Shakunetsu no Nirai Kanai
Hard-Boiled Cop and Dolphin

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Have you ever seen an anime/manga where that has a series within a series(like a tv show) with a ridiculous premise? One I can think of is Kamakiri Man from Zatch Bell about a giant praying mantis with a human head that fights crime like a Saturday Morning cartoon. A concept so silly and ridiculous that you wonder how a series about it would play out on it's own. Shakunetsu no Nirai Kanai is pretty much that concept made into an actual series.

Coming from the mind Ryuuhei Tamura (Creator of Shonen Jump's Beelzebub), Shaknetsu no Nirai Kanai (Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin) is his next ... foray into Weekly Shonen Jump and the result is very similar to Beelzebub for his benefit.

The series starts off with it mainly being a comedy manga, with the absurdity of the idea of a Dolphin Cop being the main gag going forward. Jokes about dorsal fins, people questioning why he's a Dolphin, and nautical language (using Fishsticks as a substitute for "Oh shit") are the types of comedy you'll see early on. The fun is seeing how serious it's played by Orpheus and everyone just accepting who he is as a person as the series moves on.

To pair up with Orpheus we have our main character Samejima. Samejima is the early straightman to Orpheus and soon enough starts becoming a comedy machine himself. Making jokes, goofing around, and having some wonderful expressions while also being a badass cop. His character gradually shines more and more as the two of them start working together and caring for each other as a team.

The third anchor for the story would be Chako, a little girl who is viewed as an Oracle to a cult and is Orpheus' daughter. She has mystical powers but generally is seen doing this to turn sealife into half human hybrids, and at a certain point helping Samejima breathe underwater. She's playful, innocent, and cares for both Same and Orpheus and is a center point for the story.

Without giving too much away the plot later involves Undersea Gangs who want to kidnap Chako, and these gangs also involve Human/Sea Creature hybrids. This is where Tamura's experience from Beelzebub comes into play making some very fun fight scenes that got a ton of that classic "Real life element explained in the manga to make the fight cooler".

As of the time of writing the series has had a pretty big plot point happen with a new big bad showing up. It's going into the battle direction but still is maintaining it's ridiculous concept so that end I've been enjoying it.

Before I wrap up I'd like to say the setting for this series being a small tropical island is a fantastic choice. It allows for some really good looking setpieces, one fight in particular I loved took place underwater near a barrier reef and the shading and lighting from the sun through the waves really added to the atmosphere.

All in all as the series is still going on I'd recommend it. The beginning is full of your usual comedy, but don't let that dissuade you as the story becomes much more shonen/action filled as it progresses and it surprisingly works.

To sum up this story I would say for every good idea it had there was an equally bad one. Shakunetsu no Nirai Kanai was cancelled within a year of publication so that says a lot about the overall story. It's a miracle that the author was able to complete the tale with just 47 chapters. If you read the manga, the answer to the question why was it cancelled so early becomes fairly obvious.

Like I said for every good idea the story had there was a bad one. Let's start with the good ideas. Dolphin cop raising a little girl on a remote ... island that is home to a sea worshipping cult with magic ocean powers. That is definitely one of the more interesting settings and a premise with a lot of mystery and potential. You had strong characters with stronger personalities and stronger muscles. Even a unique fighting system and a lot of research into aquatic physics and biology. At the stories core, it was a shonen with a lot of potential that really nailed the shonen jump formula.

Of course then comes the bad and honestly borderline amateur ideas and concepts the story used. The biggest flaw comes with the hardboiled cop motif. Reading the story made me think that the author did not have a good grasp on detective genre or cop stories. Everything was resolved either too easily when it came to the actual police work or just became overbearing. The "I'm a cop and uphold the law" dialogue and mindset became a hinderance at times of high tension. The second biggest issue was the character of Chaoko, the young girl. Her entire power from the beginning was one of those ideas that was never properly fleshed out and made little sense no matter how many times it was explained. Honestly it was a bad idea from its inception and it was too late to change it. The third were the mermen species. This one was poor and unimaginative given that the merfolk were humans gangers that would sprout weird fish like appendages from strange places. Even the underwater setting was just modern Japan under water. There was nothing unique or creative about it. Zero thought went into the merman culture, city, or anything. There are several other minor things within the story like someone playing incorrect notes in a song. Nothing that disrupts the story but you notice. There were a lot of silly fourthwall breaking and dump jokes that struck as the work of someone who didn't know what to write so they gave in to the temptation of breaking the fourth wall.

