Tokyo Vice

Tokyo Vice is an astonishingly mediocre OVA and forgettable to the point where surrounding literature and synopsis fails to even point out that its a mech anime. Yes, its a mech anime of the 'real robot' variety, featuring a bipedal non-humanoid military walker design that undoubtedly was influenced by Kojima's original Metal Gear mech on the Famicom.

The mech is clearly the best part of the show; leading to a man with big gun vs robot setup not unlike Armor Hunter Mellowlink. Of course, Mellowlink is a must watch anime while Tokyo Vice isn't. Honestly, this whole OVA just lacks that visceral energy of contemporary 80s ... OVAs.

Pacing and direction issues plagued the vast majority of old school OVAs but they worked because they imbued schlocky direct to video awesomeness with superior quality (for the time) animation intensity that you generally wouldn't see in tv shows of the time (and certainly not in many modern seasonals). Tokyo Vice just lacks all of that: throwaway goons don't explode into showers of red goo, 70% of the budget isn't spent on 10 seconds of hyper realistic mechanical designs, the main character isn't a dude or chick wisecracking about asses and bubblegum and the main villain isn't a digitized consciousness Stalin trying to abolish everyone's Amazon subscriptions to become the ultimate proletarian cyber pirate. (admittedly that last one hasn't happened in anime yet).

It's just too grounded and unambitious with its premise! At least the music really rocks.

Rate a 5
English Dubbed

Story
Introduction was creative but also mystifying in a bad sense as well. It went along with the anticipated spy meet up. Although at the same time could have been improper order of importance. First one makes sense for the mystery theme. The other suggests lack of common sense. Everyone has a hobby of sort or like outside of work shouldn't that be put aside when more important matters are at hand? Especially when lives are at risk?

Plot wasn't original. A mystery or task needed be dealt with. Didn't help that main character or not backstories weren't present. Although, a boss per-say ... of the film was somewhat unique in terms of mechanical abilities.

Conclusion was fair at best. Mystery had reached its conclusion. There were no questions left to solve.

Art
Sure nothing different was ton to the art in relation to originality but they kept that mystery flair. You know those sometimes subtle audio or visual clues that mysteries are a foot. Like the well know music introduction for law and order special victims unit.

Conclusion was a disappointment. Plot had a nice ending but it seemed like the artists didn't want the movie to die then and there. Thus, a slow pan out zoom was added. Great and all or would have been had anything new plot, audio or art was added. Why a pointless delay for an ending song that isn't worth buying on iTunes is beyond me.

NOTE: Another review that I wrote on Letterboxd on 3/6/2022

This is one of those anime films that I remember renting on VHS when I was a kid, over 20 years ago. Tokyo Vice aka The Tokyo Project was first released in Japan in 1988, but it was not released in the United States until 13 years later by Media Blasters. I decided to revisit it because I wanted to see if my opinion on it has changed or not. When I was 10, I thought Tokyo Vice was a decent anime, not the worst thing ever, as some people claim. I can see why so ... many people disliked it now that I've seen it again as an adult. Tokyo Vice is a dull and uninspiring anime. The characters are uninteresting, and the plot is incredibly boring. The writing is filled with bad action movie clichés and clumsy plot devices. I wanted to turn off this anime so badly because I had no interest in what was going on.

Tokyo Vice is a 53-minute film that felt like it took an eternity to finish. The English dub is, in my opinion, one of the worst I've ever seen for an anime. It's not one of those amusing bad dubs found in hentai titles like Bible Black or older OVA titles like Angel Cop. I felt like splinters were coming out of my hands because the English voice acting was so wooden. When it came to dubbing for this anime, it felt like none of the voice actors gave a damn. The only redeeming feature of Tokyo Vice is the animation. They spent more time creating cool mecha designs than they did writing a good script.

Overall, Tokyo Vice is a terrible anime, and there is plenty of better 80s sci-fi anime to watch instead. Don't even watch it for free because it's not worth it. Rating: 1.5/10