Yugo the Negotiator Vol. #4

By Dani Moure     May 18, 2007
Release Date: April 16, 2007



What They Say
In a harsh and frozen land, the prayer of a child will guide a dying nation to rebirth.

Surviving snowstorms, betrayals and mind-numbing torture, Yugo has managed to infiltrate a FSK military base. Manipulating the organization from the inside out, he constructs a plan to negotiate with Major General Garrachova. Feared by enemies and allies alike, Garrachova would sooner see Yugo dead than meet his demands.

Subjected to an interrogation that makes the rest of his trip seem like a vacation, Yugo must unlock the mystery of the Romanovski rings o be sentenced to death. His only hope lies in the hands of Nadenka, the rightful heir to the Romanovski fortune. Russia's past, present and future collide as the age-old mystery of the rings is finally unlocked in the dramatic conclusion to Yugo The Negotiator!

The Review!
Things come to a conclusion in Russia in the final volume of Yugo the Negotiator.

Audio:
I listened to the English language dub for reviewing purposes, and enjoyed it a fair deal. The 5.1 mix comes across well, decently, and I noticed no dropouts or distortions during regular playback. The dub for this volume is a fair bit better, as although the Russian accents most often sound very put on, they don't sound quite as silly and forced as some of the accents in the first two volumes.

I also spot-checked the disc in Japanese, and again noticed no issues with the 5.1 track in general. It isn't really a great deal different to the stereo mix either.

Video:
With three episodes on this disc plus extras, you'd expect the video quality to be good, and indeed it is. Colours come across extremely well and no noticeable artifacting occurred during regular playback. The series in general looks pretty good.

Subtitles are in a nice yellow font (ADV's usual), and I didn't notice any major grammatical or spelling errors.

Packaging:
The front cover features Yugo at the bottom, with Olga, Nadenka and Lyuba in the background. The layout is the same as earlier volumes, with the logo at the bottom and volume number and title scattered neatly around. The back cover contains the usual summaries and screenshots, with ADV UK's excellent technical information boxes at the bottom. The reverse cover also has information inside, including a glossary, map and information about the rings.

Menu:
The menus are simple but functional. They take the idea of a desk in the office and run with it, with the main menu being at the desk, and one of the sub-menus is on an open dossier. The selections in the centre are thankfully comprehensive. You have the ability to select an episode, the usual languages and special features, as well as scene selection. A theme song plays over this menu. Submenus are simple and static, but all have music from the show playing over them. The menus are nice and functional with quick access times.

Extras:
The extras continue to be great for this release, with a nice featurette on the Japanese Depiction of Russia on this volume, which helps give an understanding of certain cultural aspects of the show. There are also some interesting interviews with the Director, the Character Designer and the Series Planner, that reveal more insight into the production of the show, and another music video, this time for the Russian arc. Finally there's a nifty little relationship chart describing how everyone is linked in the show, as well as the usual clean opening and ending.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The final volume of Yugo the Negotiator brings the Russian arc to a concise close, with all the main points of the story wrapped up nicely. Much like you'd expect if you've seen the three volumes before, from a character standpoint there's not really much to bring to a close, as Yugo's negotiations will continue even though the anime series has come to an end. What we do get though is plenty of the torture we've come to expect and a satisfying conclusion to pretty much everything we've been introduced to in Russia.

With the events of the last volume, Yugo manages to trap Lt Viktor and turn things round on him to get him arrested. His military superiors drag him up to investigate things, and although he tries to defend himself and says he doesn't know the secret of the rings, it only takes the overpowering Garrachova to get the most information out of him. Although he spills all he knows, she isn't convinced and in a very brutal move she has him covered in petroleum and smashes the window to let in the bitter cold and give him frostbite. In the final harsh move, she gives Viktor a lighter for when he can't stand the cold anymore (and sure enough, he uses it pretty quickly). She then turns to Olga and drives home the fact that she'll show no mercy to anyone in Russia, especially the negotiator.

This bit of torture really goes a fair ways to establish the lengths that Garrachova will go to for the information that she wants, and shows that Yugo's life is very much in danger if he doesn't give her the things she wants. And with that established, we soon get to see her work over Yugo when he is captured, injecting him over and over with truth serum. Despite his saying she'd never be able to solve the mystery of the rings, she doesn't give up and eventually he reveals that he doesn't know the solution himself because he never actually solved it himself.

A façade then begins with Olga and everyone trying to make it seem like everything is alright to get him to think about the rings and solve the mystery for them. Being as great as he is, Yugo sees right through it and quickly tries to convince Olga that he needs to see Garrachova one on one. With all the pieces in place the truth about the rings and what they could mean for Russia finally comes out, and the true faces of everyone are revealed.

The end of the story is a little sad, simply because this is the last of the animation that we'll get to see, but it all plays out logically with a few twists to the tale thrown in. Yugo manages to work his magic in his own unique way, surviving yet another brutal torture session but managing to talk some very headstrong people into doing the right thing, which only proves why he's hired so often and so good at his job! It's interesting to see how trusting Nadenka is of him, too, showing how he is seen through the eyes of a child as instantly trustable.

The support characters in this arc were, in some ways, much better fleshed out than the first. Olga comes out very well in this respect, as we see her in various roles from bad guy to good guy, but we get to see her true motivations and see how she is trying to get the right thing done behind the scenes anyway. Garrachova is also interesting as she starts out as the ultimate evil but we see that really, she (like most of the characters) is a patriot who just wants the best thing for her country, even with how ruthless she can be.

My only gripe with this show is really inherent in its set up. The arc manages to flesh the story out very well in seven episodes, and it's tightly plotted and well told, but at the end of the day it does feel a little light. Even with the supporting cast getting a bit more characterisation, Yugo still suffers somewhat and it's slightly disappointing that he's not really changed within the series at all. Having said that, Yugo is definitely a show that could probably do well as a longer, continuing show made up of smaller arcs; in theory then it could go on forever.

In Summary:
Yugo is a very different show to the norm, more skewed towards an adult audience with a slower, more methodical approach to the well-crafted story-telling. While I wasn't as blown away by it as I thought I might be, it's nonetheless a very good show with a story that is gripping from start to finish. It's the sort of show that makes me wish there were more like it, because it's a breath of fresh-air from all the high-school, teenage dramas we normally get. I'll be sorry to see it go, and recommend it to anyone looking for a show that's a bit different.

Features
Japanese Language (2.0),English Language (5.1),English Subtitle,Character Relationship Chart,Video Interviews with Japanese Staff and Cast,Japanese Depiction of Russia,Russia Music Video,Clean Opening and Closing

Review Equipment
Philips 28" Pure Flat Widescreen TV, Pioneer DV-464 code free DVD player, JVC gold-plated RGB SCART cable, standard stereo sound.