AD Police, fighting crime in a really perverted future time

Robots and sex. Two great tastes that all of humanity can't wait to taste together. With the end of BGC, the iron was STILL hot so they struck using Leon as their front man in a Megatokyo sans Knight Sabers.

Friends, let's talk about the A.D. Police Files, the OAV series...






Let's just get this out in the open, this show is fucked up. Comparatively speaking, BGC was almost Sailor Moon level sugary and this is... not. On so MANY levels, this show is NOT sugary, sweet, heartwarming or joy-inducing. In fact, this is a great measure of how fucked in the head or perverted you really are when you can watch this and measure how extreme your reactions are in terms of disgust or shock. Regardless, I meekly assert that it still has some great merit on its own and it is a great example of how bright and shiny the world became when the Knight Sabers came into the mix so horrible shit like this wasn't happening all the time. Seriously... ALL the time!

The greatest gift this OAV series can grant is a horrible perspective on Boomer crimes and confirming all your nagging doubts about humanity in general.


(A mish-mash music video with the theme song for BGC4: Revenge Road featuring clips from the entire BGC OAV series, this is the mothership from whence ADP descends)

As a staple of the BGC, the stupidly irresponsible and wholly destructive force that is the AD Police is essential for pointing out how dark, hopeless and messed up the future is going to be. Like Starship Troopers, working for the ADP is a flying leap into the massive maw of a giant grinder and you see the many delights of such a career choice during the course of this series in slightly more colorful ways than you would have if you only watch the BGC OAVs ( like free decapitation, complimentary vehicular death, on-the-job dismemberment, etc). Horrible deaths in general seem to be their primary benefit, I guess.

Anyway, I'm blathering...

So the story plays out in a way that's somewhat similar to Tales from the Crypt in self-contained tales of horror showing how normal, happy humans are thrust into terrifying boomer-related situations (with a sexual twist, to make it extra japanese/horrifying) usually presented in a "reap what you sow" theme and nothing ends happily for anyone involved. Just scars, crutches, prosthetic limbs and post traumatic stress therapy for everyone involved.

Furthermore, it should be noted that the basis for the story was originally a Manga and the OAVs are themselves stories completely detached from the mothership BGC save for the name, Leon and the general aesthetic and behavior of the ADP (Read: Destructive assholes with big guns). Kenichi Sonoda (BGC, Riding Bean, Gunsmith Cats) isn't artistically represented and I'd say the whole series is lesser without him, mind you that's personal taste speaking as I didn't really care for the ADP manga itself either.

Let's cover each one of these OAVs separately:




1. The Phantom Woman
To thrust us into the fucked up world of ADP appropriately, we see that Leon's introduction into the ADP came from his days as a regular cop trying to stop the killing spree of a lone sex boomer. Leon barely stopped the thing before it chopped him into fritters and the memory of its death was stored on its' womanly innards, which were recycled recently and now it lives again as it hunts for Leon to either end its life again or... Well, it's not entirely clear if that's ALL it's interested in. At the same time at the beginning of the episode, there was a boomer suppression situation at a small tea shop that went horribly wrong and one of the veteran ADP shock troops was killed by the boomer. The circumstances of his death cause his life insurance policy to be called into question and the insurance company gives the stupidest window of time for Leon & his partner Jeena to prove that it was the Boomer's parts that were defective causing the murder spree and that the officer did not intend to be horribly killed with his own weapon.

I have to admit, this jarred me a bit. After being so used to the BGC's usually fun, cheery and upbeat feel I had trouble adjusting, I popped this tape in and was subjected to some truly horrifying graphic imagery with a bizarre sexual theme. I was able to appreciate the story enough and the idea that this was how bad things were previous to the Knight Sabers is intriguing. The length disappointed me a little, but then these OAV episodes really don't run much further than the BGC eps did so expect 30 min-45 min length for each one. The primary issue with the brief length is the lack of depth they're able to penetrate in for the story as they leave so many elements left to your imagination to resolve. You see this a lot in the series, where they simply stop at a point where you are left with a poignant moment of sour, palpable regret overlooking the remains of whomever DIDN'T survive in addition to the collateral damage whereupon you pretty much state "Wow... that's fucked up!" and then BAM the credits roll. On the plus side, the angst isn't milked too far and on the poor side the characters aren't developed as far as you would like, but in that sense I suppose it's like they leave you wanting more.
All in all, it's a great intro to the series as it pulls you in smoothly if you've been watching bgc and it immediately prepares you to accept some really fucked up new aspects of Boomer crime and insert them into the canon. I'm not saying it's a great entry because the content is almost vile and like a deadbeat dad it only stays long enough to plant a seed and move on, hoping against hope that you're enough of a sucker to come back for a little more of the same. But it's better than Crash... MUCH better than crash.

That said, let's move on and see what that would be like. To be suckers. Which we are.

Sigh.




2. The Ripper
A sleazy subway loop known as the paradise loop plays host to a series of grisly murders of prostitutes who are being disemboweled by some demented predator stalking the streets. A female cop who is under pressure to have have her eye replaced with an artificial one meets a woman steeped in regret for giving into that same pressure when she had her sexual organs (plot point) and lots of other organs replaced, who is reaping some weird consequences for her choices. The basic theme of this episode is that with the convenience of better, stronger artificial organs is it worth sacrificing your humanity for them and even then does replacing them really make you any less human? Are we not more than the sum of our guts?

