When I’m tired at the end of a long day, my wife knows I’ll often turn on an American crime drama like CSI or Criminal Minds. There’s something about the relaxation that comes from the familiar rhythm or crime, investigation and resolution that can be nice to unwind with after a hard day translating or blogging. And now you can experience this relaxation with the new Special Crime Investigation Unit – Special 7 anime, a fun “police procedural” anime with supernatural elements.
As I wrote in my post on Cop Craft, and Western influences in anime stories, there are many cases when the stories we watch in anime are clearly taking cues from American films and TV series, picking up themes or story structure elements and making them into something uniquely anime. As the funding for anime increasingly comes from companies like Amazon, Netflix and NBC/Universal Entertainment, this trend might increase.
In a Tokyo populated with various magical races, including elves, dwarves, vampires and diminutive homunculi, a crime unit is needed to handle special crimes, especially those related to the mysterious terrorist group called Nine, who are trying to revive the era when dragons ruled the world. The name of the special team that handles these crimes is nicknamed Special 7.
Naturally the team is structured like any classic crime show, with different members bringing various skills and personality types to the table. But in this case the characters are often supernatural, because this is anime. Along with several normal humans, we’ve got an elf who specializes at analysis and has the ability to tell when suspects are lying, a dwarf who’s a master sniper, a vampire with samurai skills, and a young homunculus who’s good with technology, especially drones. The two main characters are a grizzled cop named Ichinose and a rookie named Seiji, who banter in standard “buddy cop” style as they solve crimes and move the story along. Seiji was motivated to become a policeman because he was caught up in major terrorist attack by Nine as a teenager.
As expected by its police procedural format and being an anime, it’s a bit formulaic, to the point that we can guess what kinds of stories and themes we’ll likely encounter ahead of time. But as with Cop Craft, there’s something enjoyable about this, and I find the Special 7 anime to be quite enjoyable to watch.
Are you going to check out the Special 7 anime and see how you like it? Let us know on Twitter!
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