Angel Cop

The golden era of the 'Original Video Animation' or 'Original Animated Video' is a time which is remembered fondly by many anime fans. Beginning in the early to mid nineteen eighties, the age of the OVA continued right until the end of the millennium, and throughout the years produced some of the finest animation to ever come out of Japan; from its earliest classics like 'Top wo Nerae!' to works like 'Rurouni Kenshin: Tsuiokuhen' and 'FLCL' in its twilight years. The format can even boast 'Legend of the Galactic Heroes' among its ranks, an anime that is often touted as the greatest ever made. But noneof that matters, because we don't remember OVA format for the less-commercialised or more creative and experimental nature it tended to produce. No, we remember the OVA for the veritable smorgasbord of ridiculous trash it spawned in the late eighties and early nineties, and then charitably brought to Western shores by companies like Manga Entertainment and Central Park Media and now providing entertainment for drunken anime fans the world over. Today we will be taking a closer look at one of the less terrible examples of this bygone era; the delightfully offensive (or just offensive) five episode spectacular that is 'Angel Cop'. Angel Cop is the story of a special branch of Japanese police officers, known as 'Special Security Agents', remarkable because it is neither a contrived acronym nor a portmanteau. The role of the 'Special Security Agents' is somewhere between a police force, a counter-terrorism unit and a band of superheroes. They operate within the context of the Japanese police force, but without unnecessary burdens like the judicial system or human rights laws to weigh them down. Naturally, all their members have almost superhuman abilities. This is in contrast to some of the other characters, which I will discuss later. Throughout the OVA, the Special Security Agents are involved battling against a conspiracy; the nature of which depends on the version you watch. If you choose to watch the dubbed version (which you would, since that is the whole point of watching bad 80s OVAs) then they are battling against the Red May, a communist terror organisation which is actually a front for a greedy capitalist government... as you can imagine, it makes absolutely no sense at all and clearly wasn't intended to be a work of political intrigue. But not making any sense at all is hardly a surprise when you take a complete production and introduce radical changes to the storyline, just because you are worried that some people might be offended about a couple of offhand remarks that some could choose to interpret as 'anti-Semitic'. If you choose to watch the fan subbed version of the original Japanese version, you'll find that the story of a communist terror organisation that is a front for a corrupt government is itself a front for a story about a Jewish Zionist domination conspiracy... This also goes some way to explaining the use of so many Judeo-Christian references and imagery in an anime without any clear connexion to religion whatsoever. Naturally when the show was brought to the West, the licensing company decided that racist conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic tones would not go over well with audiences. Not wanting to waste this otherwise wholesome story filled with violence, gore and sexual imagery they decided to change the story completely for the dubbed version, and then, for good measure, inserted random swear words into every second line. The result is, to put it simply, so fucking stupid that I don't understand how the piss they come up with this fucking shit. The title refers to the main character; a woman named 'Angel' but described as a 'total bitch' in her own terms. Naturally this aspect of her character changes over the course of the show and by the end her character has made the transition from cyberpunk feminist icon to bawling blob of moe; by which I mean she actually hesitates before blowing her own partner's brains out in order to kill a genetically enhanced psychic military experiment. Yes, you read that right. Analysing most of the cast in any real depth would be a waste of time. With only a few exceptions, all of them are entirely one dimensional and completely uninspired. Furthermore, describing their qualities would involve investing more time into the characters than the time the creators invested in their screen time. Developing them is unnecessary because we've seen them all so many times before, and since they're not gonna last why even bother trying to give them any depth? At the end of the day, Angel Cop is all about the action; and that's okay, because that is all we really wanted in the first place. It comes thick and fast, it comes in a variety of forms and it's never too repetitive or sporadic for us to ever really notice the ludicrousness of the actual story. It manages to delve between the reality of the relatively near future and the realms of science fiction and fantasy without seeming discontinuous or out of place. The animation, while not "good" by any means, is functional and only in the last episode does the shoddy workmanship start to become obtrusive. The same cannot be said for the soundtrack, which