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{{short description|1982 Japanese anime film}} |
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{{Infobox |
{{Infobox film |
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| name = Techno Police 21C |
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| image = Techno Police 21C.jpg |
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| alt = |
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| caption = Promotional poster for the film ''Techno Police 21C'' |
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|ja_name = |
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| director = [[Masashi Matsumoto]] |
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|ja_name_trans= |
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| producer = |
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| writer = [[Yoshimitsu Banno]] |
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| screenplay = |
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| story = |
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| based_on = <!-- {{based on|title of the original work|writer of the original work}} --> |
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| narrator = |
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| starring = |
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| music = |
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| cinematography = |
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| editing = |
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| studio = [[Studio Nue]]<br>[[Artmic|Wiz Corporation]] |
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| distributor = [[Toho]] |
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| released = {{Film date|1982|8|7|df=y}} |
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| runtime = 79 minutes |
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| country = Japan |
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| language = Japanese |
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| budget = |
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| gross = |
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}} |
}} |
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{{Infobox animanga/Movie| |
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title_name = |
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|director =[[Masashi Matsumoto]] |
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|studio =[[Toho Eizo]] |
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|release_date =1982 |
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|runtime =80 min |
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}} |
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{{Infobox animanga/Footer}} |
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'''Techno Police 21c''', also "Techno Police," 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. |
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{{nihongo|'''''Techno Police 21C'''''|{{nowrap|テクノポリス}}{{ruby-ja|21C|<small>{{nowrap|トウェンティワンセンチュリー}}</small>}}|Tekunoporisu Tuentiwan-Senchurī}}, also known as simply '''''Techno Police''''', is a 1982 [[Japan]]ese [[mecha anime|mecha]] police [[anime]] film made by [[Artmic|Wiz Corporation]] (later renamed Artmic) and released on 7 August 1982.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.allcinema.net/prog/show_c.php?num_c=148208|script-title=ja:テクノポリス２１Ｃ (1982)|access-date= 4 July 2014|work= allcinema|publisher= Stingray|language= ja}}</ref> It was dubbed into English by [[Hong Kong]] voice actors. |
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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 cliches were established for this genre of action. |
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The anime film's premise involves an advanced robot police squad trying to recover a hijacked prototype tank. The film is an early anime presentation for a slightly older audience, at a time when there wasn't much competition and before the [[cliché]]s were established for this genre of action. |
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The anime was made during the [[Cold War]] and so the tank was hijacked from a futuristic cargo plane and was designed to withstand a [[neutron bomb]] attack, 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 robot tank would automatically explode. |
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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. |
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== Characters == |
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Set at the start of the 21st century, its main character is Ken, a motorcycle-mounted [[highway patrol]]man 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. |
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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. (TV series)|C.O.P.S.']] [[LongArm]]. Eleanor's, Scanny, is red and has a female figure, but whose face is composed entirely of blinking LEDs, and which has two cables streaming from the neck, and which plug into computer sockets. 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 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. |
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== Plot synopsis == |
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The plot consists of a chase of a hijacked MBT-99A [[tank]], designed by the [[United States Air Force]]. The hijackers, who appear inside the tank after getting away from a recently committed bank robbery, were hired by a shadowy group backed by a foreign nation seeking an edge in their military. The tank carries six [[ATGM]] launchers, 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). |
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Another tank involved is the MBT-90D, which are dispatched by the Army 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, three [[ATGM]] missile launchers and a main cannon, mounted on the front instead of on a turret. |
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The MBT-99's hijackers are forced out by Ken and his team. Eleanor then 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]] and various collateral damage. |
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== Production staff == |
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* Director: [[Masashi Matsumoto]] |
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* Concept Creator: [[Toshimichi Suzuki]] |
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* Writers: [[Hiroyuki Hoshiyama]], [[Kenichi Matsuzaki]], [[Masashi Matsumoto]], [[Yoshimitsu Banno]], [[Yuu Yamamoto]] |
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* Script Supervisor: [[Mamoru Sasaki]] |
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* Composer: [[Joe Hisaishi]] |
