Nov 3, 2020
The 80s was a big time for the cyberpunk and futuristic genres and mangas like Akira and Ghost in the Shell are fantastic and became classics with the releases of their film adaptations, while other works became cult classics like Bubblegum Crisis (which is affiliated with AD Police but you would never know by reading just this manga) and others like AD Police were just forgotten or never found.
Story:
The story is set 32 years after Tokyo was destroyed by a giant earthquake (Tokyo is like New York for mangas, always getting destroyed by something) and we follow the AD Police a special squad
...
for stopping Boomer crimes. The first couple chapters and unrelated and are showing us how the squad do their job and how chaotic and damaging it can get. After that it shows us what I can say is the main plot of the story in how a Boomer tries to become a God and tries freeing the “souls” of all other Boomers so they can become the next evolutionary step after mankind. The main problem I have with the story and in general with the manga is the length. It’s way too short with 9 chapters and 12 pages per chapter the only exception being the final one. It has somewhat of a theme at the end asking if machines are the next step in evolution after humans, but with no time to explore it or even see how our characters feel about it was a bit flat.
Characters:
The main characters here, Leon and Gina didn't do much for the majority of the story. More so Leon as he had little to no impact on the story, while Gina did in the last chapters, with her trying to be a foil to the terrorist plans as well as the Boomer trying to become God. Gina also had enjoyable personality and a was fun, while Leon had close to no personality which could have been fixed with 5 to 10 additional chapters.
Art:
The art was good, clean and it had for a me a bit of Akira vibe to it. It did its job and was enjoyable but nothing outstanding or groundbreaking.
Final Thoughts:
The main problem I had with AD Police was it’s short length, it was an enjoyable manga but it could have been so much more with 5-10 more chapters, have a bit of development for Leon and show us how the characters actually feel about the world they live in. I wanted it to show me more about itself, as the premise although seen before (a lot of Bladerunner vibes with the Boomers) was interesting could have been a lot more. I feel it had a lot of missed potential that could be addressed in Bubblegum Crisis which I have yet to watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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