Active Raid: Kidou Kyoushuushitsu Dai Hachi Gakari

In a futuristic, post-disaster Tokyo, the "Special Public Security Fifth Division Third Mobile Assault Eighth Unit," or "Unit Eight," is a police unit specializing in handling criminals who wield dangerous wearable technology called "Willwear." Equipped with Willwear of their own, the squadron is often criticized by the public for their carelessness and disregard for protocol.

Sent in by the government as an undercover agent with special instructions from the higher-ups, Asami Kazari is Unit Eight's newest member. Determined to straighten out what she expects to be a group of incompetent fools, she instead finds a team of well-intentioned experts who use very effective—albeit unorthodox—methods, hindered by strict regulations. With their newest member by their side, Unit Eight fights crime and overcomes unexpected adversaries in Active Raid: Kidou Kyoushuushitsu Dai Hachi Gakari.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kazari, Asami Main

Ozawa, Ari Japanese

Kuroki, Takeru Main

Shimazaki, Nobunaga Japanese

Sena, Souichirou Main

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Mythos Supporting

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Liko Supporting

Kurosawa, Tomoyo Japanese

Amano, Madoka Supporting

Oonishi, Saori Japanese

Inagi, Koutarou Supporting

Midorikawa, Hikaru Japanese

USDF Superior Officer Supporting

Ono, Atsushi Japanese

Girl Supporting

Hondo, Kaede Japanese

Benuu Supporting

Furukawa, Makoto Japanese

Taniguchi, Gorou Director

Akitaya, Noriaki Director, Episode Director

Honma, Shuu Episode Director

Ooishi, Yasuyuki Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Mar 25, 2016

Grimanir

Recommended

Thunderbirds meets Gundam meets Power Rangers/Super Sentai. That's the most apt description I can think for this series.
This is the updated preview -> review, and I think the scores hold. The last 2 episodes are better than the others, but don't do enough to pull the overall score up.

Story: 6
Possibly the weakest link of the series. The story revolves around a team of police officers who operate from a mobile train base, and utilise Willwears, powered suits of armour, to fight crime. Sounds pretty exciting, right?
The problem comes from a complete lack of focus; only late in the series does Logos truly come into play. ... I realise in retrospect that this is because it is leading into the next season. However, this approach is not particularly appealing to new potential watchers.
As a mostly episodic series, the appeal of each episode must come from the theme; whilst some of the characters hit high notes in some episodes, the plot itself doesn't really hold up.

Art: 7
Fair. The animation is quite proportional and fluid, and the CGI is not the worst I've ever seen. The Willwear assembly scenes are very well done, and generally quite a pleasure to watch.
Fights are well choreographed and action is fast paced. Lines are sharp, though sometimes there are disfigured characters due to lack of perceived importance.
There's a seemingly shameless amount of fanservice, as one might expect from a modern anime series, but I shall leave this to ones own tastes.

Sound: 7
The OP for this series is majestic and energetic, and reaches some, if you don't mind me saying so, aurally orgasmic notes.
The OST is a okay. Nothing in particular stands out, and it barely adds to the ambience of the scene, but it serves its purpose.
The dialogue is of fairly standard quality, and the seiyuu do a good job of characterising each individual.

Character: 8
Easily the best part of the series is the diverse and interesting, both design wise and look wise, cast of characters.
Each character is distinct, has their own personality and theme/quirk, as one would expect, and hope for, in an anime. A bit cliché at times, but better than bland.
The side characters get fantastic character development, such as Funasaka, the giant robot otaku, or Haruka, the railfan.
Logos members seem to have their own agendas, and constantly scheme against one another, or so it seems. Hopefully we see some more character interaction in the second season.
If I have a qualm, it's that, as of the end of season 1, the three main characters themselves have been criminally underdeveloped.

Enjoyment: 7
It's a fairly fun watch. I wasn't particularly impressed with the story or thematic episodes, but the fights were extremely well choreographed, and passably animated.

Overall: 7
Worth your time if you're into cheesy, episodic content like Super Sentai. Perhaps lay off if that's not your style.
That being said, I will likely look into the second season when it is released.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Mar 24, 2016

AllenHavens92

Mixed Feelings

Active Raid, while having a set plot in mind, felt like a hodge-podge of elements thrown throughout each episode, making me question what kind of series it wants to be.