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* Theme Song Performance: [[Makoto Fujiwara]] |
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* Character Designs: [[Yoshitaka Amano]] |
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* Mechanical Designs: [[Studio Nue]] ([[Shouji Kawamori]] and [[Kazutaka Miyatake]]) |
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* Animation Directors: [[Kougi Ohkawa]], [[Norio Hirayama]] |
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* Art Director: [[Geki Katsumata]] |
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* Producer: [[Michio Morioka]] |
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* Production: [[Toho Co. Ltd.]], [[Toho Eizou Co. Ltd.]], [[Studio Nue]], [[Dragon Productions Co. Ltd.]] |
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== Development == |
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''Techno Police 21C'' started out life in 1978 as an idea from Artmic founder Toshimichi Suzuki. Work began on developing the idea into a TV series as a co-production between Artmic (then Wiz Corporation) and Studio Nue. The technology to be featured in the series was heavily researched with the intention of making the future as believable as possible. |
|||
Unfortunately, the project hit problems. After 4 years in development there was only enough animation produced for a single episode. The series was scrapped and, in order to recover some of the costs, the existing footage was compiled into an 80-minute movie and distributed by Toho. |
|||
Set in a futuristic 2021 in the Hi-Tech yet violent and crime filled metropolis of Centinel City. A reckless young traffic officer Kyosuke (Ken) is hand picked by for a special assignment far from his countryside home. He was chosen to become one of the first officers of a newly created arm of the SCPD, one which uses robotic assistants, known as Technoids, to give them an edge over the criminals. Together with his robot Blader and fellow Technopolice members Kosuga (Gora) (accompanied by the super strong Technoid Vigorus) and Eleanor (with the computer hacking female robot Scanny) Kyosuke take on the well equipped criminals that plague the city, including a runaway, prototype military tank. |
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Of the staff that worked on the aborted TV show two are most notable. The first is [[Joe Hisaishi]], who provides the synth-jazz score and is well known in the west for having created the score for nearly all [[Hayao Miyazaki]] movies including ''[[Spirited Away]]'', ''[[Princess Mononoke]]'' and ''[[Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (film)|Nausicaa]]'' and [[Takeshi Kitano|Takeshi Kitano's]] (Sonatine, Hana-bi, Brother). Working as part of the animation staff is [[Shoji Kawamori]] who is now famous for his mecha designs particularly on the seminal ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]''. |
|||
Set at the start of the twenty-first century, its main character is Ken, a motorcycle-mounted highway patrolman in what is presumably the US desert 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. |
|||
Scale model kit company [[Aoshima Bunka Kyozai|Aoshima]], in anticipation of the proposed TV show, had produced a number of tie-in plastic kits of Technopolice's vehicles and robots, including a few designs which never animated. These were still released, in hopes to make money from the movie instead. As well as 1/16 scale kits of the Techroids and 1/48 kits of the Mazurka, Temjin and Roadranger other items of merchandising included a soundtrack, on LP and cassette and the eventual release of the movie on both VHS and Laserdisc. |
|||
Ken's team consists of a woman named Eleanor and a husky guy named Gora Kosaka (whom, to the Japanese audience, has a girly 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 prehensile 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 apparently 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--presumably, the tank can crush it). |
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Undeterred by Technopolice's failure Toshimichi Suzuki returned to his original idea, some years later reworking it as the OAV series ''[[Bubblegum Crisis]]'', which fared slightly better but in the end suffered a similar fate. |
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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. |
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In 1983 ''Technopolice 21C'' was dubbed by those ubiquitous Hong Kong kung fu voice actors (see also ''Battle For Moon Station Dallos'', ''Locke the Superpower'', ''Leda: The fantastic Adventure of Yohko'' and ''Macross: Do you remember love?''). The company responsible for the commissioning this new English track is unknown, they also made a few changes to the movie, moving the title card to the very start and pausing the individual shots of the opening credits to remove the Japanese text without shortening the running time or messing with the music. Also the end credits are missing entirely but otherwise the content of the movie itself is unchanged. |
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After the start of the story, most of the film is a chase involving helicopters and military rockets. The robots are remarkably ineffectual. At one point, Blade is lost, and finds himself in a playground, talking to children as if one of them (the editor, personally, thinks this is ''incredibly'' stupid). |
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This English language version was released on video in the UK by Mountain Video (''[[Frankenstein]]'', ''[[Dracula]]'', ''[[Mazinger Z]]'') under the slightly shorter title ''Techno Police''. With the advent of the 1984 Video Recordings Act the video was withdrawn from shelves and disappeared into obscurity never to be re-released. |
|||
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. |
|||
Re-edited and redubbed scenes from ''Techno Police'' also appeared in Mountain Video's obscure ''Flash! No.1 Video Comic'' and its spin-off ''Flash! Robot Issue''. These two tapes, released on VHS, Betamax and V-2000, were intended to advertise their collection of children's by collecting short clips of them together in a mock comic-book-on-video format. Both issues were released in 1983. |
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The American market would not get to see Blader (now known as just Blade) in action until 1987 when ''Techno Police'' found its way to the shelves thanks to Celebrity's Just For Kids label (''Battle for Earth Station S/1'', ''Revenge of the Ninja Warrior''), and later from Best Film and Video. The Best Film and Video version is slightly less edited, featuring some mild swearing. |
