Techno Police 21C

The plot consists of a chase of a hijacked MBT-99A tank, designed by the United States Air Force (which is odd, but will become the saviour of Eleanor, as she can be ejected before the tank explodes, like a fighter jet). The audience is expected to be enamored with this vehicle. At one scene when it looks like the tank is sure to get away, the background music turns into cocktail-lounge jazz and sparkly lights swirl around the tank. The tank carries six ATGM launchers (which Ken is somehow able to dislodge with minimal trouble, along with a piece of the turret, towards the end of the movie), three to each side of the turret, and a laser-based machine-gun-esque installment, in addition to its rifled main gun. The tank's treads are dual-mounted (the tread is split in half, making four sets of treads for the tank).

The employment of the laser, however, seems counter-productive to a machine-gun's mission, as it can only fire once every few seconds. If it can fire at higher rates, it does not do so, and tries to acquire a lock on its pursuer (Blader, in this case). This suggests a low ammunition capacity, unlike thousand-round-and-up machine-guns routinely mounted on modern tanks. It does not appear to have any effect on the road, either, which does not say much about its power.

Another tank involved is the MBT-90D, which are dispatched by the Army (or Air Force—the movie never makes it clear if it is a joint effort, although the general who arrives midway into the movie is shown riding in something resembling an ADATS) to take out the tank. Despite having at least a platoon of these, the MBT-99 still evades capture. The M-90Ds are armed with a three-barreled autocannon, the calibre of which may be around fifteen to twenty millimeters. The MBT-90D is equipped with three ATGM missile launchers, on the left side of the turret, and its main cannon is mounted on the front, instead of on a turret.

After the MBT-99's hijackers (who appear inside the tank after getting away from a recently-committed bank robbery), hired by a shadowy group, backed by a foreign nation seeking an edge in their military (the M-99 is presumably on its way to be tested at a separate base), are forced out by Ken and his team, Eleanor enters to study the tank, and it starts up on its own, having been programmed by the hijackers to head for a pier and drive off its end so as to rendezvous with an enemy submarine. The rest of the movie is made up of the chase through the city, resulting in the destruction of another bank (owned by the same corporation that built the first bank in the movie), and various collateral damage.

Matsuzaki, Kenichi Script, Screenplay

Yamamoto, Yuu Script

Hisaishi, Joe Music

Amano, Yoshitaka Character Design

Reviews

Jul 25, 2011

RazulDarkwood

Recommended

This was my first anime and what anime really it is!

Story 10/10 - The team of police men is gathered by an interesting way not only as a team but how they meet. The tank that they chase later on acts at times as if its alive even if its following orders.

Art 9/10 - The art is common for that time but most people today may not like it.

Sound 10/10 - The music is old style but its really enjoyable.

Characters 7/10 - The characters are well formed as personality and specially the robots, but i think that Vigorish could say something and not only stay ... silent and even its big its almost unnoticed in the whole story.

Enjoyment 10/10 - Even after all those years I still watch it on my computer and I plan to keep it for my children. :)

Overall 9/10 - I will give it 9 not 10 only because I was hoping for a remake or more episodes after all these years.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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May 6, 2020

jadedXotaku

Not Recommended

Sometime back rewatching the Bubblegum Crisis OVAs, I looked up who the character/mechanical designers were (something I'd surprisingly only recently started doing with anime), and learned that Bubblegum Crisis was initially conceived as an update of this 1982 film. A joint production of Toho, Artmic, and Studio Nue, Techno Police 21C is a bit of an early '80s curiosity. Supposedly it was an attempt at producing more adult oriented animation, it's kind of cheaply made, and despite the apparent deaths that occur, it still feels like a goofy children's cartoon. Which is made much worse by the English dub.

Taking place in a super futuristic ... city called Centinel City in the year 2001 (or at least that's what the English title card tells us), Techno Police 21C is about a "special vehicles squad", which is in fact just a team of three people, who each direct a man sized robot called a "technoid" to aid them in ending the crime wave that has plagued the city. While miracles of science, the technoids seem to only be programmed to smash things, but luckily they have the ability to learn and thus the Techno Police have to teach them how to socialize and become better cops.

Techno Police 21C (I suspect "21C" comes from the fact it takes place in the 21st century), is rather silly on it's own, but holy crap does the English dub ramp up the silliness. Dubbed in Hong Kong, the anime sounds like many a kung fu flick from that era, which is funny at first, but that passes pretty quick and makes watching a chore. Not to mention the dialogue being totally ridiculous, making something that was supposed to be geared towards adults feel like a joke. The mechanical designs are kinda cool in an early '80s sort of way though, but this is definitely not a hidden gem. While pretty awful, it's not entirely useless by virtue of it serving as the inspiration for what would become the significantly better Bubblegum Crisis years later.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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Jan 23, 2019

matthigh

Not Recommended

Welcome to....The Future!!!!! Or, at least how some people may have envisioned the future. And yes, it is even more ridiculous than you would have imagined. With strange-shaped, boxy Techno-cars, and weird Techno-weapons, and soaring Techno-buildings in a big Techno-city!

But mostly, it seems the future is all about the robots. Robots everywhere! Including the main character's partner, the clunky-but-lovable Transformers Guy.

Ah, but the Techno future setting to all of this is just the backdrop. The real gem of this movie is the story - the HILARIOUSLY bad story, that ... is. As easy-going country cop goes to the Big City, and there's this super-ultra-mega-powered tank that no one can stop, that is being chased all over the city, as they try to stop it. And, you guessed it, wacky hijinks ensue.

The artwork and animation quality is laughably sub-standard (comparable to, say Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs. Or Future Police Urashiman.), and this whole mess was made even more precious because I watched the wholly inappropriate and poorly done Hong Kong dubbed version. Which, I suspect, is probably the ONLY way to watch this -- because it sort of brings out the ridiculousness of each scene. Techno Police definitely falls into that rare "So bad it's actually fun to watch how bad it is" category.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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