Hyper Police

Anyone who knows me or is familiar with my reviews will note I have a soft spot for nineties anime. This could stem from my having grown up on nineties anime and feeling a familiar warmth when encountering the older animation style and conventions of this bygone era. But I personally think it stems from my love for anime that treats itself not as some sort of totally serious medium. Many nineties anime, such as Hyper Police, The Slayers, You’re Under Arrest, Great Teacher Onizuka, Tenchi Muyo, etc. understood that they were cartoons and managed to balance silly moments with usually decent stories and typically ... conventional, but loveable characters. Even the classics like Trigun and Cowboy Bebop combined that comedic, cartoonishness with serious plot.

I like having fun, and the nineties was a time when anime was okay with being stupid and cartoony for the sake of entertainment. Nowadays, you very rarely get that sense of fun when watching anime. Maybe it’s just me and my nostalgia. Maybe I have a soft spot for Hyper Police’s style. Maybe I’m going to overrate Hyper Police purely because of my love for this sort of anime.

So take that into consideration when reading this review.

Hyper Police takes place in a world where monsters, humans, and gods coexist, though not exactly on friendly terms. Humans are given all kinds of government aid and many aren’t big fans of the monsters. Natsuki is a bounty hunter in Tokyo, where she works with her friends to take down the big bad guys and earn enough money to live. She’s a cat girl, her love interest is a werewolf, and there’s another werewolf who tags along.

When Sakura, a nine-tailed fox with only eight and one-fifth tail, sees Natsuki’s lighting attacks in action, she decides that she wants to steal that power to gain her final tail. She joins the bounty hunting agency to get closer and, of course, eventually befriends Natsuki and decides against killing her.

It’s a pretty basic set-up for an episodic anime. Very early on, though, the bounty hunting agency closes down and everyone goes their separate ways, which leads me to wonder what all the set-up was for in the first place. We’re given time with characters at the beginning who barely matter in the least. That’s not to say there are any characters who are given too much time and don’t make an impact later on, but I feel that the abruptness of the shift in plot was too early and didn’t have enough build-up.

This, truthfully, sums up the rest of the plot. A samurai from the sixteenth century shows up and after two or three episodes he’s married to Sakura. One episode she’s completely infatuated with him, the next it opens with babies running around. I don’t take offense to moving the plot quickly, but sometimes you should build things up much more before you let major plot events like a marriage happen. It’s bad enough the marriage isn’t even shown and the characters aren’t given enough time to gel before it happens. Later on, there’s an episode that makes you wonder why they even got married in the first place.

This problem is compounded by the tonal shifts. It starts as a bounty hunting adventure, becomes a sort of comedy, starts dealing with relationships, then toward the end gets serious again with the idea of humans having racial problems with monsters.

That’s way too much jumping around. If Hyper Police had focused on perhaps one or two of these facets rather than juggling so many, it would have benefitted. Instead it juggles romance, comedy, action, and a serious plot and doesn’t do so very well.

But nobody remembers Hyper Police for any of these things; they remember it for the cute girls! And Hyper Police delivers the goods. Cat girls, fox girls, dog girls, bounty hunter girls, prison warden girls!

That said, the male characters are hopelessly in love with our female characters. Batounan is in love with Natsuki despite the fact she’s like, half his age. She’s in love with him too, so I guess it all works out in the end. But then there’s a guy named Tomy who is in love with a girl who works at the prison and he winds up in all kinds of silly situations trying to admit his love to her.

The dub is…tolerable. There are no good voice actors which might contribute to why this anime, despite having a dub and DVD release, is so little known in the states. Names are pronounced one way, then another , then the original way. Some of the voice actors seem to be phoning it in, especially Poe’s, who speaks in this airy, bored way that isn’t even convincing despite Poe’s uncaring attitude. It’s a real amateur hour.

The music is alright with a decent opening and overused tracks during the show. The animation, like the music, is just average.

So what do I like so much about Hyper Police?

It’s got cute girls, it’s definitely funny, the setting is fun, and there is a definite sense of silliness that pervades the anime and kept me watching. It’s got a lot of problems and could benefit from better pacing and writing, but it is too entertaining to pan for its failings.

I can’t recommend it to everyone. Hell, I couldn’t really wholeheartedly recommend it without knowing you well. It’s a perfect example of nineties cheese, and Lord knows I love cheese.

Although animal people are a famous anime trope it's rare to see a setting where every character is part animal and humans are the minority.

Hyper Police's world is very detailed - from the visual design that always brings new ideas of monsters, characters and mechanics, to the the dialogues that explore laws, ethics and lifestyle, it almost feels like a real parallel universe.

Some episodes focus on side characters and so you get a lot of different approaches to this world. There's a variety ensemble of at least 10 recurring characters, each unique and interesting enough to receive a spin off of its own.

Almost every character ... has a love interest and the main couple, Batanen and Natsuki, is one of the sweetest ones I've seen. I was on the edge of my sit for every small development between them and it was extremely fun watching their chemistry.

The show never gets repetitive or boring. The writers control the pace with a tight grip, always finding new character interactions or situations to put them in to keep the narrative fresh.

The episodic structure of the show sometimes feel forced, but if you're looking for an epic story with drama, twists and turns you're in the wrong show. Still, the show has a story continuity and there are some really unexpected character and world developments.

If you're looking for a fun entertainment with light drama you must watch this anime. Highly recommended.

Hyper Police is a great setting with some fun action scenarios, hindered mostly by weak writing. To get that out of the way: one-note 90's-era cliches and stereotypes drive almost everything, and the plotting is mostly episodic with gradual changes in the recurring characters, which is enough to keep it alive but not enough to make it inherently compelling. The finale baffles me just as much as ever on a rewatch of the series, almost a decade later: although it's a cool ending, and some of the best writing in the series, the big moments all read as non-sequiturs thrown in to make it try ... to add up to something.

And all of that is a shame, because the setting is full of little worldbuilding details that bring it alive: The bounty hunting business, the post-apocalyptic cityscape, the street scenes with dozens of different anthro people and moments of physical comedy. It just gets dragged down by all the screen time spent on reprisals of predictable character moments, simple misunderstanding plots, and low-risk reset-to-zero conclusions: things that infest anime today too, but are a little more grating for being dated.

However, when it works, it's good. Generic villain characters frame most of the episodes, and those are great foils that consistently bring out the best of the main cast. Age has mostly been kind to the visuals, too: no high budget animation, but the visual design has some classic stuff. These good elements are good enough - and distinctive enough - that I wanted to rewatch it over "better" old series, which might be enough to recommend it to a discerning viewer(given the caveats).