Hakozume: Kouban Joshi no Gyakushuu

After graduating from high school, Mai Kawai's top priority was to find a job with a stable income to avoid turning out like her father. However, despite having taken a variety of civil service exams, she was faced with a harsh reality: nearly every institute denied her entry. The only place that accepted her was a police academy, which she reluctantly joined.

Even now that she is an actual police officer, the world continues to be cruel to Mai. Due to her profession, she unexpectedly receives constant criticism from disgruntled citizens. Disheartened by the hostile treatment, she decides to submit a letter of resignation after just a few months of employment.

But on the same day Mai chooses to quit, she meets Seiko Fuji—the former ace of the Criminal Affairs Division who is assigned as her new instructor. Finding her new coworker to be enchanting, Mai delays leaving and gives her uninspiring job a second chance.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Fuji, Seiko Main

Ishikawa, Yui Japanese

Kawai, Mai Main

Wakayama, Shion Japanese

Makitaka, Miwa Supporting

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Yamada, Takeshi Supporting

Tsuchiya, Shinba Japanese

Chief Higashiiwa Supporting

Kuroda, Takaya Japanese

Deputy Chief Supporting

Kobayashi, Kendou Japanese

Houjou, Tamotsu Supporting

Koyama, Rikiya Japanese

Minamoto, Seiji Supporting

Suzuki, Ryouta Japanese

Tanaka, Shou Producer

Watase, Shouta Producer

Ogata, Mitsuhiro Producer

Maruyama, Hajime Producer

Reviews

Jan 30, 2023

kchakrak

Recommended

Slice-of-Life police drama? Not sure how to describe this, but SoL is definitely part of it, and true SoL too. Outside of an ending arc these are individual stories about how hard it is to be a police officer told by a frankly hopeless cast of cops. Well, are they hopeless or brilliant? That's honestly part of the charm. Also, I don't know how true to life this is so I recommend taking it with a pinch of salt and not a true representation.

The characters are fun, not super fleshed out but they are enjoyable to spend time with and they do have unique personalities. ... The animation style is clean but on the budget end of things, beautiful isn't a word I'd use but distinctive is. The stories are fun for the most part, but it doesn't shy away from harder topics, though it also doesn't really dwell on them. Don't expect it to say much, just show you the situation and expect your empathy to do the rest.

Honestly on top of having a good time it reminded me just how hard and unforgiving being a cop anywhere is. Go in with empathy and I think you'll get a ton out of this one, more than you expect.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jun 15, 2022

Zanryu1337

Mixed Feelings

Hakozume (Police in a Pod) struggles with its identity a bit. It oozes the feel of a Saturday Morning Cartoon / Slice of Life show, but strangely enough it later reverts into a traditional anime story line. And within that, it doesn't really have the space to breath properly.

To row back a bit: Hakozume is somewhat sectionalized into three parts: the introduction, the middle, and the anime. All parts share some distinction thou. The general episode length is halved to around 11 minutes and they mostly encapsulate the protagonist Police Box Women Kawai and Fuji in their work.
And the introduction part in a good step ... in into their world and their personalities. But the show uses all its positive traits here.
The middle section is a big let down in terms of characterization. This is highly likely due to the fact that the setting and premise changes drastically. Instead of just doing police box work, which mostly was minor work, they almost always end up in the Criminal Affairs station and with their characters in one way or the other. Sadly, it only shows to me that the original premise wasn't really enough to stay interesting. This is also partly due to the fact that aside the main pair, no other characters from their police box is introduced, ever. This middle part also is the one which feels the most random and episodes tend to vary wildly in their contents.
The anime part (which in this case I would argue are the last 4 episodes) is where the renaissance of the show happens. And the starting flag for this is obviously the car traffic accident episode. It is a hard shift in tone in contrast to all episode before. And I commend it for finding itself in the dark abyss which is the police life. Such episodes are also good vehicles to contrast veterans and rookies. The earlier episodes did this as well, and the middle suffered from a tag-along syndrome where the rookie was thrown into problems our of her capacity with all veterans around her which mostly solved everything for her.
The last 3 episodes form the core of the anime part. In this section the show tries to forgo its 11 minute episode runtime as these form a coherent story. But they feels extra weird when the (22-minute) episode starts a review of what happened in the last (11-minute) episode which literally happened 1 minute ago. Nonetheless, the arc structure is highly beneficial for this kind of show which emulates a comedy/slice of life/sitcom as their drama can have more time to breath and build longer terms of suspension.

There isn't really much to talk about Hakozume in general. The starting story structure works in the small setting, hampers its growth in the middle part and abandon it completely by the end. Thus it is hard to see how a potential second season would play out. I could read the manga for it but the setting and the characters aren't that strongly developed to be this engaging. On that note, the adaptation seems to be extremely faithful to its origin in its content. The designs are somewhat changed from what I have seen, but it fits the characters better in that sense.
For the most part the art and sound compliment the scenes but never take the attention.

In total, Hakozume suffers from its roots and wants to evolve into something different. But the early decisions and an ever expanding core cast limit the potential the roots had to begin with. If the author would redo this whole season it probably would be a complete different thing.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jan 10, 2023

Nightscape00

Not Recommended

Had this been a pure police drama, I would probably be giving this anime an eight or nine right now. During the few times the anime strictly focused on the drama and dropped the jokes, it was quite good, but those times are so few and far between that it just highlighted how bad the rest of the show is.

The problem is that the anime has a bad case of identity crisis. It doesn't know if it wants to be a gag comedy or a serious drama. The anime will go from all out comedy one minute then become knee-jerkingly serious the next. There ... is no build up to the serious scenes and by the end they were even using jokes and gags during the serious parts. Considering the type of crimes and accidents this anime tackles, the jokes make the show seem insincere and juvenile - it felt cowardly, as if the writers and director were too scared to tackle serious crimes or accidents and were hiding behind poorly timed jokes.

The comedy was not very funny; some of the jokes, especially during the later episodes, come in at inappropriate times. Throwing in jokes and gags during episodes that discuss the assault of young girls felt very distasteful. Not only do the jokes take away from the seriousness and tone of the situation, it makes the Japanese police in this anime look incompetent and foolish, especially the protagonist.

By the end, I came to hate the Kawai. All she does the entire show is complain about being a police officer and how hard the job is. It's the police, it's supposed to be a difficult and demanding, selfless job. There is no personal growth in the series at all. She starts out hating her job and wanting to quit and it feels the same at the end as well. She doesn't do much the entire series. Instead, it’s those around her that actually do the heavy lifting. Who wants a superstitious, out of shape cop who is always scared and complains all the time as the protagonist?

Hakozume: Kouban Joshi no Gyakushuu is all over the place. It wants to be a bunch of different things at once; it reminds me of that figure of speech “jack-of-all trades, master of none”. Comedy-dramas are notoriously difficult to pull off as you have to time the dramatic scenes very carefully around the comedy and this one fails miserably.

3/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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