This review of Mezzo Forte is for the unedited “director’s cut” with all the sex scenes kept in the OVA. Sorry female anime fans, you probably won’t like MF since it’s geared solely for male audiences (particularly this version).

Last August, I saw Kite (uncut since I always want uncut versions of everything) and liked its gritty atmosphere along with its grim story and effective use of violence and sex. Since Mezzo Forte was made by Kite creator Yasuomi Umetsu and has a lot in common with Kite, I had to at least check it out. I just watched it today and am really pleased with MF.

PLOT

The plot of Mezzo Forte is that there’s the Danger Service Agency (DSA), who specialize in dangerous missions for pay. Mikura Suzuki is a trigger-happy markswoman for the DSA and killing people is as easy for her as cutting soft butter with a table knife. She’s assisted by tech-freak Tomohisa Harada and both take command from their boss and ex-cop Kenichi Kurokawa. A mysterious old man gives the DSA a mission to kidnap baseball team manager Momokichi Momoi. The kidnapping job goes awry, and because of this, Mikura and her partners have to deal with Momikichi’s extremely dangerous and bratty daughter, Momomi.

ACTION

This is Mezzo Forte’s selling point, and Umetsu did a great job in this area. The action in this is really, really violent. There’s plenty of scenes where Mikura will punch and kick her way through several hefty body guards and even though she’s pretty small compared to them, she can make them bleed really hard. There’s plenty of gun battles as well and are well orchestrated (like said martial arts scenes). There’s also things in there that you don’t see everyday like exploding bowling balls and exploding cyborgs (mostly sex bots), adding more fun to the already abundant amount of fun found in Mezzo Forte.

CHARACTERS

Honestly, the characters aren’t really well developed since we don’t really get to sit down and know them. However, they’re pretty well characterized. For one, Mikura is actually given a memorable personality as a proficient killer yet she has a spunky “human” side to her that makes her very likeable. The best characterization has to be for the villains, Momokichi and Momomi Momoi (what a tonguetwister that was). You see Momokichi beat one of his failing baseball players to death with a baseball bat (looks like Umetsu was watching too much Casino) in one scene and Momomi will happily kill people that inconvenience her, such as her body guards that failed to keep her dad safe in the bowling alley. Those to are also well characterized in the sense that they commit really heinous acts to the point where you flat out hate them instead of to the point where you “love to hate” them, which is a trap for several anime titles.

MATURE CONTENT

Mezzo Forte is rampant with extreme violence and sexual content that rivals some of the content found in some operations in the Cool Devices series (which doesn’t surprise me that much since Umetsu made “Yellow Star” for CD before making Kite and Mezzo Forte). There’s two sex scenes where Kurokawa and Harada “express their love” to Mikura in bed in a particular fashion, if you can catch my drift. There’s even a scene where Mikura is held captive by Momomi and two thugs that don’t particularly like Mikura are invited into the chamber to “have relations” with Mikura in a really non-consentual, degrading way. The violence is equally visceral since bloodshed is rampant and the acts are pretty brutal. Aside from said scene with Momokichi beating someone with a bat, there’s a scene where one of his henchmen pin down Kurokawa and actually pry off one of his fingernails with a screwdriver, which honestly made me cringe.

PLOT PACING

As stated before, Mezzo Forte isn’t a particularly deep anime, but there’s plenty of plot twists and surprises throughout. I won’t tell you what they are because I don’t want to spoil any surprises for you since they’re pretty unique.

APPEARANCE

The animation and artwork for a lower budget anime like this is outstanding. Characters are very well drawn and the female ones are some of the finest eye-candy anime has to offer. The animation runs very smoothly and the background art is very detailed. The use of colors is very pleasing to the eyes as well.

FINAL WORD

At the end of the day, Mezzo Forte can be seen as Kite’s more upbeat sister. If you want an action anime with brutal violence and over-the-top sex, Mezzo Forte will be your cup of tea.

It wants to be Kite, but is below that. But still a good adventure.