is often so inappropriate it is a curiosity. The defining moment of this is the very first time the ending theme plays, which is so inappropriate that one cannot help but laugh. Additionally, on several occasions the action scenes -which are quite violent and bloody- will be supplemented with light hearted, optimistic music. The purpose of background music is to complement the image on screen without becoming a distraction, but in Angel Cop the contrast between the two can become so stark that it actually leaves you feeling puzzled. However to be fair to Angel Cop this is not always the case; nor is the music exceptionally bad. It mainly uses a combination of harder sounding electronic music for action scenes, with more surreal sounding music to enhance the more paranormal or mysterious aspects of the show. The backing music for the action is fit for purpose but unremarkable, while the paranormal music is repetitive, clichéd and quickly becomes irritating. On all accounts, the soundtrack is the worst thing about Angel Cop, with the exception of the highly offensive original storyline. Having explored every aspect of Angel Cop, we can conclude that it is not exactly a work of quality. The story is riddled with clichés, and the plot is a total mess. The cast consists entirely of hackneyed stereotypes. The animation is unexceptional, if not outright bad, and the soundtrack is so unsuitable for the task at hand that it's actually humorous. As a production, Angel Cop is completely uninspired and poorly made. But to see it for what it really is, would be to miss the point entirely. You are not watching Angel Cop because you expect it to be good, but because you expect it to be bad. A very special kind of bad, to the point where it is almost self-conscious, where there is no other objective than producing trash lower than the level of the lowest common denominator, and doing it unreservedly and unashamedly. And from there, it is simply a matter of providing creative licence to the art of translation and making the cheapest voiceover possible, before you've transcended both bad and good; to produce something that is so bad... it is good.

This is my 10th year anniversary re-review! Back in 2014, I joined MAL to communicate with other anime fans and to write short, comedic reviews as a means to vent stress. I was attending medical school at the time and during practical exams you must think fast and write fast, so writing 30-minute blitz reviews was good writing practice for me. One of the first anime that I ever reviewed for this site was Angel Cop. Since the 1990s, Angel Cop has had an infamous reputation among older anime fans. This is due to its astoundingly awful dub and for embodying the spirit of ultra-violent,schlock OVAs from the height of the video rental boom in Japan. Flash forward 10 years and I’ve ended up on a completely different career path. Fortunately, I found something that I really love doing and it just so happens that I have a job where I can typically relax on the weekends. This means that I now have more than 30 minutes when I want to write a new review. It’s definitely going to take a wee bit longer than that to adequately summarize my feelings towards this anime and provide background information explaining it. Angel Cop is very much a product of its time and it’s important to understand the context in which it was made to fully appreciate this lump of insanity. Strap yourselves in folks, if you’ve not heard of this anime then you’re in for a ride! I’m not even sure where to begin with this series. I’m someone who passionately loves terrible anime, so Angel Cop is special to me. I own it on Bluray and I’ve seen it 6 times now. I’ve watched it 3 times dubbed, twice with the original uncensored subs, and once with both the dub and subs at the same time so I could directly compare the two. There are plenty of anime where I initially disliked it either because I was in a foul mood, or I didn’t really appreciate what it was trying to do. Then I watch it again a few years later and it’s amazing. This list includes shows like Kuchuu Buranko, Samurai Champloo, Gurren Lagann, Princess Tutu, Kaiji, Evangelion, and Lain. Angel Cop is not on this list. This anime is still terrible no matter how many times I rewatch it. However, it is compellingly terrible in a way that I feel I must share with others. They certainly don’t make them like this anymore! Angel Cop was not based on a manga, novel or anything else. It was a completely original IP created by legendary animator Ichiro Itano, who you may remember for creating the “Itano Missile Circus”. That thing in every mecha anime where a thousand missiles are fired at once and spiral all over the place. Trust me, you’ve seen it before. Angel Cop had a very troubled production history. It began in 1989 and didn’t finish until 1994 despite only being 6 episodes long. The manga that was supposed to accompany the OVA got canned after a single volume in 1989. Veteran script writer Sho Aikawa was originally attached to the project but left after the first couple episodes. Yasuomi Umetsu, who would go on to found Studio Arms, was the key animator on episode 1 but also bailed. The last 3 episodes were written, directed, and mostly animated