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Outside of the English speaking world unedited video versions of ''Technopolice 21C'' were seen in France, Germany and Spain with a theatrical run in Cuba, which were dubbed using the English dub. In Bulgaria, the movie received two separate VHS releases, one by Bulgarian Video in 1989 and a re-issue with alternate cover art by Multi Video Center a few years later, both featuring the English dubbed version of the film with Bulgarian subtitles. |
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{{spoiler}} |
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== Rerelease == |
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The chase is of a hijacked fictional 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). 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 is presumably at least one hundred metric tons in weight, carrying six extremly large missile launchers (Ken is somehow able to dislodge one of these 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 intallment. 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 300-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. The tank's treads, for some reason, are dual-mounted (the tread is split in half, making four sets of treads for the tank). It is also capable of out-maneuvering 120mm rounds. |
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In 1994/5 ''Techno Police'' was re-released by Best Film & Video Co on NTSC VHS to cash in on the popular rise in anime and cyberpunk with OAVs such as ''Bubblegum Crisis'', ''[[Appleseed (OVA)|Appleseed]]'', ''[[Dangaioh]]'', ''[[Patlabor]]'', ''[[AD Police]]'', ''Armitage 3'' and ''[[Cyber City Oedo 808]]''. Release Date: April 15, 1995; run time: 80 minutes; ASIN: 6303388019. |
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== References == |
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Another, more realistic tank is the MBT-90D, which are brown in colour and 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 [[Air_Defense_Anti-Tank_System|ADATS]]) to take out the tank. Despite having a platoon of these, the MBT-99 still evades capture. The M-90Ds are armed with a three-barrelled autocannon, the caliber of which may be around fifteen millimeters. The M-90D is equipped with three much smaller missile launchers (and much closer to a sane size), on the left side of the turret, and its main cannon is mounted on the...front? Indeed. The M-90D needs to ''turn'' to fire. It seems fairly maneuverable, however, so this might not be a problem. The editor thinks otherwise. |
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{{reflist}} |
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== External links == |
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The anime was made during the [[Cold War]], and so tank was hijacked from a cargo plane resembling the [[B-2 Spirit|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. |
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* {{anime News Network|anime|4503}} |
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{{AIC films}} |
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This is what makes for the plot in the movie, for after its hijackers (who miraculously appear inside the tank after getting away from their 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 seperate base), are forced out by Ken and his team, and Eleanor enters to study the tank, 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. |
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[[Category: |
[[Category:1982 anime films]] |
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[[Category:1982 films]] |
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[[Category:1982 science fiction films]] |
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[[Category:Films scored by Joe Hisaishi]] |
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[[Category:Japanese animated science fiction films]] |
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[[Category:Mecha anime and manga]] |
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[[Category:Animated films set in the 21st century]] |
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[[Category:Animated films set in the future]] |
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Latest revision as of 22:05, 23 August 2024
| Techno Police 21C | |
|---|---|
 Promotional poster for the film Techno Police 21C | |
| Directed by | Masashi Matsumoto |
| Written by | Yoshimitsu Banno |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Toho |
Release date |
|
Running time | 79 minutes |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
Techno Police 21C (テクノポリス21C, Tekunoporisu Tuentiwan-Senchurī), also known as simply Techno Police, is a 1982 Japanese mecha police anime film made by Wiz Corporation (later renamed Artmic) and released on 7 August 1982.[1] It was dubbed into English by Hong Kong voice actors.
The anime film's premise involves an advanced robot police squad trying to recover a hijacked prototype tank. The film is an early anime presentation for a slightly older audience, 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 futuristic cargo plane and was designed to withstand a neutron bomb attack, 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 robot 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
[edit]Set at the start of the 21st 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 composed entirely of blinking LEDs, and which has two cables streaming from the neck, and which plug into computer sockets. 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 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
[edit]The plot consists of a chase of a hijacked MBT-99A tank, designed by the United States Air Force. The hijackers, who appear inside the tank after getting away from a recently committed bank robbery, were hired by a shadowy group backed by a foreign nation seeking an edge in their military. The tank carries six ATGM launchers, 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).
Another tank involved is the MBT-90D, which are dispatched by the Army 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, three ATGM missile launchers and a main cannon, mounted on the front instead of on a turret.
The MBT-99's hijackers are forced out by Ken and his team. Eleanor then 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 and various collateral damage.
Production staff
[edit]- Director: Masashi Matsumoto
- Concept Creator: Toshimichi Suzuki
- Writers: Hiroyuki Hoshiyama, Kenichi Matsuzaki, Masashi Matsumoto, Yoshimitsu Banno, Yuu Yamamoto
- Script Supervisor: Mamoru Sasaki
- Composer: Joe Hisaishi
- Theme Song Performance: Makoto Fujiwara
- Character Designs: Yoshitaka Amano
- Mechanical Designs: Studio Nue (Shouji Kawamori and Kazutaka Miyatake)
- Animation Directors: Kougi Ohkawa, Norio Hirayama
- Art Director: Geki Katsumata
- Producer: Michio Morioka
- Production: Toho Co. Ltd., Toho Eizou Co. Ltd., Studio Nue, Dragon Productions Co. Ltd.
