Osamu Dezaki is one of my absolute favourite directos. Responsible for the adaptations of Riyoko Ikeda manga Rose of Versaille and Oniisama e, as well as Aim for the Ace, which heavily influenced Hideaki Anno. And of course, Dezaki directed the adaptation of Ashita no Joe. Oniisama e, Rose of Versaille, and Joe, are all in my top 10, so basically, he's a big fuckin' deal, and I'm a huge fan. He started by working as an animator on the first Astro Boy TV show, and died in 2011. One of the last series he directed was Ultraviolet: Code 044 (2008), a 12 episode TVanime based upon the American science-fiction film Ultraviolet (2006). There is a lot of discourse regarding movie adaptations of anime, but here we have an example of the reverse happening: an american movie being adaptapted into a TV anime.

The show itself is action packed, although, sadly, it does pale in comparison to all of Dezaki's other work in terms of not only the action, but most notably in overall quality. It feels like a sci-fi action show, and not that much more. The weapons are fairly cool, I suppose, but I would be hard pressed to outright reccomend this show to anyone who isn't already completely head over heels for everything as Dezaki (a category of people I happen to be included in). Shoehorned in are also a fair amount of mildly interesting sci-fi concepts, and, what I will admit, are some fairly nice looking character designs. I did find the plot difficult to engage with too, I never really felt that it grabbed me in any sort of way. But what I was able to appreciate were the action scenes. Dezaki is known to not use a lot of fast or flashy animation, instead relying on techinques such as split screen and the triple take in order to sell the impact of a hit. He did it wonderfully in Joe, and while Ultraviolet doesn't have anywhere near the same amount of stellar character writing to back it up as Joe did, it does still have the action on point.

All in all, I must say that I felt a little dissapointed. As previously mentioned, I love Dezaki's body of work, but not every shot fired can be a hit, there are bound to be misses, and this just happened to be one of them. Instead of watching this as your entry point for one of anime's alltime greatest directors, watch literally anything else he's worked on. Ashita no Joe, Aim for the Ace, Rose of Versaille, Oniisama e, Space Cobra, Genji Monogatari Sennenki, point is, the guy has a made a ton of wonderful series: this just happens to not be one of them.