Of course since the chapters of the series was limited and had to be finished so quickly, the ending, while complete, was rushed. The final fight was extremely quick and you can tell where the author knew it had end quickly. While I am glad the story had a ending, I was neither happy with the ending and honestly wanted to see the story continued to be fleshed out and continue on with all the characters.

At the moment when this title started I was thinking, ‘why aren’t any (good) mangas about cops. That’s kinda a market hole… hmm’. And a little bit later there it was, ‘Hard-Boiled Cop and Dolphin’! I was really hyped, especially when I saw it was made by Ryuhei Tamura, the author of the successful ‘Beelzebub’ (which I haven’t read or watched) from which I heard a lot of good things about. Sadly, this hype died very soon but I hoped for something better until the end, which never came.

Short version
- Overall (5/10):
This manga definitely failed at the beginning, with missing pre-building and introductions and the ... short/bad written buddy-cop principle. Too many characters and the unsuccessful attempts to change the genre dulled the greatly written mystery story. However, it has its moments, the story is told and not ended abruptly, while Chako (the little girl) puts her childish energy again and again into it to push the story further, create funny moments and shake your heart at the correct time.

But let us dive deeper!

Long version
-Story (4/10):
This manga struggled a lot at the beginning and tried a lot of genre mixes which was definitely the reason why it dried out. The problem is that buddy-cop stories work the best if they have enough humor and/or action and a good chemistry between the 2 main cops. The action and humor were mostly missing… It started with a good mix, but after the first ‘He is a human, but has a dolphin head and sometimes does dolphin things’, the impact of the jokes calmed the waves. While the action, which was often just some underwhelming gunshots and punches, was barely existing like the survival chances alone in the open water. These failed genre parts drowned the interesting and steadily working mystery part, which contained humans evolving into fishmen, mystical powers, weapons and creatures as well as an evil cult trying to reach their goals. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

But as I said, it fought for its life like a fish in a net. The author saw the weak action-comedy and tried to put a bit of ecchi, slice of life, wholesome and even romance (?) in it, but these attempts were just confusing and weakened the good mystery part and lost its readers. To be clear, for a really good mystery manga (or else), you need a lot of prebuilding and introductions to unfold its core step by step. And these were missing just to put unconceptional things in it! For example: Some strange fishman attacks the people! But don’t worry, it got arrested… So maybe we should investigate this? Meh, the next chapters are about finding a new apartment! Or about some delinquents trying to impress the female cop, but in the end it is totally enough just to see her bra… Or introducing a bunch of characters 2 whole chapters long (of around 50) where maybe one was truly relevant?! Come on! What a marine pollution!

At the end, this dolphin in the net was already dead before it got catched, due to irrelevant waste in this mystery ocean… And even a hard-boiled cop wasn’t enough to stop the junk before it got thrown into the deep water…

- Art (5/10):
As it tested different genre parts, at the end the typical ‘battle shounen’ remained… Which I understand, because one of the best chapters were, when the fishmen got arrested with some nice action. But most of the fights were totally unsatisfying. For the typical ‘battle shounen’ you need a lot of creative powers, weapons, magic, transformations or at least something! And I know, there are people who don’t like that, but if you focus on the fights, you need these things to get excited for them! And these are best shown in the art. Creative designs for the villains or the different powers are almost a must have. And yes, we get fishmen and kind of water kung-fu or whatever, but these are mostly underwhelming.

Want an example? Sure: There is fishman 1, who looks like a normal person with strange skin. Okay. Fishman 2, looks like a normal person, but with strange teeth. Hmm… Fishman 3, looks like a normal person, but with strange eyes… Or our main villain looks like a normal person… That’s all! Holy sea cow! How uncreative is that? Yes, for normal people the fishmen look scary or rowdy, but they are supposed to be some ocean-creature human hybrids! The ‘special’ powers were poor too. For example: a breathing technique underwater to be drawn exciting is damned to fail. The fights per se lack the dynamic moves. You can create a battle manga without inhuman powers, like a martial art type, but if your characters are static, you won’t catch the readers' attention. Again an example: If your super one-hit k.o. attack is just to put your hands together and create a boom, then nobody will care at all! It’s too weak compared to titles like ‘Black Clover’ or else.