Development
[edit]Techno Police 21C started out life in 1978 as an idea from Artmic founder Toshimichi Suzuki. Work began on developing the idea into a TV series as a co-production between Artmic (then Wiz Corporation) and Studio Nue. The technology to be featured in the series was heavily researched with the intention of making the future as believable as possible.
Unfortunately, the project hit problems. After 4 years in development there was only enough animation produced for a single episode. The series was scrapped and, in order to recover some of the costs, the existing footage was compiled into an 80-minute movie and distributed by Toho.
Set in a futuristic 2021 in the Hi-Tech yet violent and crime filled metropolis of Centinel City. A reckless young traffic officer Kyosuke (Ken) is hand picked by for a special assignment far from his countryside home. He was chosen to become one of the first officers of a newly created arm of the SCPD, one which uses robotic assistants, known as Technoids, to give them an edge over the criminals. Together with his robot Blader and fellow Technopolice members Kosuga (Gora) (accompanied by the super strong Technoid Vigorus) and Eleanor (with the computer hacking female robot Scanny) Kyosuke take on the well equipped criminals that plague the city, including a runaway, prototype military tank.
Of the staff that worked on the aborted TV show two are most notable. The first is Joe Hisaishi, who provides the synth-jazz score and is well known in the west for having created the score for nearly all Hayao Miyazaki movies including Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa and Takeshi Kitano's (Sonatine, Hana-bi, Brother). Working as part of the animation staff is Shoji Kawamori who is now famous for his mecha designs particularly on the seminal Super Dimension Fortress Macross.
Scale model kit company Aoshima, in anticipation of the proposed TV show, had produced a number of tie-in plastic kits of Technopolice's vehicles and robots, including a few designs which never animated. These were still released, in hopes to make money from the movie instead. As well as 1/16 scale kits of the Techroids and 1/48 kits of the Mazurka, Temjin and Roadranger other items of merchandising included a soundtrack, on LP and cassette and the eventual release of the movie on both VHS and Laserdisc.
Undeterred by Technopolice's failure Toshimichi Suzuki returned to his original idea, some years later reworking it as the OAV series Bubblegum Crisis, which fared slightly better but in the end suffered a similar fate.
In 1983 Technopolice 21C was dubbed by those ubiquitous Hong Kong kung fu voice actors (see also Battle For Moon Station Dallos, Locke the Superpower, Leda: The fantastic Adventure of Yohko and Macross: Do you remember love?). The company responsible for the commissioning this new English track is unknown, they also made a few changes to the movie, moving the title card to the very start and pausing the individual shots of the opening credits to remove the Japanese text without shortening the running time or messing with the music. Also the end credits are missing entirely but otherwise the content of the movie itself is unchanged.
This English language version was released on video in the UK by Mountain Video (Frankenstein, Dracula, Mazinger Z) under the slightly shorter title Techno Police. With the advent of the 1984 Video Recordings Act the video was withdrawn from shelves and disappeared into obscurity never to be re-released.
Re-edited and redubbed scenes from Techno Police also appeared in Mountain Video's obscure Flash! No.1 Video Comic and its spin-off Flash! Robot Issue. These two tapes, released on VHS, Betamax and V-2000, were intended to advertise their collection of children's by collecting short clips of them together in a mock comic-book-on-video format. Both issues were released in 1983.
The American market would not get to see Blader (now known as just Blade) in action until 1987 when Techno Police found its way to the shelves thanks to Celebrity's Just For Kids label (Battle for Earth Station S/1, Revenge of the Ninja Warrior), and later from Best Film and Video. The Best Film and Video version is slightly less edited, featuring some mild swearing.
Outside of the English speaking world unedited video versions of Technopolice 21C were seen in France, Germany and Spain with a theatrical run in Cuba, which were dubbed using the English dub. In Bulgaria, the movie received two separate VHS releases, one by Bulgarian Video in 1989 and a re-issue with alternate cover art by Multi Video Center a few years later, both featuring the English dubbed version of the film with Bulgarian subtitles.
Rerelease
[edit]In 1994/5 Techno Police was re-released by Best Film & Video Co on NTSC VHS to cash in on the popular rise in anime and cyberpunk with OAVs such as Bubblegum Crisis, Appleseed, Dangaioh, Patlabor, AD Police, Armitage 3 and Cyber City Oedo 808. Release Date: April 15, 1995; run time: 80 minutes; ASIN: 6303388019.
References
[edit]- ^ テクノポリス２１Ｃ (1982). allcinema (in Japanese). Stingray. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
External links
[edit]- Techno Police 21C (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
Anime International Company theatrical features | |
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| AIC |
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| AIC ASTA | |
