ANI-MOVIES, *Techno Police

When Techno Police 21C first came out in 1982, it was one of the first anime titles to coin the "fighting crime in a future time" trope several years before the C.O.P.S. animated series was made. Animated by Studio Nue along with Wiz Corporation which would later become the anime staple studio Artmic, this film was of course made to sell a line of toys. The sci-fi action hustle was retitled Techno Police in several English markets as it was one of the earliest 80s anime films that got a dub done in Hong Kong along with several ninja movies, so there were numerous different distributors. The screenplay was by former-Godzilla director Yoshimitsu Banno who also went on to be an executive producer in the Monsterverse franchise, and at the same time this film premiered he wrote the script for The Wizard Of Oz anime movie. Upon first watch, modern day viewers might think that Techno Police was just using a bunch of cyberpunk cliches, but it does in fact set up much of those commonplace pinpoints that would flood the market through the late 80s-90s.

In the far-off year of 2001, a lesser dystopian future lied in store for Centinel City(yes, that's how it's spelled)which may or may not be in the United States. The major metropolis is the target of several hi-tech criminals, so a new branch of the police has been set up to counter this new breed of bad guy. The Techno Police has specialist officers teamed up with robot counterparts, and newcomer Jo meets his Technoid partner Blade to stop a robbery who literally steal the vault from a brand-new transparent bank that was supposed to be invulnerable to thieves. The same crooks later on get hired by an underground organization to steal a nearly indestructible tank that goes fully automated when its capturers are finally caught. Jo and his crew have to stop the self-driving tank from exploding when it runs out of ammo and has the only female Techno Police officer trapped inside it. The final battle oddly takes place in a submarine when the tank goes automatic again and blows the criminals' setup from the inside.

This movie was conceived by Toshimichi Suzuki who liked the idea of futuristic armored police when he later created the Artmic cyberpunk classic, Bubblegum Crisis, and all its various remakes and spinoffs. Techno Police is an uneventful affair with nothing but chase sequences and massive property damage which in no way would've been made post 9/11. If you wanted to see a little more urban destruction in all those shootout scenes in Transformers or G.I. Joe, then you might find some a tiny fragment of comfort here. Ultimately, this movie is a fragmented mess that might have started several anime action banalities, but they became more profound in later productions.