entirely by Itano with everyone else of note having abandoned the project. Angel Cop began its life as a Judge Dredd inspired gorefest that’s violent, gritty, and consistently mean-spirited and nasty. Sort of a love letter to the schlockiest of bad 80s action movies. Bakemonogatari gets endlessly praised online for lifting shots directly from French New Wave films like “Breathless” and Cleo from 5 to 7”. Angel Cop directly lifts a scene from "Invasion USA" by Cannon Films. It’s the shot where Angel casually looks over her shoulder while firing a missile from the back of her motorcycle. It’s kind of ironic as you’ll later realize that Angel Cop would shamelessly rip-off an Israeli action film, but Itano did it for whatever reason. Everything changed for Angel Cop from its writing to its production cycle with the Japanese economic crash that started in late 1990 and continued throughout the 90s decade. A lot of people lost a lot of money, including Mr. Itano himself. Whenever unforeseen disaster strikes, everyone looks to place the blame on someone. In reality, it was a complex issue caused by decades of monetary easing by the Japanese government and reckless speculation by Japanese banks and credit companies who thought the good times would never end. However, conspiracy authors were quick to blame the United States for sabotaging the Japanese economy in order to prevent Japan from overtaking America. Anti-Semitic conspiracy novels including the 9001st reprinting of Protocols of the Elders of Zion quickly reached the top of the Japanese bestseller list. So, if you’re wondering why the animation quality nosedives in the 2nd half and the plot goes completely off the rails to instead focus on delivering a 7-minute racist diatribe…that’s why. Itano was not exactly in a healthy mental space during the last half of this OVA. Dude was hauled up in an animation studio with empty bottles of whiskey, piss jars, and Protocols finishing this piece of shit mostly out of pure spite. You have to love the crazy old bastard. Against all the odds, he somehow got this shit made. Angel Cop was not a successful OVA in Japan by any means. So how did it even reach the West? Why isn’t it stuck on Japanese VHS and doomed to utmost obscurity? The answer to those questions is a little company called Manga UK. During the 1990s, the British saw an opportunity to market anime as violent, sexy cartoons for adults. They would license the cheapest, shittiest OVAs that no Japanese companies wanted and sell them to British audiences with highly “spiced up” scripts that feature swear words in virtually every sentence. Enter John Wolskel, who is secretly the hero of this whole story. As a young college graduate, Wolskel was trying to break into television and film writing. Some of his first projects were for Manga UK. After the disastrous failures of “The Dark Myth” and “Sword for Truth”, his boss threatened to fire him if the next anime he was assigned to didn’t fly off the shelves. Wolskel stopped even remotely trying to follow the Japanese scripts and completely threw caution to the wind. This led to such AMAZING dubs as Mad Bull 34, Devil Man, Cyber City Oedo, and of course Angel Cop. Wolskel’s script manages to transform Angel Cop into a profanity laden dark comedy in which an elite team of utterly unlikeable asshole cops must crush a plot by American communists. Oddly enough, the joke dub even manages to fix some plot holes from the original, such as the Japanese government allowing Jews to somehow buy the entire island of Hokkaido and turn it into the world’s nuclear waste dump to sterilize the entire Japanese population. The dub explains that they don’t intend to keep this a secret for long, but the sterilization will happen quickly and by the time the rest of Japan finds out, they’ll all be on a beach overseas using new identities. The original script literally never explains what the motives of the Japanese government are to go along with this plan or how they intend to keep it hidden. They just say that if they don’t do it, the Jews will force Japan to become the 51st state, which is a fate somehow worse than sterilizing the entire population. Then it goes on a tangent about how America lost over 500,000 soldiers in the Vietnam War which was entirely orchestrated by American Jews in order to test out chemical weapons on Vietnamese civilians. Yeah…even the most unhinged of terminally online /pol/ lurkers look at the Angel Cop script and think…what?!! Anyways, back to my man John. The dude made a heroic effort to salvage this project and is the only reason that anyone outside of Japan knows about this anime. Angel Cop’s reputation in the 90s made it out to be one of the single worst anime of all time, but is it really that bad? The answer to this is…not really. Of the scant selection of anime that Americans could purchase dubbed in 1995, it was definitely among the worst. However, America wasn’t getting the type of shit that people like Kenny Lauderdale cover. We weren’t getting Chargeman Ken, Twinkle Nora Rock Me, Kentoushi, Kennel Tokorozawa, and shit like that. I can personally list over 100 anime that are worse than Angel Cop. Ichiro Itano may not be the greatest script writer, but he’s an animation