Cosmo Police Justy

Wow! 80’s Sci-Fi cheesy feast anime at it’s best.
When you look at the cover you make an idea out of what you might find inside of the OVA and it is indeed really all of what you had anticipated.
If you re into eighties sfi-fi anime and old sfi-fi in general and if you enjoyed the cover, you’ll certainly enjoy the content.

I did enjoy pretty much everything in this OVA, the character designs, the characters themselves (they were not outstanding characters but they did fit their roles well), the “1985” very good animation, the story was a straight story and did well for it’s 43 minute ... run, the concept could have been better elaborated if we had more time, but it’s still okay. The music was excellent 80’s music for this kind of stuff, especially near the end, I guess the soundtrack is discontinued since way back, because I’d love to hear the full OST out of this title.

The only bad thing was the running time. It was too short in it's 43 minutes run. You just can help it but feel unsatisfied when it reaches the end. It's a pity that it hasn't been made into a full feature film, otherwise we would have a very good eighties anime flick here.

There were some aspects that made me remind of 1980 “Terra e…” Film, Justy himself looks a lot like Blue. He is a strong esper and has the same blue hairstyle and is probably a strong esper like Blue was in his most strong days. The art style is also pretty similar and the character design of the rest of the characters are similar too.

A curiosity about this is that Justy was released as a double feature with Area 88, another excellent OVA of the eighties, so you might get a clue on the quality you’ll find inside.

Rate: 7.7/10

When growing up as an anime fan, I was raised off of extremely bad one-hour OVAs from the late 1980s to the early 1990s licensed from Manga Entertainment or Central Park Media. So, when my brother downloaded this rare sci-fi OVA from around that time period of the aforementioned OVAs, I actually felt excited. Why? I'm one of those people who revel in that kind of animated garbage. Say what you will about "M.D. Geist", you have to admit it is one of the funniest OVAs you will ever see. To my disappointment, "Cosmo Police Justy" left a shallow taste in my mouth. I yearned ... for ultra-violence and inexplicable sex scenes but this 43-minute OVA fails to deliver. Bah, I'll just go ahead categorize my thoughts for you guys.

Story:
This OVA is so obviously based off of a manga that far expands the story, and lo and behold, I was right. This was based off of a pretty short-lived manga published in Weekly Shonen Sunday by a seemingly unknown author (and by unknown, I mean that I haven't bothered to research the subject). The story is surprisingly not all TOO clichéd, but that doesn't mean it leaves an extremely deep impact on the way I view animation as an art form. It gets a while to get going, and then it goes for about 10 minutes. Then, sometime around the climax, the story just seems to totally fizzle out and we come to realize how one-dimensional this entire OVA truly is.

Art:
Now, one good thing that can be said about this OVA is the animation. Yes, kiddies, back in the day, Studio Pierrot actually gave two shits about the animation in their properties. For example, when Justy and his trusty (hur hur) companion Borba dock at the cosmo police headquarters...man, that was the exciting docking scene I've seen since the original Star Wars. And it was a totally mundane docking procedure, imagine if explosions were involved and stuff! The fight scenes are also slickly executed here, with espers flying around in rich detail without having to resort to the good ol' "going so fast that the normal human eye can't see them" trick.

Sound:
It's the 1980s. The sound effects are therefore awesome.

Character:
THIS is where the OVA truly shines. Extremely rich and detailed characters abound here, people! First we have Justy, an esper who's the best at what he does who wishes to protect his newly adopted sister. Then there's Astaris, the ever-so-insanely cute sister of our hero. Her father was killed by Justy and this incident awoke her powers that magically (psychically?) turned her into a full-grown girl who still has the mind of a 6-year old, but packed with enough psychic powers to make Mewtwo blush. But she's sooo cute....just look at that face. Next up is Borba, Justy's comrade who can't stop thinking about work as evidenced in the witty line of dialogue: "Oh Borba, you can't stop thinking of work, can you?" There's Jelna, Justy's sister by blood who....does....something, doesn't she? Then there are the bad espers who wanna take down Justy by reactivating Astaris' powers after somehow finding out that he had taken her in sometime after Astaris had proceeded to kill Justy in the past. Grade-A characters right there.