The most important change to note here is the difference in art quality and apparent increase in budget (Meaning the first ep clearly caught a lot of flies, I mean, suckers, er... "commercial interest"). For instance, Jeena looked straight out of the manga before (imagine Mad Max and Rambo having a female lovechild with a metal arm), but they modified the style to give it a softer, organic look. I'll admit, Jeena looks MUCH cuter like this and they also decided to encase her boomer-killing artificial arm in flesh so it looks normal and less scary. But whatever, right? Hot stuff comin' through!

The story is kind of hard to take seriously for two reasons. It treads some amusingly sensitive ground with the argument of what defines your humanity, but the important parts of that discussion are left to the wayside because of the second primary element in the story that "her period made her do it." seeing the "ripper" in her office begging for her undercarriage to stop making her desire sex and murder made me feel weird. Mostly because I decided to watch it in the front room when my grandparents were over and when I was babysitting, but enough about me...

The sex aspects apparently polled well or something because they take it and then take way too far with this entry. WAYYYYYY too far. Then there's the horrible deaths. When the ADP realize that their suspect is on a subway train and then send in some sort of mecha-ant thing to break into the subway and ATTACK the train full of civilians, but then those civilians look sleazy and they WERE sexing up the primary suspect so... they're co-conspirators then? Anyway, sending in enough firepower to derail a train full of people in order to kill one person who hasn't been tried for any crime save for that of being declared a "boomeroid" because of her body being like 70% synthetic is something I have trouble buying. Actually, I had those troubles way earlier in the story. WAY earlier. This is easily the least appealing entry in the series because the story revolves around a character only technically tied to the main cast (IE: she know the names of Leon & Jeena) and after her this tale of her woe she is never heard from again. Granted, this blends into the whole Tales from the Crypt, episodic stuff I mentioned before, but that doesn't mean that we won't notice or protest a little of the dismissive stuff. The whole thing is kind of fucked up and stupid, but then it's almost immediately over! Poof! Done! Amtrak special!
Admittedly, I can point out at least 50 great points about this episode noting the issue of artifical morality and cyborg rights and genuinely amazing additions to science fiction this story stands to off, but because they had to sex it up it's the effed up fluff in the middle of a raunchy pillow of death. Such a waste.

Anway, there's only one episode left. Let's finish this...




3. The man who bites his tongue
The stupid title aside, it's explained within the first five minutes and then immediately after you kind of wish they'd kept it a mystery... Billy was a lot of things! He was an ADP trooper, he was a boxer, he was a roommate, he was a lover and shortly after he was road pizza, he became the first Anti-Boomer cyborg in the employ of the ADP. An astoundingly effective addition to the ADP ranks, Billy was able to take down the toughest rogue boomers with minimal collateral damage and walk away craving a new book on tape (which is how he smuggles in drugs for his own stimulation). However, his resurrection was incomplete as only his brain and tongue were saved. His tongue being the only portion of flesh he has at his disposal is the victim of occasional biting fit to wake his brain so he has some sensation to keep himself grounded. When approached with his problems, the scientist who designed him decides to stimulate him by fucking him. Or at least trying. Basically she rubs herself all over his robot body, dry humping him while he basically just sits there. Meanwhile, Billy has managed to secure some "self-medication" for his issues and is on the edge of losing his shit and tearing up the ADP headquarters.



Spoiler alert! He loses his shit and tears apart ADP headquarters. The end!

As the final goodbye to this series, this one is especially depressing. There's no real villain because so many people are riding the bus to hell via Good Intentions Avenue and so MANY poor ADP guys die in this (most of which are killed by a buddy) that I can't really find one particular theme for this aside from irony or animator bloodlust. On the plus side, the sexual weirdness is much lighter than the others and ultimately it's the story of Robocop-gone-wrong so it's easier to absorb in the context of a Blade Runner-ish tragedy.


(Finale of RED EYES BGC ep 6, Priss on her own takes out 3 stupidly powerful "hyperboomers" that have had their way with the ADP)

What do we learn from all this during the course of ADP? Well, we see where Leon develops his oversexed horndog nature shown in BGC probably due to Jeena's perverse influence. I mean, after seeing the shit he's seen I can't blame him for not worrying about Daley trying to probe his exhaust because Leon's priorities fall into two categories: 1) NOT DYING HORRIBLY! and 2) Fucking as much as possible before he's inevitably crushed in the powerful metal hands of a Boomer.

Speaking of which...


(AMV using a clip from BGC5: Moonlight Rambler showing Leon, ready to die, as he dons a K-suit without backup to take down an advanced prototype military boomer combat suit carrying a neutron failsafe device ready to detonate in the middle of Megatokyo... yikes!)

Other than Leon's softer side being summed up, we see how hard it was for the ADP for survive on their own, even against something as comparatively trivial as a single Boomer selling tea (civilians dead all over, shop destroyed, 1 ADP trooper killed with his own weapon, etc.) when all it takes are some spastic gestures from Priss in BGC to make Boomers drop by the dozens. Sad, huh?

All snarkiness aside, there's some great anime to be had here. It's sick, it's twisted and it's the perfect DARK intro for newbies to BGC and a horrible hazing ritual for people just getting into anime. It is by no means essential viewing, but I do recommend giving it a shot at least once if you're a fan of the franchise. It's better than the ADP: Serve & Protect tv series by far because it manages to convey shitloads of information with a quarter of the episodes and has a cohesive narrative with something resembling closure and strong ties to a bigger, better anchor series.

I'm taking a BGC break... Promise. Reliving ADP just made me want to slit my wrists. Not that it's bad, but fuck is it ever depressing. So next post, watch out for my #4.


(Opening for Bubblegum Crash)

And keep in mind, it could always be worse...