side of the show, as several secret agent teams, including Jack and Rowe, race to the center of some ruins to claim the prize. The various teams are an odd mix, including a drag queen with two bunny girls, two septuagenarians, and a team I can only describe as the Coy and Vance to Jack and Rowe's Bo and Luke (that's a "Dukes of Hazard reference, for the uncool).

A novel feature in this show was the background music. Rather than synthesizer or orchestral pieces, there's full vocal songs, in English (Engrish, if you like) no less. The songs are pretty much always allowed to play regardless of the action on the screen, which lends a nice music-video feel to it all. The only other anime show I remember doing this was FLCL (Fooly Cooly), which I also happened to enjoy.

Video:
The video aspect ratio is 1.33:1 (full-screen on 4:3 monitors). A recent release, this show doesn't suffer from any encoding errors. However, I was a little disappointed by the colors. The color palette is pretty sparse, even on characters' faces, which has the effect of making a lot of what you see appear to be two dimensional. Perhaps this was an area more money could have been spent on.

Audio:
You can watch the show in either Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo Japanese or DD 2.0 stereo English. There is an option for English subtitles. I watched it in Japanese with English subtitles. I didn't hear any problems with the audio. The voice acting is pretty good, too, as far as I know.

Extras:
Despite being a new title, there are few extras. In fact, all there is are the opening and closing credits, once with the Japanese credits, and once without any credits at all. There are also some previews. As much as I'm always annoyed by companies calling their advertisements "extras", essentially saying that a commercial you paid for is added value, they're kind of a guilty pleasure of mine. I'm one of those people who just can't miss the previews before the movie, so it's not like I'm not going to watch them. I just want them to be put somewhere other than the Extras section.

--Miscellaneous--
The DVD comes with a single-page, fold out, colored insert with chapter listings on one side. On the inside is a split panel manga (Japanese comics) style drawing of Jack and Rowe up close. It's a little better than the usual chapter listing, nothing major.

Film Value:
"L/R" won't change the way your friends look at anime, nor will it provoke any late night discussions. There's no real detail to the characters, who come off as 2D as they look. Still, it's not like this show aspires to be anything more than what it is, a decent spy-action series. In broken English, the show describes itself as being a "kiss kiss, bang bang" kind of show. Thanks to the internet, I've learned that that's how the Japanese describe spy shows like a "James Bond" movie. If you've been saving your spending money for some other purchase, then pass this one up without looking back. But if a friend offers to show it to you, or you can get it on the cheep, "L/R" is good enough popcorn entertainment to make it worth your while.