Kudos to Marshal Victory for recommending this series. To be honest, I briefly considered watching it whilst scouring through Hulu’s anime collection, but the goofy promo image turned me off. Well, “turned off” maybe is too strong language. It just seemed like there wasn’t anything to the series beyond future cops with Lazer Tag guns.
Vergilius’ note about this being from the same writer as MADOKA MAGICA tipped the scale some, as well. Who knows if we’ll be seeing an authorial voice connecting these shows, but the prospect's good enough for me. Even if I generally can’t sustain watching a simulcast show every week, it’s nice to try every so often.
Honestly, I wasn’t won over until the “MINORITY REPORT meets A CLOCKWORK ORANGE” elevator pitch was thrown at me. As somebody who was a remedial reader in 2nd Grade and quite nearly put on Ritalin, I’ve usually got a greater, personal interest in futuristic sci-fi about the government trying to pre-emptively regulate human nature under the guise of social reform. And if I can get some cool gunplay with it, then all the better…
Anyway - - the show’s got an intriguing hook, even if it breathlessly frontloads an excess of exposition to get its premise across. It’s almost like Urobuchi felt a desperate necessity to convey all the complexity of this concept in the first go for fear that viewers wouldn’t stick around otherwise. For the most part, it didn’t irk me too much - - but the show does still suffer a telltale storytelling crutch by having its rookie protagonist get a bunch of explanations on the field that she logically should’ve been briefed on before she ever set foot outside of the department.
The finisher with our rookie potentially fallen to this “virus of violence,” as it were, is a decent tease. Not the most gripping cliffhanger, but interesting enough. I think I’ll go on and see if there’s more to this series than morphing Lazer Tag guns that can only shoot those guilty of unclean thinking.
Watch this episode, "Crime Coefficient" here and decide for yourself.
Tom Pinchuk’s a writer and personality with a large number of comics, videos and features like this to his credit. Visit his website - - tompinchuk.com - - and follow his Twitter: @tompinchuk
