Take a bite of AD Police's shiny metal ass... Or not. I wouldn't. Ew.

Normally, I’m wacky for police dramas as they were a huge part of my evening viewing during my formative years and adding in robots gone awry normally makes everything better, but apparently that's not always the case.

I realize that I’ve been tossing up anime that I praise and since I touched on BGC I feel it’s only fair that I explore the dark side of enjoying that particular franchise and the consequences that such folly merits. Let's start with one of its more contemporary snafus...

So sample my venom as we discuss AD Police: To Serve and Protect, the TV Series






(A “trailer” which is really just the domestic opening title sequence for AD Police, hence Hans’ voice actor reading over the Japanese man in English)

Let's briefly touch on the "story" in play:

Kenji is the atypical "rogue cop" that literally goes through partners like tissues; a transfer from the japanese "regular" police, Kenji is a member of the AD Police in Genom City specializing in Boomer crimes and suppression of rogue Boomers mid-nanostampede. Every other flashback he has is of him at some dude's grave and the dead partner's widow snarling at him, then there's all the chastising from the upper brass that he ignores followed by long scenes of him brooding as though he had even a single thought going through his pea-brain as he's seen frequently in the company of his freakishly mellow girlfriend. He's the protagonist of the show and in lieu of actually developing his character, they show him brooding over drinks, brooding with his girlfriend, brooding on his motorcycle, brooding at work and just sort of quietly and angrily contemplating things which are never revealed to the audience. Maybe he left the oven on? We'll never really know.

Hans is a transfer from the German police force(?!), he is the cleaner, more polite partner in this odd couple. Hans manages to charm the pants off of everyone and his suave antics leave the ladies swooning. He has just come out of a coma from a bullet to the brain that happened to relieve him of all his memories, his angst is palpable, his confusion in trying to fit in is easy to relate to and best of all the dub script makes him a super cool dude. Unfortunately, Hans is second fiddle to his partner, Kenji, in almost every respect; particularly in screen time.

The two of them are recently partnered officers in Genom City's AD Police force. Genom, like in the rest of the BGC series of spinoffs is the only manufacturer of Boomer/Voomer androids/robots that has revolutionized technology worldwide and freed man from almost all menial labor and has a strong interest in the military application of their product and the profit that such a path merits. This Genom or rather, this Quincy, is a little different (aren't they all?) as his primary "thang" is the desire for immortality from fruit borne of this technology. Mason, as in Brian J. Mason the second-in-command of Genom from BGC, has the role of a thuggish antagonist for our heroes that floods the streets with Boomers for promising criminal enterprises.
Things in Genom City are getting worse everyday and the calls for the ADP are growing more frequent and things are escalating to a fiery end.

Unfortunately, the show is bogged down in so much shit that it's only saving grace is the english dub script and that's not going to save much.

Let's talk shittiness:

First of all, notice how they couldn’t help themselves from bastardizing BGC as much as possible and they wanted to make that clear as soon as the fucking show starts up? They didn’t have to fuck with innocent consonants swapping the B we all know so well and slapping a V in its place making Boomers into Voomers, but wait it gets better because they had to get cracking on installing acronyms for you ignorant sods still watching. I know that as a culture their collective “Engrish” is questionable, but that’s no reason to screw with words they can still find in print, but that’s only half the problem…
I can’t remember ALL of the elements involved in making “V.o.o.m.e.r.” (VOodoo Organic Metal Extension Resource) into an acronym, but before I blacked out with rage I saw that they started with the word “Voodoo.” Thus making Voodoo an essential part of these automatons that essentially run modern society. How the hell do you explain that shit? Is Voodoo supposed to be another acronym within an acronym? Is Genom packed to the rafters with Voodoo practitioners? Are shrunken heads a common accessory for Boom-I mean, Voomers? Do witch doctors specialize in Voomer repair? Are crystal balls part of the norm for working at Genom?