genius. Even flying solo while drunk off his ass, Itano insured that Angel Cop has a few scenes that look good even in the last couple episodes. Angel’s brutal execution of a communist terrorist in the first episode looks spectacular and is possibly the best-looking gore that Umetsu has ever done. What I can’t say anything nice about is the OST. Angel Cop’s soundtrack has never been released even in Japan and there is a good reason for this. It was composed entirely using a Casio synthesizer and just sounds like garbage. Combined with one of the worst ending themes in the history of anime, Angel Cop’s soundtrack is just the drizzling shits. So, if I love this anime and keep making my friends and family watch it, then why am I only giving it a 2? While the dub does its absolute best, Angel Cop doesn’t work as a “so bad it’s hilarious” comedy in the way that something like Mad Bull 34 does. Angel Cop probably has around 6-7 minutes of gut busting comedy spread over a 3-hour run time. Even if you’re an edgelord and are looking for the anti-PC shock value, it doesn’t really do that consistently either. That’s pretty much all in the last 2 episodes. If you're a gorehound, you'll also be disappointed. The majority of Angel Cop’s run time is actually just boring as FUCK. My girlfriend almost fell asleep watching this. There are long gaps of utterly unenjoyable downtime between the peaks of gleeful ultra violence, hilarious dub lines, and deranged conspiracy theories. Instead of being “so bad it’s good”, Angel Cop at the end of the day is just…bad. Really fucking bad. However, it’s such a time capsule of OVA insanity that I find it endlessly fascinating. Despite my morbid fascination though, I can’t earnestly give this a higher rating.

“Angel Cop” is a six-episode sci-fi action thriller OVA from the late ‘80s-early ‘90s. Its story has a strong anti-American and anti-Semitic slant, and the way in which it progresses is dull and confusing. Even the Japanese version is filled with redundant, cheesy dialogue, and while some of the characters stand out, it’s basically due to how they look and they are mostly one-dimensional personality-wise. This series is touted as having a lot of graphic violence, but I found that the violence pales in comparison to that of similar “ultra-violent” OVAs both in amount and quality. The story is riddled with exposition dumps that consistof racist and xenophobic conspiracy-laden diatribes. There are also some inconsistencies in the writing, making it difficult to follow. Two of the characters have similar names (Ichihara and Tachihara), so I had trouble distinguishing which was which sometimes. Although this OVA is supposed to be full of action and violence, it plodded along at a snail’s pace in the earlier episodes, and it was kind of difficult to watch. The violence itself is not as graphic as I thought it was going to be. There are maybe three or four truly graphic scenes, but the rest of it is mostly just characters getting shot, exploding, or getting their heads crushed in a split second. The most excruciating scenes are where people have been given truth serum and are being interrogated, with lots of torture to get them to talk (why do they need to be tortured if they’ve been given truth serum in the first place??). The dialogue is supposed to be infamously bad in the dub, but the sub, which I watched, also has redundant and corny lines. One of the characters often says stuff like “what” and “don’t touch me!” in English, for instance. There’s also a scene where a Japanese cop asks a French cop if he speaks Japanese, and he just responds, “Oui.” There are a few silly exchanges like that throughout the OVA. Also, the long diatribes are exhausting to digest and sit through. There is an attempt at character development for the main character, Angel, but it comes off feeling unnatural and forced. The rest of the characters don’t receive any development, unless you count the two “reformed” psychics, whose decision to help the protagonists all of a sudden doesn’t feel natural, either. Regarding technical aspects, the animation is okay, but it declines in quality in the later episodes. There are frequent flashing lights. The character designs, while unusual, are decent and largely memorable. The voice acting is average. The background music consists mostly synthesized organ-type music, but it tends to fit the scenes that it’s in. The sound effects are okay, but I’ve definitely heard the same exact effects in other anime, so they’re not unique to this series. A good word to describe the ending theme is “discordant.” It caught me off guard, and it’s certainly unique, but I didn’t like it. As for potentially objectionable content, the aforementioned racist and xenophobic streak in the plot will probably offend some viewers, as will of course the violence. There is some nudity and some revealing clothing as well, particularly towards the end. Overall, while the plot does progress somewhat logically and gets from point A to point B, it doesn’t do a satisfactory job of it. All of the elements highlighted in this series — the violence, the cyberpunk aesthetics, the geopolitical conspiracies with corrupt politicians — are better handled in other anime. Not recommended.

