AD Police (Japan 1999)

Rating: *
Review Date: 7/14/08

Divided into twelve installments.

Another spin-off of Kenichi Sonoda's groundbreaking cult classic, "Bubblegum Crisis," but this one turns out to be really awful. The Advanced Police (AD Police) exist to deal with Boomer crimes and other acts of cyber-terrorism that the normal police aren't equipped (or sanctioned) to handle. This series follows the adventures of a group of AD Police officers with a hot-headed loner named Kenji at its core. Unfortunately it's all rather boring and uninteresting, but its worst crime is that it's visually unattractive due to really bad animation and low production values. The character designs are unusually ugly and everyone's mouths are situated at awkward and bizarre angles. The mecha design is poor and the animation is sub-par. On top of that, it tries to combine CGI elements with traditional hand drawn cel animation with hideous results. Remember in the early 90's when 2D morphing effects were considered cool and cutting edge? This show uses a lot of that, even though it was an outdated and unimpressive technique when the show originally came out. I only managed to make it through one episode before turning it off in disdain, so it may actually improve in later episodes like many anime series do. However, given what I saw and how completely disappointed I was, I have no interest in finding out.