Which is ALL a moot point ANYWAY because they call them BOOMERS, not VOOMERS because apparently one consonant change makes them evil or rogue. Seriously! That’s the distinction! V is okay, B means you should already be running because the once peaceful robot that once sold you burgers is now going to crush/rape you with its robot tentacles and that’s NECESSARY to imply that they're berserk… you know… the TENTACLES. No rogue mechanoid is complete without 'em.

Whew. Glad I got that out there. Damn. I’d bother with the rest of the acronym but what the fuck else do you need when you’re starting things off with VOODOO?!


(An AWESOME fan-made trailer for ADP using the COPS opening theme song by… Aw hell, I don’t remember. You know… those guys with the… the thing?)


ADV Films billed this show as being a police squad room drama similar to Hill Street Blues or NYPD Blues, which was enough to make me buy it the day it came out, but it’s pretty far off from a remotely decent police drama. It possesses many of the stereotypes like “Dammit Kenji! I’d take your badge right now because you don’t play by the rules, but you’re best damn cop on the force! So I’ll just bluster, nag and be entirely useless as you dismiss every word I say!” Seriously, that line is almost verbatim used on him in the first episode and he walks away blowing off his superior officer who is begging him to be a "team player."
Then there’s the brooding with brooding sauce, the entire cast's weird-ass personal issues coupled with identity crises that shouldn’t be coupled together in a cohesive story and the simple fact that it drags like a bear's carcass being dragged across a desert by a drunken squirrel. Actually, it's not even THAT entertaining.

In a less judgmental response I’d say they just bit off more than they can chew and didn’t know how to attach all their separate genres they intended to merge into a single, cohesive gestalt narrative making it feel like 9 different shows reusing the same cast, but in my honest opinion the guys who made this are fucking idiots with poor impulse control as their grasp of drama is pretty slippery, but not as slippery as their grasp on decent animation (the show is ugly as sin) or competent narrative, pacing, character development, dialogue writing or any of the qualities required for telling a good story with complicated human drama with a man versus machine theme.

Let’s start at the top before I froth over and pass out from anger just thinking about this thing again…

1. The Police Element to a Drama: While I’m not going to try and focus too much on the original OAV of the AD Police there’s a lot of points I should compare, for one there’s the obvious connection to law enforcement (it’s in the title after all), which this series fails to really address except to repeatedly chastise the idiot protagonist that he’s not a COP per se or rather not a member of the “REGULAR police” and that he should act like a good mall cop and stop interfering with the efforts of the regular police force. If that is in fact the case, then the ADP crew should be acting like firemen and waiting around the station until something happens and a Boomer goes rogue. That’s not the case as they’re usually wandering around in the city when their pagers go wild and summon then to an emergency.
For the record, implying police drama means you’ll show investigation or… you know, POLICE work at some point. Basically, the only “drama” in the series is a direct result of actions taken by our protagonist such as causing incredible mayhem and breaking laws that he’s supposedly meant to enforce. He doesn’t investigate so much as wait to be called upon for duty where he can endanger his entire squad by ignoring orders and getting his partners killed. Again. Ultimately, the whole “police” thing is lost on the show and the attempt at securing a decent squad room drama is drowned out by inconceivably stupid plot points and every superior officer that our hero reports to chewing his ass out because he’s the worst cop ever. And he’s still not a real cop ANYWAY.

2. Turning off reality – So the opening scene in the first episode is a good enough place to start. Kenji is in plain clothes being so annoying that nearby teenagers mock him just for buying food with paper money, to return the favor he drags one of them screaming into a hostage negotiation taking place outside the burger joint with a guy holding an unlit pipe bomb. Let’s be clear on this, the actual “regular” police are hiding under cover waiting for a sniper to take their shot in order to ensure the safety of the hostages and Kenji drags a screaming woman past police officers who literally do NOTHING to stop him from interfering with the lives of an undetermined amount of people inside the building and those outside (including their own). No one even TRIES to stop him. Man, I can’t wash a car without somebody’s eyebrow raising and that in front of MY OWN HOUSE. How can this douche wander into the “danger zone” without someone tazing his ass and dragging him behind cover and cuffing him before he kills the poor girl he’s dragging and antagonizes the guy with the fucking bomb?!?

