Review of AD Police

Introduction

I think it was a Season of anime on Channel 4 back in the early nineties that really opened my eyes to Japanese animation. Prior to that, I had only seen the classic children`s fare that had been on television in dubbed form, shows like Ulysses 31 and Mysterious Cities of Gold, and in my childhood naïveté I didn`t realise they were from a source other than America. I was quickly disabused of that misapprehension, especially when I saw what else Japan could produce, and realised just how unique anime is. Perhaps the first adult anime I saw were shows like Cyber City Oedo 808, Tokyo Babylon, Legend Of The Four Kings and AD Police. It wasn`t long before these and several others were taking up space in my video collection, but awaiting their arrival on DVD has been a tortuous process. At last, AD Police has made it to the shiny disc, courtesy of Manga Entertainment. One down, several to go.

AD Police is a prequel to Bubblegum Crash set in Megatokyo in the year 2027. It`s a brave new world as humanity creates artificial life, Voomers to do the jobs deemed to degrading for normal man. But these androids are remarkably lifelike, especially in their emotional responses, and when they are unable to deal with these feelings there are lethal malfunctions. A super strong robot is hard for a regular cop to face, so the Advanced Police are bought in. These three OAV episodes deal with this future technology and its consequences.

File 1. Voomer Madness
As a normal cop, Leon Higachi found himself face to face with a rogue Voomer and came out of it triumphant. As a reward he`s transferred to the AD Police, resourceful and relentless cops trained to face the threat of machines gone mad. When a Class 4 goes crazy and kills Ellis, a member of the AD Police, they think little of it other than a loss in the line of duty, but Ellis` life insurance policy comes under scrutiny, as does the claim that the Voomer was indeed rogue. Ellis` former partner Gina and Leon investigate, and find an illegal trade in recycling Voomer parts and resurrecting dead Voomers. One such resurrected Voomer is hunting for the man who failed to kill her in the first place, Leon Higachi.

File 2. The Paradise Loop
A serial killer is stalking the Paradise Loop, the rundown Tokyo subway system. Young prostitutes are being horrifically slaughtered, disembowelled by a violent psychopath. Naturally the suspicion falls on a Voomer, but Police Officer Iris Cara believes otherwise, thinking there must be a human motive to the killings. Her eye is troubling her, and a colleague suggests she gets it replaced. When lifelike androids are everywhere, replacement parts for humans are child`s play. But during the consultation, she overhears an argument between Caroline Ubachi, a top executive and her doctor, who refuses to remove artificial implants and restore the natural organs. Just how much of a body can a person sacrifice, and remain human?

File 3. Give Me Medicine
Billy Farnwood is a Captain in the AD police, fun loving, dedicated, and once intimate with Gina. Billy Farnwood is also dead. Killed in the line of duty, a government project took what was left of Billy`s brain and implanted it into a powerful cyborg body. Now Billy`s sole purpose is to destroy Voomers. With nothing left to feel with, except for his tongue, Billy craves stimulation. The scientist in charge of the project attempts to do this with a dangerous drug DA27, and also uses Billy to satisfy her own carnal desires. Anything to make sure that the cyborg survives until a critical seminar. But Billy`s need to feel begins to overwhelm him.

Video

AD Police comes with the original 4:3 ratio. The transfer is unremarkable, certainly sharper and clearer than my aged video copy, but not all that spectacular either. Perhaps most noticeable is the rather lacklustre black levels. Tending more towards the grey, it`s an indication of the rather washed out feel of the colours in general, again much like the original video.

Ad Police has some excellent design though, with a nicely realised future world and intricately depicted technology. The character design is quite good, although there is a decline in detail as well as changes in design after the first episode. Gina`s obviously robotic prosthetic arm is gone by the second episode. The animation is fairly good, even after all this time, though some scenes are a little static now, but some of the animation is quite atmospheric and striking, accomplishing as much through implication as through explicit violence.

Audio

You get a choice of the original English DD 2.0 Stereo dub or a spruced up DD 5.1 remix. The remix is like many other similar efforts, with action and dialogue front-focused, and ambience and atmosphere from elsewhere. I must admit I was a little disappointed to see a lack of the original Japanese track, something I have been looking forward to since I first saw AD Police. The voice acting is just as bad as when I first saw it, with some of the voices not at all suiting the characters, and it actually detracts from the stories. The dialogue isn`t much better, with certain lines quite laughable. Billy Farnwood pleading with Gina to shoot him in the tongue is a particular example. There are also no subtitles on this disc.

Features

AD Police comes packaged in a Scanavo case, slipped inside a cardboard slipcase. Inside you`ll find an A4 mini-poster.

The disc has some very nice animated menus, and some insubstantial extras. There`s about 8 minutes worth of trailers for other releases from Manga Entertainment, 10 pieces of concept art, scrolling summaries for the three episodes on this disc, and character profiles for six of the main characters in the stories.

It`s interesting to note that the disc and the packaging fail to agree on the character names. Leon Higachi is Leon McNichol in the character profiles, Gina/Geena Morris is Gina Marceau, while on the back cover she`s merely Nina, and Billy Farnwood is spelt Fanword in the profile.

Conclusion

The last thing that AD Police can claim to be is original. Even the most casual of observers will note the parallels with both the Blade Runner and Robocop films. It`s where the two concepts meet that the ideas become thought provoking. Voomer Madness is the examination of robots as life forms. Where exactly do you draw the line? When a machine has feelings, can you treat it as merely a machine? I Need Medicine is the obvious Robocop homage, with Billy Farnwood implanted in a machine body, struggling to remain human when all that defines him as human is gone. But Paradise Loop is the meeting place of these two ideas, and poses a fresh question. When we willingly sacrifice pieces of our humanity for the sake of convenience, for our careers, at what point are we no longer human? Caroline Ubachi in the race to further her career comes up against sexism in the workplace; her detractors claim that her being female would reduce her productivity. In an attempt to prove them wrong, she replaces all that makes her female with machine components. It`s only later that she realises that she has sacrificed too much, so much in fact that she is considered a machine in the eyes of the law rather than a woman.

This being anime, it`s hardly told with a gentle touch, rather the stories comes with a healthy dose of sex, drugs and violence, as well as a fair amount of misogyny. But the stories are no less entertaining for that. The worldview presented in AD Police is a compelling one, with humanity on the cusp of a technological revolution that will require it to redefine itself and its place in the world. While some like Iris are accepting of technology, others like Leon are distrustful and even fearful for the loss of their intangible humanity. Gina walks a fine line between the two, working with the technology, having a prosthetic arm, but wary of exactly what it means in terms of whom she is. It allows for great conflict, and the stories are really quite special despite their very familiar nature.

While I`m happy to finally see AD Police on disc, the English voice acting is a distraction from the stories, and ends up masking just how good they are. A lack of a Japanese soundtrack and subtitles may have you thinking twice about upgrading from that old VHS copy.