Angel Cop: Certainly A Thing That I Watched

Angel Cop is is a 1989 OVA. It is copaganda. Full stop. Why’d I watch it? I dunno. It seemed interesting. Anyways, in the traditional anime fashion, it starts off seemingly simple. At the time, apparently, Japan is caught between two opposing world forces. On one side, there was communists. On another, America. So, these Super Special cops, the SSF are recruited to fight…

…the communists, of course. Because the last time Japan fought Americans, bad things happened. Also, apparently, there are communists doing terrorists activities. I forgot to mention, this takes place in the then far flung future of 2001 (I think), so basically they did 9/11. So, the SSF is hunting down these communists, and they have a crack team of the Commander (who’s name I don’t remember), the XO (who’s name I don’t remember), Raiden (motorcycle cop who gets injured bad and turned into a cyborg – we’ll get to that), cute tech lady, and beefy demo expert who always has a knife on his vest for some reason (I think his name is Hacker?).

Now, while out on a mission, Raiden bungles stuff up with bad situational awareness, and then some new hot lady cop shows up, and up until this point, all the blood has been relatively tame. However, when the hot lady cop shows up, she’s all like “I’m a hot lady copy here to save your hot man ass, and I’m gonna brain this ugly commie chick before she brains you!” and then we see the communist lady’s brains.

The hot lady cop’s name is “Angel”. Title drop. Roll credits.

Later, Angel and Raiden go on a motorcycle chase for some communist terrorists? And… I just want to point out that at no point do the communists get to say what their goals or ideals are. They’re just communists and they’re violent. So you’re supposed to think that communism and violence are inherently linked. Never mind that Angel almost murders a child hostage later… but whatevs. The point is, there’s SO. MUCH. GOING. ON. IN THIS ANIME. Interconnected sublots and convos and who’s doing what and trying to pull one over on who and…

…then you get to the last episode and the SSF commander gets put under a truth serum and starts complaining about America being owned by “THE JEWS”. And Lucifer, who’s been terrorizing Japan for the whole OVA with “KILL” orders from some corporation and her own nationalist motivation (not Japanese nationalism, it never gets said, she just says Japan needs to remain for her country to survive) also complains about “THE JEWS” who own American who are coming to buy out Japan. And it’s like… which Jews supposedly own America? Where are they? Almost every landlord I have ever had has been either Catholic or Protestant. Almost every boss I have ever had has been some stripe of Protestant. Very few instructors in any educational institution I have ever been in would admit to being anything other than Christian. In some places, they’d go so far as to attempt to recruit IN THE CLASSROOM IN PUBLICLY FUNDED EDUCATION FACILITIES.

All that said, this came out in 1989 written by folks who OBVIOUSLY knew a thing or two about global politics and history… they had to know that Reagan and all of his supporters were rabid Christ-worshipping sycophants. They had to know at least some of the history of the Catholic and Protestant churches in Europe. The Inquisitions. The wrote a character with some of that savvy.

Watch it if you like 80s anime vibes and twisty character interactions and can suspend disbelief on what characters say with regard to political and character motivations. Be warned that if you aren’t paying attention to the character interactions, you won’t get it.

Also, Asura and Frea both deserved better. So did Lucifer if I’m being real. Fuck Raiden, tho.