Cyber City Oedo 808

Cyber City, Cyber City, but where have we heard that title before? Ah, right, the late lamented Granata wanted to bring it to us back in the day: do you remember the promos of this anime together with those of Macross Plus? No? Never mind.

In 2808 technology has reached such levels that cities are now entirely computerised, but as we know, between crime and the law, the first is quicker to adapt to new technologies. So how will the police be able to face the dangerous spread of computerised crime? You know the proverb that says “one nail drives out another”, so who better than another criminal to catch a criminal?

Three dangerous criminals, held in a maximum-security orbital prison, are offered the chance to stay in that prison out of this world serving their centuries-long sentences (I wonder whether the guys who handed down the sentence are jokers or big jokers. – Ryo’s note), or to join the cybernetic police and try to reduce their sentences (indeed, for every mission that goes well, part of the sentence is cut). Too good to be true: after accepting, the three are told that if they fail, the micro-bomb inside their collars will be detonated.

So the three protagonists, Sengoku, Go:gl and Benten, don’t have many choices: they must complete every mission successfully, or die. They are only cannon fodder for the police and their commander, who treats them with detachment, without the slightest respect or consideration. The series consists of three episodes, in which the story features, in turn, one of the three Cyber criminals as the main character and the other two as sidekicks. In this first volume, “Virtual Death”, it is Sengoku who has to slog his guts out to close the case. The OAV opens with the arrest, more swaggering (Never use words without my permission!! – Goku’s note) than spectacular, I’d say, of a criminal who was trying to flee the city of Oedo, business as usual. But the mission awaiting our man is a tad harder: a hacker has managed to sneak into the control system of the tallest skyscraper in Oedo, taking control of all the security systems and thus holding hostage the 50,000 people inside.

Every attempt to break down the hacker’s computer defences proves useless: the only person who can get around the barriers is Kurokawa, the controller of the system that runs the skyscraper, who has barricaded himself in the control room because he is convinced that the hacker is a mysteriously vanished colleague of his, come back to kill him. Of course, if you want to know the answer, watch the OAV and perhaps you’ll find out whether a deep- rooted feeling of revenge can overcome death.

Cyber City isn’t exactly a cyberpunk series, it is only cyber: forget the filthy buildings (on a scale from 1 to 10 your refinement is 12! – Goku’s note) of Battle Angel Alita or Blade Runner, here the settings are clean and sterile, everything seems perfect, but it only serves to hide the filth of society. Character designer and director of this little masterpiece is Yoshiaki Kawajiri, already known in Italy thanks to masterpieces such as “Ninja Scroll” and “Wicked City” (in Italian, “La città delle bestie”): if you have already seen these two anime, you know what awaits you, if not, trust me. This Kawajiri knows his stuff, he manages to create scenes of great suspense. Honour and infamy to the English adaptation: honour because they rebuilt and adapted into English entire computer screens, infamy because they put into the dialogues an exaggerated amount of “fuck”, so that it feels like watching a B-grade American cop movie, and to think that the Granata version would have kept the original dialogues, a shame.

If you get past this small detail, I recommend it to everyone: it is the best cop story I have seen (after Blade Runner)(and after Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor and Armitage, in my modest opinion. – Ryo’s note), excellent animation, full of action and plenty of suspense.

An interesting OAV for sure, fairly good animation and a gloomy atmosphere, in a world in the hands of big corporations. The dubbing, contrary to what Char says, didn’t displease me at all. The vulgar language and that sarcastic and cynical humour (more American than English) don’t clash at all within the anime. The story is all about action and doesn’t seem to develop in any particular direction. A title for lovers of action and of Blade Runner-style atmospheres.

Wdim