So yes, this forced ‘battle shounen’ elements failed completely, especially with this weak illustration. But it is supposed to be a mystery manga, so how are the backgrounds and the settings?... They are fine. I mean, we are on an island far from a big city where nothing amazing happens. So you won’t get fired up, but it is good. It looks like a small nice village. While the sea- and underwater life are greatly illustrated. What about the character designs?... They are fine… I mean, yes, they are uncreative for some fish-human fusions, but the illustrations of the humans are… okay. The female characters more or less look all the same, especially the ‘white’ haired ones, while the male characters show some diversity. Looking at the two and a half main characters (Hard-boiled, Dolphin and the little girl), they have a solid design. Nothing extraordinary, but good.
Overall, it definitely lacks creativity, especially for the villains, but everything else is solid and good.

- Characters (4/10):
Continuing with the characters. They may don’t look too interesting, like a youtube aquarium video, but maybe they have something beneath that? Sadly, no. Like I mentioned in the story part, without pre-building or introductions or at least, for Poseidon's sake, a backstory, they are just randoms tossed in the ocean… Especially in the last 10-15 chapters. We suddenly get more than 10 characters, but you could not tell more than 2 facts about them, except for 2. But even the female cop, introduced at the beginning, is just there! At least at the very end we get some backstory and closure for 2-3 characters… out of 50 or so...

Of course, the problem is it was too short, but you can’t make interesting characters without their backstory, or some introduction, then it’s not the fault of the length… If you would focus more on a bunch of them, before putting new ones in, the readers may have stayed.

But okay, look at these 2-3. As I mentioned, one of the crucial parts of a buddy-cop story is the chemistry between the 2 cops. And here is the most disappointing thing! At the very first, they were like oil & water. But just a few chapters later they were like two identical characters just one of them has a dolphin head… So one of them is totally unnecessary, however, the dolphin has to be there for the mystery line… Which is swamped by filler like chapters… So I can totally understand those people who dropped that after 10-15 chapters. However, one glimpse of hope was the ‘half’ character, the little girl Chako! Due to her childish attitude she not just created chaos and pushed the story further, she also refreshed the wholesome, heart-shaking and comedy parts. Especially at the end she catches the reader and saves us from the plastic ring of ‘who cares?’

- Enjoyment (7/10):
This will sound strange, but even if the manga failed in many sections, I enjoyed it a lot! Mostly because of the mystery part, which I really wanted to know and was well written! The mangaka definitely had a good concept in his mind. The hard-boiled main character was cool too and the little girl adorable. Also in a not ‘battle shounen’ viewpoint the action was good enough for the arresting parts. And the fishmen were uncreatively designed, but they still had their epic (few) moments. So I could ignore the micro- (and sometimes macro) plastic junk in our dolphin, but a lot of people won’t and that’s totally okay.

Altogether I would say: give it a try! If you are hooked, nice! You will enjoy it, because the quality is mostly stable, but if you don’t like the bait, ignore it and keep swimming, just keep swimming...

The pandemic affected everyone in different ways. For me, it meant that all my college friends started watching anime. Which is great, but no longer my medium of choice. I picked up Hard-Boiled Cop and Dolphin on a whim with the one friend I'd managed to successfully beg to join me in reading a new manga. I knew it was being forced to end, but I'd heard it was wacky and an enjoyable ride. I don't think another manga has made me laugh faster and more often.
Hard-Boiled Cop and Dolphin gives the reader exactly what they want in a comedy: A ridiculous premise, a ... memorable cast of characters, fun shenanigans, and an interesting idea for a greater story. It does suffer due to what feels like a rushed ending, but unfortunately the manga industry is a cold mistress to many series.
It's a shame Jump canceled it before it really got off the ground.
8.2/10