The story has your typical futuristic setting featuring authoritarian and political plot lines with mechas thrown into the mix. Personally, I've always found it difficult to comprehend all of the futuristic jargon being delivered, but it just might just be I'm slow when it comes to stuff like that. The structure of the series is simple: early episodes are one-shots until the last few episodes where the "big picture" is finally put into play.

Our main set ... of characters (those of Unit 8) are unique in their own way, which shows their individuality. We also have episodes that focus on a particular character, so they get their time in the spotlight. However, in the end, some characters are fleshed out more than others.

The animation, when it wanted to, could be pretty decent. Aside from a couple of episodes that showed some lacking, overall it was alright.

Like any original series, I gave Active Raid the benefit of the doubt hoping something good came out of it. With that, it was nothing all that great, but it wasn't bad in any way. Supposedly, there will be a second season, and I will more than likely watch that when it comes out.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Mar 25, 2016

Flawfinder

Not Recommended

I don't really like it when somebody tries to impress me by copying my favorites. After all, I could just interact with my favorite again if I wanted to, and it doesn't help that a lot of the times when something copies what I enjoy, it tends to miss the point entirely and thus we get a thousand Boondock Saints and five hundred Boondock Saints 2. Every once in a while though, you get one that gets what's up, or takes it in a direction you didn't know you wanted. As such, I was kind of looking forward to Active Raid despite it looking like ... a shitty Patlabor-ripoff because although he wasn't actually directing the thing, I was interested to see if Taniguchi would do anything interesting with it - and more importantly, make us remember Production IMS for something besides shitty light novel adaptations and arguably Inari Konkon.

Well you can throw away that pipe dream, because Active Raid sucked dinosaur-sized dick so much to the point that few people even remembered it existed by the time the third episode came out. Whilst the idea to make a modernized Patlabor with tokusatsu/sentai elements may have seemed promising on paper, the resulting anime we got is a complete and utter mess. Not only does it fall under the common problem of trying to do too much to the point that nothing stands out, but it somehow manages to fuck up giving me a reason to care about what's happening in the first place. The first episode alone has the lead female join Unit 8 eager to prove herself, only to rush her into a random case without any preparation, getting proven wrong in order for two guys we don't get properly introduced to to show her up, and causing a lot of property damage in order to catch a completely unthreatening throwaway villain we don't know and will never care about after the episode ends. Basically, a poor man's version of the introductory episode of Psycho-Pass, and it only gets worse from there.

One common criticism I've read regarding Active Raid (besides the Power Rangers one I mean) is that it doesn't have a main character to either relate to or push the show forward at all. Although the show first opens with Asami as the newbie we're apparently supposed to project ourselves onto, it rapidly starts treating her like a side character as we focus on the two male leads, the female boss who looks like a middle-schooler, and a bunch of other one-note characters whose only job is to deliver one line and that's it. Not only that, but there are many scenes that don't involve Unit 8 at all, choosing instead to look at the very government they protect as they spout boring political dialogue that does nothing but establish what's at stake whilst the main bad guy stares at his screen with his little girl servant, delivering a stupid monologue that no one in their right mind would find charismatic. And that's if the dude shows up, because a good chunk of the episodes are centered on one-off characters who have practically zero chemistry with Unit 8 and when they do, it's too cartoonish to take seriously (love of trains? WTF?). If the main characters have no personal involvement in any of the show's conflicts, then why should I care when it occurs?

Not that the show is any better when it does focus on them, as most of the individual members of Unit 8 aren't the least bit interesting. Rin's concept is entirely nonsensical considering I don't believe for a second that a woman that dumb and that young-looking can lead anything (and I've seen Full Metal Panic), and Unit 8 as a whole is completely impossible to root for given how much property damage they do to take down villains who are about as threatening as my own farts, along with the constant sexual harassment that's dealt towards Asami because apparently we're not out of that mindset that being self-aware of your offensiveness doesn't make your actions any less offensive. And Asami herself isn't exactly a sympathetic, fully-fleshed out character that you feel bad for whenever she's made the victim of her co-worker's incompetence. It's just that she's a better character than Rin. Or Madoka, a female member that's so far in the background you won't even remember who she is when she gets her own episode that fucks with every single rule of poker you know.

