Techno Police 21C

Infobox animanga/Header
name = Techno Police 21C


caption =
ja_name = テクノポリス21C
ja_name_trans = Tekunoporisu Nijūisseki
genre = Mecha, PoliceInfobox animanga/Movie
title =
director = Masashi Matsumoto
studio = Toho Eizo
released = 1982
runtime = 80 min

nihongo|"Techno Police 21C" or "Techno Police"|テクノポリス21C|Tekunoporisu Nijūisseki is a Japanese anime made by Toho Productions and released to the theatrical screen in 1982. It was dubbed into English by Hong Kong voice actors.

This is an early anime presentation for a slightly older audience than that of children's cartoons, at a time when there wasn't much competition and before the clichés were established for this genre of action.

The anime was made during the Cold War, and so the tank was hijacked from a cargo plane resembling the B-2 bomber, and was designed to withstand the neutron bomb, even if its crew would be killed by that weapon, for the tank was computerized to continue to fight on its own. When out of ammunition, the tank would automatically explode.

One point which marks the animation studio of this film is that to save money there are many scenes which are monochromatic. When the hijackers are in the vehicle they stole, everything on screen is blue; when Eleanor starts to drive it back, everything on screen is red. Another scene towards the beginning has the Techno Police headquarters in blue.

Characters

Set at the start of the twenty-first century, its main character is Ken, a motorcycle-mounted highway patrolman in what is presumably the American Southwest, who is called to join the police force in Centinel City (the name comes from centennial, not sentinel), where he is only expected to last six months. He can be described as flighty, although as the movie progresses, he gets more serious. He is also known to wreck his motorcycles frequently in pursuit of criminals; he is shown in the beginning of the movie leaping from one onto a truck, and as the movie proper opens, his cycle is yet again trashed, barely making it to the station. An African American partner eyes the bike, and inquires "how many "that" is." Ken shrugs, and replies that it might be the sixth that month.

Ken's team consists of a woman named Eleanor and a husky male named Gora Kosaka (whom, to the Japanese audience, has a feminine name) and who grows flowers. Each has a robot to direct for police work--not a Giant Robot that they would control from inside, but a robot that is crudely presented as stupid, as a computer has to be trained to do everything. Ken's, Blader, is blue and white and equipped with a projectile handcuff, much like C.O.P.S.' LongArm. Eleanor's, Scanny, is red and has a female figure, but whose face is entirely comprised of blinking LEDs, and which has two cables streaming from the neck, and which plug into computer sockets. (Two is symbolic of Yin, and is common in anime.) Gora's robot, Vigobus, is bigger, and is stronger than the other two (at one point in the movie, it lifts the tank that the anime is built around, and keeps it immobile for several minutes with some strain; it lets go only when the tank becomes active again).

These robots ride in the back of a large, six-wheeled, roofless police car (dubbed the "Roadranger", although this is not mentioned in the movie) which is red and white. A trailer is attached to pull along Gora's robot. Ken sits in the middle to drive it; Eleanor on his right and his other partner on his left.

Plot synopsis

The plot consists of a chase of a hijacked MBT-99A tank, designed by the United States Air Force (which is odd, but will become the saviour of Eleanor, as she can be ejected before the tank explodes, like a fighter jet). The audience is expected to be enamored with this vehicle. At one scene when it looks like the tank is sure to get away, the background music turns into cocktail-lounge jazz and sparkly lights swirl around the tank. The tank carries six ATGM launchers (which Ken is somehow able to dislodge with minimal trouble, along with a piece of the turret, towards the end of the movie), three to each side of the turret, and a laser-based machine-gun-esque installment, in addition to its rifled main gun. The tank's treads are dual-mounted (the tread is split in half, making four sets of treads for the tank).

The employment of the laser, however, seems counter-productive to a machine-gun's mission, as it can only fire once every few seconds. If it can fire at higher rates, it does not do so, and tries to acquire a lock on its pursuer (Blader, in this case). This suggests a low ammunition capacity, unlike thousand-round-and-up machine-guns routinely mounted on modern tanks. It does not appear to have any effect on the road, either, which does not say much about its power.

Another tank involved is the MBT-90D, which are dispatched by the Army (or Air Force—the movie never makes it clear if it is a joint effort, although the general who arrives midway into the movie is shown riding in something resembling an ADATS) to take out the tank. Despite having at least a platoon of these, the MBT-99 still evades capture. The M-90Ds are armed with a three-barreled autocannon, the calibre of which may be around fifteen to twenty millimeters. The MBT-90D is equipped with three ATGM missile launchers, on the left side of the turret, and its main cannon is mounted on the front, instead of on a turret.

After the MBT-99's hijackers (who appear inside the tank after getting away from a recently-committed bank robbery), hired by a shadowy group, backed by a foreign nation seeking an edge in their military (the M-99 is presumably on its way to be tested at a separate base), are forced out by Ken and his team, Eleanor enters to study the tank, and it starts up on its own, having been programmed by the hijackers to head for a pier and drive off its end so as to rendezvous with an enemy submarine. The rest of the movie is made up of the chase through the city, resulting in the destruction of another bank (owned by the same corporation that built the first bank in the movie), and various collateral damage.

Credits

* Director: Masashi Matsumoto
* Composer: Joe Hisaishi

External links

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