But naturally, it gets worse kids… So Kenji’s plan to have the girl stand in as this guy’s wife is blown when her hood flips up two steps in after Kenji pushes her towards the building that the suspect is sticking himself out of in plain, open view. The suspect, upon seeing that this woman is “too pretty” to be the wife he was screaming for, ignites the pipe bomb and flings it in Kenji’s general direction where Kenji SHOOTS THE BOMB in the air making it explode. Let’s put this in the proper perspective; from the burger joint you can make out the pipe bomb he’s holding as the suspect is on the second floor of a building across the street. I’m no bomb expert, but I’m guessing that his bomb is powerful enough to at least take out the entire room the suspect is standing in and if that’s true then EVERYONE involved in this scenario would be dead as disco.
I wish I were kidding; his solution was to SHOOT THE FUCKING BOMB IN THE AIR when it was closest to him, the poor girl, the suspect and his only visible hostage putting them in a blast radius of pretty much any small explosive. But magically, his bullet piercing the lit explosive did nothing to harm anyone involved because Kenji is just THAT good apparently.

Even taking the typical Japanese scifi tentacle thing into account, it doesn’t make sense that Boomers can merge with pretty much ANYTHING becoming randomly sized behemoths of devastation and that NO ONE thinks to step in and stop mass utilization of machines that will quite easily murder us all. I don’t mean the criticize, or maybe I do, but setting up a private military organization for the express purpose of dispensing with robot monsters that fail quality control inspection ALL THE TIME seems pretty backwards. Sure, in the BGC it happened and weird shit like absorbing metals, machines, weapons and calling down death from satellites in space were all the norm in BGC, but there were other cards in play like the fact that Genom’s claws were in the police, media and military keeping the public ignorant and docile. Furthermore, in BGC only specialized military boomers did shit like the ones in this show do when they go berserk driving cars, pumping gas or working at McGenom’s, so in Genom City your likelihood of death is remarkably high at all times and your insurance premiums are obscene. Nice place, right? Wrong. And shut up.


3. Style over substance – The whole show looks like something Masami Oobari (original director of BGC and legendary director of both fighting anime and giant breasts) would make if he were by himself and high on meth. They obviously decided to rip off his artistic flavor, but they didn’t work past stealing things from stills because the action is mind numbing and moves at a snail’s pace as they literally slide things across the frame instead of spending money to ANIMATE something. Their actions kick up a lot of dirt and smoke to hide their limbs so they don’t have to animate them and their smoke/dust/dirt is clumpy so they don’t have to add any depth to it (much like the rest of the show). Short cuts and budget cuts aside, the overly dramatic stills with flesh gleaming like everything attends body waxing and oiling every hour prompt a lot of appropriate questions directed at the sobriety of their art department. The weird poses people strike, which are AGAIN usually slid across a frame to keep costs down, like Kenji going from drinking his soda to having the straw dangling from his goofy face makes less sense than adding rockets to a badger. And shit like the straw happens ALL the time, especially with Kenji and his creepy girlfriend who is permanently attached to her violin. So you’ve got an entire cast of greasy-looking people who are extremely limited in motion, especially when they NEED to be moving which makes the entire series essentially send the message that “I’m all made up and I don’t want to muss my hair by running too fast.”