"Unless you want a .45 caliber lobotomy real fucking back, you better tell your friend over there to put the fucking knife down." - Angel I have returned once again, from the gratuitously ultraviolent era of anime past... the 80s OVAs! For those who aren't yet in the know- the 80s are now famous for having produced some of the most outrageous, over the top bloody, gory, and violent anime ever. Back when you had to get anime on sketchy bootleg VHS tapes that cost $40 a pop just to see an animated titty. Back when blowing heads off and turning characters into meat fountains waschic. This turned a series of widely varying in quality and appeal anime into cult classics. Titles like Violence Jack, Genocyber, Mad Bull 34, Wicked City, and our very own Angel Cop will forever be remembered for their contribution of an obscenely ridiculous plot with dubs to match. This is not to say that Angel Cop is by any means a good anime, no matter what the underground following says. Sound and Voice Acting: 6 The dub is not as hilariously bad as it was described to me, but decidedly hilariously average, and probably even a good quality production for the time. Sure, there's a few memorable one liners that sound like something someone from another planet who'd studied only extremely dated euphemisms and idioms from 20 years before this anime was even made would say... or just ad libbing. I did once read about the ADR director that worked for Central Park Media at the time- named "One Take" Tony Scorlietti. He had a thing for making every character have a thick NY accent and cursing as much as possible. SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT... PIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSS! Sometimes it felt like Tourettes Guy was the scriptwriter for this series, no lie. Artwork and Animation: 8 What was decidedly above average was the art in this OVA. Its contemporaries Violence Jack and Mad Bull look like ASS in the animation department. They're straight up terrible. Angel Cop, surprisingly, looks really nice. It's fluid for the most part, and the animation of the characters and their models are fleshed out and not recycled over and over, or with horrible drops in detail level. Angel Cop keeps the gore level high, and there are some pretty squishy, grotesque killings. Cool factor +2 for disgusting displays of viscera. Characters and Story: 4 The characters are as follows: Robocop, Impossibly Badass Female Supercop, Steve Perry mixed with Steven Tyler, complete with an enormous 80s glam rockstar-do, Doll Girl, Dick Tracy, and Arnold Schwarzenegger with boobs and psychic powers. Do with that as you will. The story is a snoozer, and I didn't even care enough to go back and listen to what was supposed to be happening, and it didn't much matter. What matters is that a psychotic psychic bitch named Lucifer is going on a rampage for some suits who want to turn Japan into a nuclear waste pit, in the vein of Fallout. "When kids start growing two heads, you don't think people will notice that shit?" Dick Tracy says. So, in order to stop the suits, their psycho test subject has to be subjugated to reveal the really poorly planned get rich quick scheme behind the murders. It's up to Angel and her partner Robocop to shut that shit down... and totally annihilate everyone in their way. Yay for drama. Yay for murder. Enjoyment and Overall: 7, 6 While not nearly as crazy or funny as Mad Bull, nor as graphic as Violence Jack, Angel Cop falls somewhere in the middle. The dub is classic Central Park Media, and worth watching for that alone, but the actually decent visuals are a plus too. Imagine if Mad Bull had half the budget of Akira, and you've got something in the ballpark of Angel Cop. There's also an unintentionally hilarious scene where a guy gets shot multiple times because another character can't aim with the other hand that basically makes the OVA. This is must-see TV for 80's OVA fiends like me, or anyone who enjoys a short romp in the realm of the bloody ridiculous.