"If this is JUSTICE... then I am a banana!" Just try to imagine lines as stupid as that being read with a speech cadence that makes Christopher Walken's seem ordinary. Today I am revisiting and re-reviewing one of the worst anime I have ever tackled on MAL. Angel Cop is fairly famous in circles of older otaku for being one of the absolute worst anime of all time. I didn't adequately explain just how BAD this series is last time, so I hope to recitify that with this new review!
Plot: 1/10
The plot is that in the future, Japan has become a global superpower and the evil Americans wish to destroy Japan by bribing the Japanese government to turn Japan into a nuclear waste dump, which would sterilize and kill off the population. This level of extreme Japanese nationalism, terrible writing, and anti-American xenophobia is nothing new to anime and wasn't the reason Angel Cop failed. Code Geass was at least that bad and it actually became hugely popular! Angel Cop takes things one step further by stating America is controlled by evil Jews and launches into a massive anti-Semitic diatribe. Of course, extreme anti-Semitism is also not the reason Angel Cop failed. Code Geass turned the beloved Jewish scientist Albert Einstein into the evil, racist, cowardly, and reviled character Nina Einstein, and no one had a problem with that. Angel Cop failed because at every level of storytelling it is a complete mess. The characters are poorly written, the execution of the plot is terrible, the ending is terrible, pretty much everything is terrible! The story begins with a communist terrorist attack by the the Japanese Red Army, who was an actual terrorist group at the time this series was made. The government responds to this terrorist attack by creating Judge Dredd style super cops that act as "judge, jury, and executioner"! The main character Angel is of course one of these super cops. She must uncover the conspiracy while fighting the terrorists and even fight against elite psychic special forces sent by the Americans. The plot gets dumber and dumber as it goes on. You would think that this series was written by 1000 chimpanzees with type writers, yet the writer of this garbage later went on the write...Full Metal Alchemist! How is that even possible!? Of course knowing Japan's "good ol boy" system where seniority takes precedence over talent, it is quite possible that the FMA script was written by a young nameless intern and the credit was simply stolen by Sho Aikawa. That would actually make more sense than Aikawa writing this, Legend of the Overfiend, Violence Jack, then after 20 years suddenly resurfacing and is all of a sudden an amazing writer.
Edit: Sho Aikawa only wrote the dialogue for episodes 1-3. The scenario and plot was written by Ichiro Itano, who also wrote all the dialogue for episodes 4-6. I learned this from the special features of the Angel Cop Bluray I bought! I know this is 4 years late, but apologies to Aikawa. Oh, and BTW all the rabid Antisemitism was entirely Itano's doing.
Characters: 1/10
The main character is Angel, who is a generic 80s badass that blows away all the bad guys and doesn't give a fuck who she has to kill in order to accomplish the mission. Her main opponent is an agent sent by the evil American Jews named Lucifer, who is best described as a poor drawing of a drag queen attempting to impersonate Sharon Stone. Lucifer fights with her deadly fingernails and psychic powers, which Angel is only able to overcome at the very end. There are also some corrupt Japanese government officials, but no one cares about them. No characters in this pile of shit are interesting, well written, or likeable in any way!
Sound: 5/10
The one thing that "saved" Angel Cop and actually made it fun to watch was the HORRIBLE English dub provided by the incompetent buffoons at Central Park Media. In order to market their titles as more "mature", Central Park often added in a ridiculous level of swearing that often makes no sense and doesn't reflect the way ANY HUMAN actually swears. Characters will just randomly yell things like SHIITT....AANNNDDD PIIISSS! It is absolutely hilarious how bad this dub is. If you ever watch Angel Cop, the only reason should be the bad English dub. NEVER watch this series in the original Japanese! You will just get bored.
Entertainment: 4/10
It is fairly amusing simply because it is so bad. At least it isn't boring with the consistantly hysterical English dub!
Overall: 2/10
Angel Cop avoids a 1/10 only because it is entertainingly bad and not simply bad and boring. That makes it more like Plan 9 from Outer Space and not Manos the Hands of Fate, where 10 minutes are spent driving through the middle of nowhere because the director promised the crew that everyone would have thier name on screen for 5 seconds, and then forgot to add names in post production!
