Lack of good storyline.

Absolutely Fantastic

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

All you really need to know is Angel Cop boasts decent action scenes, gratuitous violence and a hilarious English dub with such gems as "If this is justice, then I'm a banana!" Starts with an anime Dirty Harry, throw in a cyberpunk element and psychic powers like so many anime of the time, and you have an admittedly interesting setup. Unfortunately, the plot is flimsy and silly, the protagonist is easy to hate and the villain masterminds are practically cardboard cutouts. The final fight with a nigh-invulnerable psychic is neat, but all importance is quickly diminished by our incredibly inept hero. I like the weapon concepts; Recoil so high it breaks your arm, or muzzle flash so bright it fries your retinas. Not surprisingly, there's excessive violence to go along with it. Anyway, watch it for the laughs.

Angel Cop would seem like any other dark and extreme Japanese anime from the late 80s/early 90s. The thing that makes this movie infamous is the sudden final act of the OVA, the inflammatory, crazy reveal that turns the show from a mundane action show to a laugh riot of obscene wrongness. People with extreme politically correct attitudes will probably not approve and neither did Manga Video. They censored the long winded conspiracy theory rant from the police force leader at the end of the OVA to remove heavy themes of Anti-American and plain racist talk in a final part of the OVA. But really it only comes from the obscenely wrong police force leader who let's face it isn't good either. No one's good in this story. Or innocent. It's still an inflammatory and offensive scene that turns the otherwise action packed and somewhat character driven series off the rails to crazy land. It's laugh out loud hilarious in the true meaning as well as the dubbed take of it. It's honestly if the final reveal was written by a Anti-American, Neo-Nazi conspiracy theorist. And it would have been one thing if it was just Anti-American conspiracy theories.

Angel Cop has a promising beginning, but quickly goes south. The first episode gives us the impression that we'll be watching a violent political thriller with cyberpunk overtones. The plot looks like it will follow an elite government agency's attempts to stop a group of communist terrorists plotting to plunge Japan into chaos.Then the psychics show up.At the end of the first episode, a psychokinetic girl tears apart one of the terrorists. She is soon joined by two other, even more powerful psychics. Even though both groups oppose the terrorists, the cops soon start fighting the psychics, with the aid of mecha suits. From here, the plot simply goes insane.The problem with this anime is that it simply does not make any sense. It is entirely style over substance, a convoluted mess of political intrigue and sci-fi violence. Further muddling matters is that the American distributor had to rewrite much of the expository dialogue due to anti-Semitic / anti-American content, further blurring the plot. Finally, the anime does not end so much as it stops. The overall political plot is never resolved.The series does benefit from some good action sequences, courtesy of animators who worked on Akira. However, the plot ultimately sinks it.

OK, this isn't exactly the thinking man's Manga, but a kickass, nonstop action romp nonetheless. A lot of people will criticise this movie for having a weak storyline, underdeveloped characters or whatever, but it has one thing in spades - violence! Head popping, limb wrenching, flesh burning violent action in all of it's glory. And isn't that the main reason why people watch these kind of Manga films? Also, the standard of the animation is very high, an essential requirement for any kind of animated feature in my book. An anime film could tell the greatest story since War and Peace, but, if it has the kind of animation that makes early Hanna Barbera cartoons look like masterpieces, I'll turn it off after about ten minutes. Anyway, the plot and storyline aren't as bad as many would have you believe, certainly not compared to the standard of most anime features. Maybe it wasn't surrealistic enough, perhaps some people would have been happier if it all turned out to be a metaphor, unveiling the mysteries of evolution and the spirituality of man. For me, this flick has it all - violent "cops on the edge", slowmo shootouts, vengeful cyborgs and psychotic superhuman killers. If there were a live action film that had all of this backed up with cutting edge effects, I'd go see it in a minute. Angel Cop is well worth watching for any fan of in-your-face, violent action anime.