Anime DVDs You May Have Missed: “Kochikame the movie”

Japanese Title: Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Koen-mae Hashutsujo The Movie (This is the Police Station in Front of Kameari Park in Katsushika Ward The Movie)
Publisher: Pony Canyon (Japan)
Format: Region 2 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English and Japanese Subtitles
Length: 95 minutes
Production Date: 1999
English Version Release Date: 19 July 2000
Currently in Print (as of writing): No

Good for nothing middle aged police officer Kankichi Ryotsu (or Ryo-san to his colleagues) has been chosen via computer as a “robber” for a drill at a local bank. But due to Ryo's nature he has decided not to follow the script and make the drill much more “realistic” by stopping staff from setting off the alarm and actually taking wads of cash from the bank. This horrifies everyone including his robbery partner and police officer, the long suffering Yoichi Terai. After Ryo deliberately lets Yoichi get splattered with a paint dye bomb so he can grab the bank's money, he escapes giving his waiting colleagues the slip. However Ryo happens across a real bank robbery in progress. The two bank robbers have taken one of the employees hostage. Ryo fires blanks at both the robbers from a machine gun that had been confiscated from a gang the previous week. The robbers are shocked and drop their weapons, which gives the waiting riot squad a chance to arrest them. But Ryo's commanding officer, Daijiro Ohara, is as per usual livid at him.

There is no time for Ryo's punishment as the robbers have left a time bomb behind which has five minutes until it detonates. Ryo rushes in to defuse it, but ends up entangled in its wires. He attempts to commandeer a passing bus in an attempt to have the device explode in a safe place, but the driver refuses to leave. The bus cuts a swathe of destruction through the city and eventually ends up on its side to avoid hitting a temple. Luckily for Ryo, the station's motorcycle cop, Hayato Honda, was following the bus and they make a beeline for an isolated spot where Hayato unceremoniously dumps Ryo and flees. Ryo makes a futile attempt to remove the bomb from himself and then neutralise it, with the only result being that his pants fall down. Much to the surprise of everyone, a helicopter lands and young woman exits who cuts one of the wires stopping bomb from exploding.

Later the next day, Ohara is chewing out Ryo, but he makes an excuse that he should be on patrol and quickly rides off with his boss continuing to shout at him. Unfortunately for Ryo the townsfolk have heard of yesterday's incident, one in a very long line of disasters for Ryo, and the townsfolk criticise him as he rides along the road. So to avoid them he cycles out further to he gets to Ueno park. There he reminisces about his childhood days spent there until he discovers that the temple in the park has been replaced by a gaudy hotel. Disgusted at it, Ryo throws a small rock at it, and much to his surprise the entire building collapses. However this disaster wasn't Ryo's doing for once. It is the work of Bentan Mask, a mysterious terrorist who gave a warning via the internet of his intent to destroy the building. The department has invited Lisa Hoshino from the FBI (the same woman who defused Ryo's bomb) to help investigate the crime and to help thwart any future attacks. Ohara orders Ryo to attend Lisa's lecture on dismantling bombs, in which the disinterested Ryo falls asleep in. Lisa punishes him by programming her bomb defusing robot, Dandy, to dismantle his chair, which sends the sleeping Ryo crashing to the floor. Incensed at this, Ryo challenges Lisa to duel with his homemade robot, Densuke the 28th. Naturally Ryo's poorly made and odd looking robot loses.

Lisa's lecture turned robot competition is interrupted by an emergency callout. Bentan Mask has sent another waring to the police. This time his target is the Shinatora Moonlight building and it will be bombed at midnight. Like the previous hotel complex, this one is owned by the Shinatora Company. The police have hypothesised that Bentan Mask may be out to get company CEO Torazo Shinatora. He has suspected links to criminal activities, but has managed to dodge any charges that have been levelled at him. Much to Ryo's disgust, Ohara has ordered him to be Lisa's partner on this case mainly because no one will miss him if he's killed by a bomb. Upon arriving at the building, the reluctant partners find charges in the pillars inside the building, and then search for the timing device. However due to Ryo previously kicking Dandy several times, the robot’s drive shaft is broken and it cannot reach the timer. Ryo lifts the heavy robot above his head, but slips which causes the robot to short circuit the timer advancing the detonation time to just 40 seconds. Lisa, Dandy and Ryo escape in the nick of time as the building is reduced to a pile of rubble. However the police spot a safe in junk pile that was once the Moonlight building. Inside are hundreds of thousands of yen in banknotes and Torazo is arrested on suspicion of tax evasion.

Despite the positive result in charging Torazo, Ryo is yet again chastised by Ohara. Ryo believes it is all Dandy's fault and breaks into Lisa's trailer to graffiti the robot. Unfortunately he is caught red handed and even after viewing closed circuit TV footage of him writing on the robot, he claims that someone who looked like him broke in and committed the crime. Ohara can't take anymore and confines him to the police dormitories for two weeks. Ryo's work colleague, the young, rich and handsome officer Keiichi Nakagawa, visits him and is utterly astounded to find him digging a tunnel underneath his room. He says that according to a magazine article he read (actually from a 1968 issue of Shonen Jump) that a shogun's gold is buried somewhere below. Keiichi has to leave Ryo to his own devices as Bentan Mask has sent another warning. This time it's an industrial area owed by the Shinatora Company. Lisa and Dandy are about to go in to find and defuse the bomb. But a worse problem arises when a group of children tell them that they were playing hide and seek in the building and one child cannot be found.

