It makes you do the math right along with Shin Kazama: every kill is a paycheck, every paycheck is a step closer to buying out a contract he never meant to sign, and the closer he gets to going home the less of him is left to send back. This is the 2004 Group TAC take, the one that bolts CG fighters onto hand-drawn faces, and once you stop flinching at the seams the dogfights read like cold documentary footage over Asran sand. Makoto Shinjou is the audience's stand-in with a camera, and the show is smart enough to make his lens feel intrusive rather than heroic. Mickey Simon jokes because the alternative is thinking, Greg Gates does the dirty work, and none of them are pretending mercenary is a noble word. Kanzaki's betrayal is the wound, but Ryoko waiting in Japan for a man who is becoming very good at killing is the part that actually hurts. War as a payment plan, invoiced in people.

Makoto Shinjou, a Japanese photojournalist, arrives at Area 88, a remote airbase in the desert kingdom of Asran, camera in hand. He has come to document the mercenary pilots who fight the country's enemies for pay. One of them is Shin Kazama, a Japanese ace who is trapped here by betrayal. His former best friend tricked him into signing on with Asran's fighter squad, and the deception cost him his career as an airline pilot and his chance to marry his fiancée Ryoko. Now Shin faces a hard choice. He can serve out three years, scrape together 1.5 million dollars in blood money, or attempt a desertion that will almost certainly kill him.