AD Police Files

(This is the prequel to the anime Bubblegum Crisis which I am not familiar with so I can't compare the shows, but simply review it as a stand alone product.) Set in MegaTokyo in the year 2046, the police force has been broken into two groups, Normal police (who deal with your everyday crimes), and AD Police (who deal with the Boomers.) Boomers are robots or people who have cybernetically enhanced their bodies by 70% and are committing criminal acts.

The extremely short series (only three episodes) deals with Normal Police officer Leon becoming an AD Police officer and what it is like to be a member of AD police.

AD Police is a very dark and grim look into the future. A feel of Blade Runner meets Robocop runs through this story, but with such a dark feeling that I couldn't really enjoy it. Plenty of blood and guts and creepy imagery to really visually impress, but just a little too nasty for my tastes.

** Out of ****

AD Police Files is a standard issue grim cyberpunk vision that spends much of its time ripping off earlier, better works such as Blade Runner and Robocop. Long story short, it focuses on a elite police squad dedicated to hunting down rogue androids or "skin jobs,"-I, err, mean "boomers." All of this is set in the future that looks like 1989, only with robots and cyborgs.

In only three episodes, it manages to rip off every major science fiction movie of the eighties. The first two episodes are effectively pervy versions of Blade Runner, while the third episode is essentially a plagiarism of the first two Robocop movies.

To make things worst, the animation is abysmal. Never mind Akira or Studio Ghibli, this won't even make you forget a typical episode of Pokemon! As with most early 90s anime, the subtitles are laugh-inducing, with hyper-melodramatic dialogue.

Just to top it all off, the first two episodes have a definite misogynistic feel to them. In the view of the series's writers, the essence of being a woman is apparently to die from multiple rapes. This is literally stated in the dialogue.

Rent it if you're in the mood for something comical or lurid; otherwise, don't waste your time.

A.D. POLICE FILES (1990) is a three-part Japanese OAV (Original Animation Video) prequel to BUBBLEGUM CRISIS (1987), an eight-part series set in Mega-Tokyo of 2032 about battles waged with "Boomers," androids run amok, by police and the costumed crime-fighters, the Knight Sabers. A.D. POLICE is set a few years earlier and focuses on members of the title unit whose job is to combat Boomer crimes at a time when humans and Boomers have become mutually interdependent. Unlike the earlier series, this one spotlights the issue of humans trading organs for cybernetic parts, a theme more fully explored in the later anime classic, GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995).

This series is much harder-edged than BUBBLEGUM CRISIS, with far greater amounts of bloodshed, dismemberment, and violent death. It's also more sexually fetishistic, with ample shots of beautiful, lingerie-clad women (always with garters), both human and Boomer, stalking the streets of Mega-Tokyo. In one jaw-dropping scene, a woman scientist strips down and straddles a hulking cyborg. Unfortunately, the beautiful women invariably suffer violent, bloody deaths. On the other hand, the main police protagonists in each episode are women. Gina Marceau, as tough and hard-as-nails a lady cop as you're likely to see in anime, is the lead officer in the first and third episodes, while the young and naïve Iris Cara, a member of the regular police, is the lead investigator in the second. (Interestingly, Gina's partner is rookie cop Leon Nichols, who figures prominently in CRISIS and its sequel, BUBBLEGUM CRASH.)

The first episode, "The Phantom Woman," is pretty complicated and has Gina investigating the illegal recycling of Boomer parts while partner Leon is stalked by a beautiful female Boomer who retains the memory of another female Boomer who'd once gone berserk and been shot by Leon. The second episode, "The Ripper," finds Iris investigating a series of Jack-the-Ripper-style murders of women, a case which takes her to the abandoned no-man's-land subway station where junkies, hookers and human dregs congregate. This episode has a quasi-feminist twist in its focus on a female chief executive who'd found biology getting in the way of her career so had cybernetic surgery to enable her to compete more effectively with male rivals, to disastrous results. The third episode, "The Man Who Bites His Tongue," focuses on Captain Billy, a member of the A.D. Police who is all cybernetic but for his tongue. When he becomes addicted to drugs and comes under the sway of a female scientist with surprising appetites, he starts to become unhinged and arouses the concern of Gina and the other members of her squad. Both "The Phantom Woman" and "The Ripper" were written by celebrated anime screenwriter Noboru Aikawa (PEACOCK KING, VAMPIRE PRINCESS MIYU, THE HAKKENDEN).

The animation style of these episodes is a far cry from the simpler, less detailed, and bolder graphics of the 1980s-style BUBBLEGUM CRISIS. There's far greater attention to detail, not only in the settings and cityscapes, but in the character design and animation. There's also more experimentation with style, from the use of single color schemes for some shots to the use of montage and the reliance on pen-and-ink illustrations in the place of flashbacks in one episode. While the action is expertly animated, there are far fewer of the intricate mecha battles that distinguished BUBBLEGUM CRISIS and more of the direct, one-on-one confrontations that mark a good police thriller. Even though the setting is the same as BGC, the whole style and overall tone are different, closer to the sci-fi noir of Yoshiaki Kawajiri (WICKED CITY, MIDNIGHT EYE GOKU, CYBER CITY OEDO 808) and looking forward to such similarly themed works as ARMITAGE III and GHOST IN THE SHELL.

AD Police Files 1-3 (1990): 8/10: Despite a third episode that is almost a scene for scene remake of Robocop this is one of the sharpest Anime's around.

Sexist and racist in that unconscious Japanese way with over the top violence and just a dash of nudity AD Police doesn't fail to entertain. The first two tales are gripping and inventive if a little hard to follow (Character development is minimalist at best) with great moral arks about the downfall of artificial parts and artificial people.

The third episode is a letdown and quite skippable. Tons of action keeps AD Police moving even when the story seems to stall. The plots of the first two episodes are also filled with surprise and that delightful "I always wished someone would do that" feeling.

The animation is very well done with different styles mixing it up to great effect. At only 3 episodes however it left me wanting more. That's usually a good sign.

The first of a more "serious" set of stories set in the Bubblegum Crash/Crisis universe

Good animation and art overall, I was disappointed in the formulistic plotline. It felt like a rehash of a hollywood stalker flick, done as scifi.