Enjoyment:
As stated earlier, I REALLY wanted this to be ultra-violent, but Cosmo Poilce Justy settles for being the pacifist among the obscure 1980s OVA crowd. When people are shot IN THE HEAD, do they bleed? Somehow, no. This is an OVA, Pierrot. You can get away with so much more than you could on television. Plus, when Justy disposes of his victims, they either crumble into ash or their heads flash uncontrollably. Lame, me want blood now. I also really wanted to see randomly placed nudity somewhere in here as well. I mean, Astaris' clothes rip perfectly after her transformation into an adult. You see nothing at all, not even the tip of her butt crack. This OVA plays it too safe. Although you might think these complaints are weird, there's a certain enjoyment I have in watching ultra-violent 1980s OVAs with random nudity. It's just nostalgic.

Overall:
So, yeah, my tastes are probably a lot different than all of yours. If you guys dig obscure 1980s OVAs (why else would you be on this database entry and reading this review?), then you just might get a kick out of this. However, I couldn't get past the lack of guts this OVA had to go further than what television could. Sure, it's got a pretty rocking soundtrack and some slick animation (plus hilariously cardboard characters) and there is some fun in watching all that. But the story gets dull after a while, and all I wanna see when that happens is heads blowing up in gory fashion, not flashing like a strobe light.

Yeah...my tastes are definitely weird.

My God this ova Jawn is ridiculous, words cannot describe the asininity that is this ova. This “film” is only 43 minutes long and is available on youtube, which is probably this anime’s main selling point. I found this “series” because, a while back, I made a habit of watching these terrible, retro anime films on youtube at 2x speed while I practiced tech skill in Smash Bros Melee (yeah I am in that fandom). So, naturally , this “cancer” was prime real estate for my viewing pleasure. And, unlike all the other terrible 80s films I’ve ... watched, this one somehow managed to get a four instead of a two out of ten.

I just want to make it clear, this film is terrible. If you don’t take my word for it, watch it--with 2x speed it is only twenty plus minutes. I believe the films’ lack of quality will speak for itself, but if it doesn’t feel free to fight me on it (another_Fiend#2240). Here is my discord, if you’re brave enough, give me a call anytime <3. Since I know you won’t, I’ll instead talk about the value this show has and why I think people should take time out of their lives to watch this in 2019 (or any year plus).

There is this idea that goes around in many different art fandoms (anime, music, films, etc…) that asserts a time period or style is better than another without fully looking at the individual works. I distance this line of thinking because of how, by nature, the idea generalizes vague traits and similarity rather than looking at things more deeply. For example, if we were to talk about dad rock in a generally sense, it would assert that Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel are in the same category of music, despite their music being very different. Under the same logic, saying retro anime asserts that Akira is in the same category as Cosmo Police, despite the works being as different as night and day.

With that being said, I hate it when anime fans make opinions of retro anime as a whole without looking at the individual titles. I’m sure we’ve all heard someone Albert Einstein say “Retro is better than modern.” Retro anime might seem better than modern because when we think about old shows, we think of the classics: Eva, Akira, Legend, Gunbuster, Berserk, Angel’s Egg, FLCL, and the list goes on. But what we don’t remember is all the garbage that came out alongside them. Modern anime seems so bad now because we are seeing first hand all the trash that airs, whilst bad retro shows get forgotten.

Which brings me to Cosmo Police Justy. This is one of the terrible retro shows that time has forgotten. This is the show that the elites who think retro is better than modern has definitely never seen, and there are many more bad examples like this. This “cinematic masterpiece” is just another overpowered MC protecting his waifu and beating up some ugly bad guy. And since this show is retro, this all takes place in space and everyone has psychic powers. And by the way, his waifu is this b!tch who sounds just like the b!tch from eromanga, except she’s been saying “Uni-chan” like a mentally disturb loli 30 years before it became cool.

Overall, this film is not good. But I do think people should take twenty plus minutes out of their day to give it a watch just to see that loli’s yelling for their brothers is an ancient art that has its roots diving deeper than most normies could ever imagine. I ended up giving this a four instead of a two just because the main girl was really cute--what can I say, I want to protect that smile too :). But the jawn was still bad though.

If you like the obscure anime talk, then check out my twitch (I have a working link on my MAL profile). I play melee and also do live anime discussions/analysis. But regardless of what I'm doing, if you hit me up in the chat with anything, may it be an insult, critique, or something dumb, I'll happily respond. Have a nice night. cheers.