Angel Cop

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
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Angel Cop is a six-part original video animation directed by Ichiro Itano, but due to the content of the anime, it's usually considered that the driving force of the anime is actually the writer Sho Aikawa. A manga adaptation written and illustrated by Taku Kitazaki was serialized in Newtype Magazine and reprinted as a Newtype 100% collection in 1990.

Plot in a nutshell: Jewish bankers (Americans in the dub) plot to turn Japan into a nuclear waste dump.

To elaborate: Twenty Minutes Into the Future, Japan's economy is so strong that it's linked to the global economy. This angers a communist terrorist group called "The Red May," who decides that the best way to make the world a more equitable place is to blow up as much Japanese infrastructure as possible. To combat these terrorists, a bunch of elite law enforcement officials licensed to kill are assembled. They include the title "Angel," a buff dude called Raiden, a couple of other token stereotypes, and Da Chief. Things take a turn for the bizarre when Raiden goes missing after one encounter with the terrorists, and then the terrorists themselves are being attacked and murdered by three powerful psychics called "Hunters." Raiden shows back up as a cyborg courtesy of a local friendly Mad Scientist, it turns out most of the government is evil, two of the Hunters join Angel and her team when they realize they're the unwitting pawns of a government conspiracy to somehow profit off of Americans dumping nuclear waste in Japanese territory.

The real reason to watch this anime is for the gunplay, the cars, the gruesome kills, the awesomely-animated displays of telekinetic power being thrown about by the Hunters, and the hilarious profanity in the dub.

Along with other "masterpieces" such as Mad Bull 34 and Urotsukidouji, is it directly responsible for the widespread belief in the early 90s that all anime was just "Gorn and Porn."

Tropes used in Angel Cop include:
  • Action Girl: Angel
  • Anime First
  • Anti-Hero
  • Black and Grey Morality: A lot of the supposed good guys do a lot of highly questionable things. Taki's torture of the Red May leader, in particular, is gruesome and blood-chilling, going above and beyond anything "necessary."
  • Blown Across the Room
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Lucifer, as it turns out, is really working for the real bad guys and is just killing everyone else to eliminate an evidence trail. She's been brainwashed into thinking that she's actually doing good. Taki suggests that eventually she'll break free of her conditioning and turn against the evil old guys in charge, but he's more willing to bet that Angel, Asura and Raiden can finish her.
  • Cluster F-Bomb
  • Cyberpunk
  • Decoy Protagonist: The title Angel doesn't get to do all that much until the finale, and that's because almost everyone else is dead or disabled.
  • Defector From Decadence: Asura and Freya
  • Dirty Communist: The Red May terrorist group
  • The Dreaded: Both the Special Security Agents and The Hunters are this to the Red May. The latter scares them more than the former to the point where some members are willing to surrender to the Former in hopes to get away from the latter.
  • Dubtitle: Since the original Japanese dub was deemed antisemitic and impossible to market in the west, the English sub and dub toned down the Jewish plot.
  • Dull Surprise: Hacker has this problem. A lot.
  • Don't Make Me Destroy You: Freya whenever she's using her powers. When she's got a terrorist cornered they are screwed, but when innocent people or authority figures are in the crossfire, she tries her hardest not to harm them and even warns them away.
  • The Eighties: The whole anime didn't age very well, but Asura and Raiden got the worst of it.
  • Enemy Mine
  • Engrish: Lucifer in the original
  • Film Noir: The dialogue draws heavily on a film noir influence
  • Friendly Sniper: Peace is more amicable than the super-bitchy Angel, but fully capable of blowing people away if necessary.
  • Gender Blender Name: Lucifer.
  • Greedy Jew: In the Japanese version. Not so much the English version.
  • Gorn
  • Hand Cannon: A gun so powerful it's got too much kickback for humans to safely use it (it was meant for cyborgs). Firing it risks breaking your hand.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Raiden
  • Heroic Sociopath: Angel, or at least she tries to be.
  • High-Pressure Blood
  • Hulking Out: Rare female example: Lucifer goes from silky-smooth to rippling once the gloves are off.
  • Japan Takes Over the World: Japan is a superpower, which is why it's frequently targeted by terrorists
  • Jerkass: Angel
  • Kill'Em All: The only named characters who survive the movie are Angel, Taki, and maybe Asura. To say nothing of the the nameless people who got sent to the slaughterhouse.
  • Lady of War: Lucifer, arguably.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: Emphasis on "ludicrous"
  • Knight Templar: Lucifer, definitely. Angel has shades of this.
  • Mad Scientist
  • Magitek
  • Meaningful Name: Asura (subverted in that Asura turns out to be a good guy, contrary to what his name suggests), Freya, Lucifer. And Angel, obviously.
  • Mind Rape: In the dub, Lucifer actually says the line "I will fuck your mind"
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Lucifer
  • Playing with Fire: Freya's power
  • Power Hair: Lucifer.
  • Pretty in Mink: Lucifer first appears with a huge fur cape.
  • Psychic Powers: Lucifer and Asura have telekinesis, Lucifer has some Telepathy in the form of a Mind Probe, Asura also has teleportation, Freya has garden-variety Telepathy and pyrokinesis
  • Psychic Surgery: Lucifer reaches inside her own body to set some broken bones at one point, and also inside other people's heads.
  • QUALITY
  • Red Scare
  • Theme Naming: The vigilantes
  • They Called Me Mad: The mad scientist who rebuilds Raiden chortles that those who laughed at his genius will now be destroyed by it! This is one of the few times we see a non-evil mad scientist spout this.
  • Torture Always Works: Actually, it doesn't. The Red May leader is tortured hideously, but only breaks when he finds out that three ultra-powerful psychic killers are on his tail.
  • We Can Rebuild Him: Played straight with Raiden.
  • Your Head Asplode: Angel makes her debut by graphically blowing the brains out of a terrorist all over the wall.
    • Lucifer inverts this once, by making every part of a man except his head explode.
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