| Title: | Golgo 13 (TV) |
| Episode: | 03: Masterpiece Assault Rifle |
| Synopsis | |
| Professor Kaizer is monitoring a brutally realistic trial of his revolutionary computerized gunsight in the hands of the Savine brothers, two feared and respected French mercenaries. Assault rifles fitted with such sights might radically increase the range at which ordinary infantrymen can engage targets, but there are still many skeptics. Duke is hired to perform some non-lethal sniping in the desert; what he's not told is that the actual intention is to pit him against the Savine brothers and the Professor's new sights. After all, what better way to demonstrate the deadly efficiency of the sight than to defeat the ultimate long range marksman? Duke is not completely clueless, however, and has made a few improvements to his own trademark M-16... | |
| Comments | |
| This was a neat episode, to be sure, but I felt the climactic shootout was kind of confused and could have been better. It didn't even begin until after the station break and at one point I was wondering if this might be a two-parter. Right from the start of the episode the premise had me excited and intrigued. The makers had done a good deal of homework about the history of assault rifles, which was cool. Though I have my doubts about the technical plausibility of the super sight (or rather how much extra performance can be squeezed out of an assault rifle), it sounded like it could work, and thus I could suspend disbelief and enjoy the show. This was sort of a man against machine contest, with Duke having to employ his wits and skill to overcome the brother's technical advantage. His own trademark M-16 (wiki) has been improved by the gunsmith (I don't know if he has a name), but it was made clear that the finest adjustments could only be made by an expert, not a machine tool. When Duke removed the rifle from it's case and assembled it, I could only grin and think "those brothers are so dead"! The only question was exactly how Duke would pull it off. Again, I wish a better explanation had been offered as to how each trick Duke employed had worked; at the end the opponents were at virtually pointblank range, and the fancy gunsights shouldn't have made much difference. This would have been a lot more fun if it had been more clear what was going on. I would say this episode was of about the same quality as number one. P.S: I think the brothers had French Foreign Legion (wiki) paratrooper badges on their berets. P.P.S: I've read that this episode is based on a manga story published way back in 1971! http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=63245&page=7 | |
