AD Police

AD Police aligns itself better with the noir aspects of the cyberpunk ethos than Bubblegum Crisis. You can feel the Bladerunner inspiration more here. The episodic nature of the OVA does not work against it. This is effectively world building for Crisis despite the tone being quite different.

Leon is one of the worst parts of Crisis in that he is actually a a low-key member of 'Dominion Tank Police'. He become far more human in exploring these 3 episodes. Along with this, the impacts of technology integration and augmentation are explored both on the level of the individual and to some degree on a societal ... level, which has and will continue to be an important topic for people to explore.

Definitely a worthwhile watch.

“AD Police” is what happens when old school noir storytelling meets anime.

To be honest this whole OVA feels more like a proof of concept than anything else. It’s related to Bubblegum Crisis and could be considered its loose prequel. It’s dark, gritty and shows the bad parts of a cyberpunk future.

Before we start I would like to explain something. I will be talking about “plot” and “story”. Many people use those terms interchangeably. I’m not one of those people, so to make sure everyone is on the same page…
I use the definitions for “plot” and “story” as Lisa Cron describes them:
“What ... happens in the story is the PLOT, the surface events.”
“STORY is about how the things that happen affect someone in pursuit of a difficult goal, and how that person changes internally as a result”.

There are two recurring characters in this OVA. Their role in the episode changes. They are both main characters in the first episode, become support in episode 3 and just background in episode 2. Still, they are important and prevalent enough for me to mention them. They are:

Gina - a stereotypical, hard cop archetype. She’s a member of the AD Police. She’s as 80s as one can be. The hair, the clothes and the no bullshit attitude. She has a “quirk” as she calls it. She gets horny when she sees blood. She’s also kind of an idiot. There is this really dumb scene in the first episode when a boomer is killing one of the AD Police members, Gina wants to help, is stopped by another member, only to wait until the first one is good and dead and only then she attacks the boomer from behind. WTF? Did the guy who got killed owed everyone money or something? If she acted sooner (which she could, she just had to shrug one dude) she would have given her fellow police officer a bigger chance for survival. But no, he had to die because of plot conveniences.

Leon - Gina’s partner. In the first episode he’s treated like a rookie, Gina even calls him that openly a few times. In 2 and 3 he seems to be more experienced. He is competent and seems to have PTSD after being attacked by a boomer but that’s pretty much one of two things we know about him. The other is he has some distrust in cybernetic technology and against one of his acquaintances to replace her eye.

The reason why I treat it more like a proof of concept than anything else is the fact that despite having recurring characters there are differences in their design depending on the episode. Mainly between episode 1 and the other two. The episodes aren't connected in any meaningful way and could be watched on their own. They have their own self contained plots, and that works both in their favour and their detriment.

Episode 1 is also a bit unique in the set. Episodes 2 and 3 bring up a theme of what it means to be human and when a person stops being one. The first episode is concentrated mainly on showing Leon as a character and not much more. It does ask a question: does a synthetic benign created artificially can have feelings, and what kind but doesn’t go too deep into it. Unlike episodes 2 and 3, episode 1 doesn’t have a story, it’s mainly plot. Things happen but nothing really changes. You could make a case that there is a little bit of Leon’s story there but it’s not much.

When it comes to the story department the best one is in episode 3. It shows a steady degradation and depersonalization of Billy. An AD Police officer turned into a cyborg. Because it’s just one episode the pacing is very fast and a lot of things are rushed but it still shows his agony rather well.

I’m not sure if this is the result of the short run or the writer's choice but the show asks a lot of questions but never answers them directly. Normally I love that. I think that movies and shows that want to touch heavy subjects should let the viewer form his own opinion. The problem this time is that it doesn’t really give You enough material to work with. We only see a snippet of the problem and because of the type of show this is the only answer is violence. It works for plot convenience but it doesn’t for story.

At the end of the day “AD Police” won’t break any new ground in the cyberpunk or noir genre. It’s plot heavy and avoids any kind of deep thinking despite playing around with some pretty hard hitting questions. It’s an acceptable watch but nothing more.

Well, after another small 90s OVA I am left with not much to say. This show is your typical anime sci-fi fair. Protagonist are some form of police. Antagonists are some kind of augmented human. On paper, should be decent, in practice episode one and two are decent, episode three is dull. But, despite this, I'll give this review a bash.

Animation is grea here. Everything you would hope it to be for the time. Looks really great with a nice varied pallet. Character animation is smooth and effort was put in to provide a varied character look. Which is NOTHING like the complete lack ... of effort that went into Mad Bull 34 with every women looking exactly the same. I am 100% happy with the animation here. I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

In the same vein, the music is also really great, including the opening theme. Throughout the episodes, I would say the music shines the most. It really adds to the gritty atmosphere provided by its animation and story. The is a nice variety of sounds used too. It's not just your basic synth pad sounds at every opportunity.

Story wise is where we fall short here. The show starts strong. It really sets the scene excellently, explains what the plot is perfectly and really gets you ready for what SHOULD be a great show. Now, the first episode is great, excellent story, excellent pacing and great end to end delivery. The second we start to loses the momentum gained. It's not awful. It's just OK. Pacing is still fine, it's just the story is a little boring and ultimately, impacts the delivery. The third, my goodness, never in my life have a given less of a crap of a fella called Billie. Honestly, I had zero interest in this lad and the show gave me zero reason to care. There wasn't any real intro to him, no explanation, nothing to buy into, nothing to crab hold on. It just starts 'this is Billie' in the end, I thought, thank god that's over.

I summary, music great, animation great but the story got worse with every passing episode. It's annoying, as it started very strong and ended very weak.