Luckily Ryo who has been digging all this time manages to dig through the floor of the industrial area and finds the child. Meanwhile Lisa quickly defuses the bomb. However in the child was trapped under a number of large pipes. In order to save the child Ryo removed all of the pipes, which somehow weakened the whole structure of the industrial area. It begins to topple and promptly falls apart around them. But all three of them manage to escape via the tunnel Ryo had dug. As a result the Shinatora Company is in trouble again with the law again as due to its destruction, the industrial area is revealed to be hiding an illegal toxic waste dump. The incident has also led to some within the police department to be suspicious of Lisa as so far she has been unable to stop any of Bentan Mask's bombs.

Oddly, like a number of the most popular and highest rating anime on Japanese TV, "Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Koen-mae Hashutsujo" (shortened to "Kochikame" by fans and later the producers of the show) has been pretty much ignored by fans in the west. One of the main reasons for this was the TV series never got a release on Laserdisc or even a later release on DVD. Therefore in the mid to late 1990's when this show was released, the fansubbers didn't bother with it. It's a shame as the show is really funny. To back up just a bit, the "Kochikame" TV series which ran from June 1996 to December 2004 for a total of 367 episodes (though there was a one off anime special created in 1985), is based on an extremely popular manga by Osamu Akimoto. The manga ran continuously in Shonen Jump from September 1976 to September 2016 which made it the longest ever running manga without a break. It has reached a total of 200 volumes of manga and sold over 157 million copies. Never heard of it? Can't say I'm surprised. For some reason a lot of the extremely popular mainstream manga and anime never make it in the west or are complete flops. Hence the reason why you can't buy “Sazae-san”, “Chibi Maruko-chan” or “Doraemon” on DVD in English (except for a couple of movies released in Hong Kong) or see them on TV. I think for the most part they're "too Japanese". It's much easier to market sci-fi or fantasy anime which have universal concepts and storylines.

Though the story picks up some three years into the anime's broadcast run, for the most part you can watch this film without knowing anything at all about the series. First we have Kankichi Ryotsu, or Ryo-san, a lazy, undisciplined mono-brow cop who would rather think up get rich schemes and play around rather than do any real police work. In fact he's always getting himself and his other colleagues in trouble or difficult situations. The storylines usually revolve around Ryo inventing a new gadget or some other money making scheme and pulling rich boy police officer Keiichi Nakagawa into help when he's in financial dire straits. Other characters which regularly feature (but aren't all that important to this film) include Reiko Akimoto, a half French, blonde and busty lady police officer, and like Keiichi also comes from high society. Also in order to understand the final reel of the film, I have to make mention of the character Ai Asato or Maria as she known to work colleagues. Maria is a transvestite police officer who loves Ryo, but obviously the feelings aren’t mutual. Excusive to the anime are two young female police officers Komachi Ono and Naoko Seisho. As you can tell from this film they both love to tease and ridicule Ryo and his schemes. There are a bunch of other characters in this show, but none have particular relevance to this film, so I'll omit them from this review. The entire series is mostly confined to the Katsushika Ward of Tokyo (hence the literal name of the show in English; "This is the Police Station in Front of Kameari Park in Katsushika Ward").

In the very early days of DVD, a small number of anime in Japan was released with English subtitles, of which some were really odd choices. In 2000, possibly because the film had been translated in an attempt to sell it to various international markets, Pony Canyon released this movie with English subtitles. Strange really, as none of the TV anime or the manga has ever made it into English. However despite the fact the disc was English friendly and most DVD players could have region coding disabled, the show really failed to make a splash amongst English speaking fans, even those who regularly imported Japanese DVDs. I think that's quite a shame because as I've said before this show is really funny. While the main plot has to do with a mysterious bomber named Bentan Mask, this is nothing more than an excuse to cram in a ton of absurd jokes that have nothing to do with any aspect of the storyline. I have to say that for this most part this works really well. There's just gag after gag coming at you from all directions. Finally at about the two-thirds mark it does slow down to resolve everything and you could say at this point things get bogged down a bit. However the climax to the film and the whole absurd build up is hilarious.

While the show is supposedly set in the late 1990's and the surroundings and technology confirm that, you can't help feel that it has a distinct 1970's feel, especially in the way some parts of residential Tokyo are portrayed. Being that this a comedic police show, I suppose comparisons to “You're Under Arrest” can't be helped. In a way the two shows are very similar to each other, though I think “Kochikame” anime is aimed at a more for an older demographic. I also noticed that both the “You're Under Arrest” and “Kochikame” movies were both released in 1999 and oddly both have plot points which specifically involve raising the Kachidoki Bridge in Tokyo! There's also a bit of a nod to Masamune Shirow as the robot Dandy is obviously modelled on the Fuchikomas from his “Ghost in the Shell” manga.

Pony Canyon issued the film on DVD twice, once in 2000 in CD jewel case packaging and the second in a more standard DVD case in 2004. Despite the popularity of the series in Japan, both versions have been deleted. I have the oddly packaged CD jewel case version, which quite a number of early Japanese DVDs were released this way. It includes a “making of” featurette, several trailers and TV spots as well as cast and crew biographies. Unfortunately none of these features are in English. The disc also includes an 8 page booklet, which like all inserts in Japanese DVDs, shows how the menus works, and amusingly clearly shows where the “Easter Egg” is located in one of the menus (it's another TV spot). Both DVD versions of the film can be found online for less than ¥2,500 second hand. While hardly a classic film, “Kochikame the movie” is yet another title that against all odds made it out into the commercial market in English and then was promptly ignored. I think this is really unfair. If something as long and laden with Japanese pop culture references as “Keroro Gunso (Sgt Frog)” can be marketed in English, then this show could easily be also. While the movie has one small scene at the very end which would require previous knowledge of the show, the rest of the film can be watched without knowing anything about the manga or TV anime. This sadly out of print DVD offers a small glimpse into the wider world of “Kochikame”, and disappointingly I don't think I'll be able to see that world in English.