Crying Freeman 3: Abduction In Chinatown follows the continuing exploits of a gang, the 108 Dragons, and it's boss, Yo Hinomura, as they fight to maintain their status as a leading Japanese gang. In the first episode, Abduction In Chinatown, a group of mercenaries have formed a nation state of sorts-much like in the classic martial arts movie, Enter The Dragon. Yo is kidnapped and forced to fight in an arena against various killers in hopes of getting him to come over to their side. Needless to say, his captors find out that Yo's pre-programmed brain, already brainwashed by the best in the business, is not going to be altered by him doing what he does best (ie: kill people). In the second episode, The Russian Connection, Yo and company must combat internal threats from rival gangs as well as outsiders from Russia who want a bigger piece of the action at the expense of all concerned. The biggest factor here is one of the lead assassins hired to kill Yo is nearly as good, and has an edge in the fight. Yo shows his ambivalence to this moral coil and how he'd prefer to end his own suffering. What a way to end a series.

Okay, my complaints for the series remain. The anime style is fairly limited and for all the nudity and violence, it's typically done for an excessive effect more than as part of the story. This limits the appeal of the show to that of a roller coaster ride-fun to check out once but ultimately unsatisfying. The voice acting in English had a lot of moments where I thought they were cold reading the material and the Japanese cast wasn't that much better. The subtitles were not the same as the English dub and that left me wondering, at times, if major differences were glossed over for some unstated reason.

The aspects I liked about this standalone volume were the fact that you don't really need to have watched the earlier volumes, the fact that adult issues and actions weren't shied away from, and the fact that ADV provided 2 full episodes on the discs rather than release them individually (although three per disc would've been better considering the age of the material). While it may appeal mainly to young teenagers, it still only rates a as released. Fans of the Japanese Manga comics will, of course, want to own it as it is supposed to be faithful to the series.

Picture: The picture was presented in full frame 1.33:1 ratio. Yes, the age of the source material shows but most fans won't care. The dvd transfer was pretty good but there seemed to be only so much that could be done with it and a couple of artifacts popped up once in awhile.

Sound: The standard choices of 5.1 English, English with song subtitles, or Japanese with English subtitles was present with 2.0 stereo. The subtitles did not contain the same story (at least verbatim) as the English language track-sometimes in a confusing fashion. Otherwise, it was pretty well done.

Extras: A few trailers and a paper insert with a chapter breakdown.

Final Thoughts: The series is very dated in many ways and as such, may be past its prime. I've seen worse and this was worth a rental but the story about an assassin who cries at the death of his enemies is not really as interesting in anime as it probably was for the manga release. This entire series might make a good boxed set, if properly priced, but its lack of extras didn't help it as a collectible either.