OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Dog Soldier

Based on the Dog Soldier manga from 1987 by Tetsuya Saruwatari who also did the artwork for the notorious Riki-Oh manga, this single OVA was released in 1989 under the title Dog Soldier: Shadows Of The Past. The manga-ka based his series on 80's American blockbusters, even though this translates oddly to anime with all the pointless backstory of each character as it seems they all knew each other when they were younger. Central Park Media decided to pick this up for U.S. distribution with an Ocean Group dub on VHS and Laser Disc, but a blending of anime and Rambo doesn't necessarily make for a thrilling time.

John Kyosuke Hiba is a retired green beret who works with his army buddy Fudou for a construction company. They get pulled into a situation where a girl is superficially being chased by goons with guns. It turns out the girl an old friend of John's named Cathy that grew up with him in the backstreets of California and was working for a terrorist leader called Phantom who is going to offer a cure for AIDS to all the world's countries for the highest bid. The vaccine is revealed to be totally fake and was just an excuse to have John do a commando run on Phantom's secret island getaway which leads to a big knife fight out of a Schwarzenegger flick.

Dog Soldier has a lack of direction in where the intrigue is leading to, not to mention some awful dialogue in what is supposed to be a straight up homage to action movies. The OVA also suffers from a jarring habit of trying to put misplaced humor in places where it doesn't belong, like having Rob Schneider in a Stallone movie. This scenario might work for anime titles such as Lupin or City Hunter, but the military manga did not translate well as a late-80's OVA.