For the majority of its first cour, Active Raid takes an episodic approach to its premise, focusing on Unit 8 as they solve a various crisis committed by its retarded villain in their own way each week rather than establish an on-going story. Even when compared to shows with a similar format like the first halves of Ushio & Tora and Gun x Sword, or the new Lupin anime, Active Raid is absolutely awful at utilizing it in a way that's engaging. Too much of the run time is spent on trying to be funny (which in anime terms, means it's not funny) to the point that there is absolutely zero tension in any of the scenarios, not helped by the fact that all the villains are throwaway 80s cliches that would have embarrassed He-Man's creators if they ever watched this show. Some of you are probably aware of the statement made before the show's start by the show's creators that it's supposed to be a lighthearted barrel of fun that you're not supposed to take seriously. Well Active Raid follows that stupid smug "we're not taking ourselves seriously so we can do whatever we want" logic to the extreme, having the police distract criminals with dancing robots for no reason, which is pretty much the anime equivalent of that one horrible musical number from Tank Girl. Or those rapping kangaroos. God that was a bad movie!

And the worst part is that once you get rid of the humor, there's nothing left. Unit 8's incompetence has virtually no effect on what goes on, and the actual story boils down to one weak moral: government is corrupt. That's it. That's where ALL the goddamn conflict in this show comes from. In an age where we have many products that examine the intricacies of the world's political system with lots of nuance (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Batman v Superman, and Patlabor 2: The Movie did it well over two decades ago), Active Raid is several decades too late to the party. None of the events that happen are representative of anything resembling real Japanese history (yes, this IS a requirement to be entertaining satire), and not a single person on either side has anything resembling moral ambiguity. I mean don't those government guys have any interesting points at all? What are they villains from a Robin Williams movie?

On a side note, I know the producers and stuff don't read this blog and thus didn't listen to me when I said way back in my Rolling Girls review that they weren't allowed to base every concept of their show on wacky nonsensical humor, but I'm going to repeat it again anyways: DON'T BASE EVERY CONCEPT OF YOUR SHOW ON WACKY NONSENSICAL HUMOR! It's not funny and it's fucking boring to watch in long stretches! You think Mind Game is good just because it was Yuasa being Yuasa? No! Mind Game is good because underneath all the wackiness (well actually, it's more because of the wackiness) is a story about following your dreams and how even though you never know what'll truly become of it, you've got to try because it's better than being a loser forever.

I could go on about everything else wrong with this show. Like the constant breaking of its own internal logic. The actual (and piss-poor) reason why the bad guy wants to take down the government in the first place - along with the insultingly anticlimactic resolution. The LARGE amounts of blatant exposition whilst the camera pans over nearly still frames. But there's a second cour coming soon and I'm dead set on reviewing it because everyone seems to like it when I review absolute trainwrecks and no one with a passing interest in reality would bother defending this show anyways (aka the people who legitimately say Cross Ange is good without irony), so I should save some ammo and sum it all up in one line: this show is junk food. And unlike real junk food, anime/movie/visual medium junk food is NEVER tasty. Even if it had fixed all its technical problems, the show still would have been bad because it had no interest in telling a story or thinking through its comedy. It actively wants to just be as crazy as possible with its tokusatsu elements in the vain hope that somehow it'll be entertaining, which just makes it come off as a desperate kid struggling for attention.

What could have been a fun 80s throwback as well as a chance for Goro Taniguchi to return to the limelight has ended up as a poor mishmash of tokusatsu cliches and mecha masturbation with low ambitions for its story and characters who aren't even attempted to be made interesting. Even the mecha action is crap, either being shot too close to the camera to make sense of it, padded out with too much dialogue, or shot so cartoonishly it sucks away all the tension. With this, Iron-Blooded Orphans, and pretty much every mecha anime made in the last decade or so, I think from now on, whenever you see a show has robots in it, we should automatically mark it as a lost cause. Now if you excuse me, I've got some PA Works shit to see.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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