4. What’s in a name? – ADP followed the coat tails of BGC: Tokyo 2040, now as much as I will complain about Tokyo 2040 I was and still am thoroughly pleased with the show and how it ultimately handled the plot points left unresolved in the original OAV. ADP:S&P was supposed to be a new story in a new city and since I assumed they’d still do things like ACT like police I eventually accepted that Leon wouldn’t be a part of it and I prepared to welcome a new cast of character into my heart in the same way I accepted and enjoyed Tokyo 2040. These fuckers couldn’t be bothered to come up with anything too original so they grabbed at elements of the original BGC like fucking thieves and even stole two primary characters (Mason & Quincy) without making sense of the way they installed the items they had “borrowed” nor were they taking any extra effort to flesh out the things they had created.
The AD Police Files OAVs were all about humanizing the robots that the ADP had to put down. Their targets ranged from a modern day Jack the Ripper disemboweling prostitutes on a subway, to a “recreational” boomer with a corrupted memory that prompted her to seek love or revenge (she’s not sure) and even one of their own when he goes berserk. It was sad, tragic and every result was bittersweet at best, but they developed characters deeply on both sides of the fence making for a compelling story set in a horrifyingly rational world by comparison.
Also, it's a petty complaint, but it's one that I have to register even though it technically doesn't fall on the shoulders of this show: The name. A.D. Police was never really addressed in the original BGC, so Adam Warren took it upon himself to do so in the original comic he made calling them the Armored Defense Police and that was cool because it made sense and gave a reason for distinction that these are arguably POLICE OFFICERS which specialize in urban military-level situations. Cool! Then enter the Japanese... In Tokyo 2040 they reveal in a few points that the A.D. (which everyone will agree is what is known as an acronym, but if not for that DAMNABLE Voodoo this probably wouldn't be an issue) stands for "Advanced" and that makes them the "Advanced Police."

5. Saved by a dub? – The original show is boring beyond compare and leaves long pauses hanging over pretty much every scene. The localized English dub makes the show almost sufferable. It’s certainly enjoyable by comparison, but they can’t change the level of suck associated with the show already. The dub adds actual depth of character that didn't exist in the original Japanese show and the dub-script cheats to add additional dialogue filling in all those long pauses when you’re unable to see a character’s face and thus unable mouth moving, which is more often than you think (they pose away from the camera constantly) making for a comparatively well-spoken series. Sadly however, polish on a turd still leaves you with a piece of shit and ADP:S&P is nothing if not a giant turd.

6. A pale imposter - As a tacked on BGC/ADP spinoff, ADP:S&P sucks and sucks HARD. Worse than that, it misses the point and they KNOW what the point is! BGC's primary bread & butter is finding the humanity in things that we already know ARE NOT human. ADP Files did the same exact thing, albeit in a much darker and depressing fashion making you appreciate the sugary flair of BGC. ADP:S&P has neither the encompassing darkness of its predecessor nor the sugary flavor of the mother series, it TRIES to fall somewhere in-between with sugary crap like lollipop sucking bad guys, butch male cops drinking "'gina" drinks in what appear to be gay bars and engage in what are commonly known as "hissy fits" in full view of the public.
While I have to admit, the ADP Files had the perturbed notion of sexualizing each of the stories in the most horrible way possible in order to make the entirety of the story completely disturbing rather than partially. A boomer prostitute gone murder frenzy because the sex fried her brain, a cyborg with artificial sexual organs going kill crazy because she's mysteriously having her period and a cop who goes kill crazy because he's a brain with a tongue attached and the sense deprivation of being in a walking tank while being doped up like crazy as the scientist behind his resurrection dry humps him in lingerie... yeah, that's pretty freaking weird. But if you watch anime, this isn't anything that will phase you. Well, if you a really perverse and screwed up individual. But the point is that the OAVs never lost sight of what was important in this universe: Humanizing the inhuman. It's the theme that kept this franchise timeless and it's the same theme that keeps people buying different versions of Blade Runner. ADP:S&P doesn't really measure up to that at any time and they knew they were supposed to because of the idiotically lame twist at the end by unmasking certain characters as having been Boomers the entire time. They act like that's supposed to surprise us, which it does not and to be fair calling it a "twist" is going too far since during the first episode they teach you a few essential facts about Boomers in this universe and you come to suspect things about certain characters pretty quickly. The sad thing is how many characters AREN'T Boomers, so they have no excuse for being freaks. Sad.

I can't advise watching this, if you absolutely must watch it then rent it. Just don't pay YOUR money to buy it.


(closing credits for ADP:S&P, note them dragging the frame across still images... that's kind of a theme for the show and representative of their particular lack quality, IE: CHEAP BASTARDS! Not complaining about the choice of images, but that effect is essentially 70% of the show's allotted budget.)