Been watching: Highander-The search for vengeance

 Some centuries into the future and civilisation has collapsed. What's left of humanity are clustered in  city states ruled by the sort of people who wear stylish leathers and have their own personal gladiator's arena. Outside, meanwhile, is a howling wilderness infested with mutants.
 The story opens with moody drifter Colin Mcleod doing a spot of headhunting in mutant country. As it turns out, some of those remaining are very special indeed. Immortals who can only be killed by decapitation and who's death unleashes the sort of light show Pink Floyd would kill for.
 In case you hadn't worked it out already, Colin is an Immortal. He doesn't seem to be enjoying it much.
 But when he goes to collect his bounty things really start to get interesting. It seems a local badass has himself up as God-King of Manhattan and is systematically crushing any opposition. Initially Colin remains uninterested. Right up until he finds out who the Big Bad actually is.

 In all fairness this anime maybe owes as much to Fist Of The North Star as it does to Highlander. Thinking about it, the post-apocalypse setting, urbane, chatty but still lethal bad guy and the underdressed women are the sort of thing Manga video made it's name with in mid-90s.
   Some elements do get ported over from the original: There are quite a few flashbacks from Colin's earlier life and naturally "There can be only one" crops up at key points.
 The end result is quite possibly more interesting and better presented than most of the stuff that came out under the Highlander name. The animation is of the usual Madhouse quality with the fight scenes being elegant in execution. Bad guy Marcus is one of the more well-rounded villains I've seen lately, having simple - if brutal - reasoning behind his actions and a definite air of amusement at Colin's repeated attempts to kill him. At times he comes across as a lot more reasonable than McLeod, who has spent  a couple of thousand years looking for revenge to the exclusion of everything else and is a bit of a moody twat, truth be told.
 Surly hero and some oddly longfaced character designs aside, this particular DVD was £3 and 82 minutes well spent and I'd like to see more of this sort of thing. An anime version of Red Sonja maybe?