Special 7: Special Crime Investigation Unit is a 2019 original anime production directed by Takayuki Kuriyama and Harume Kosaka with scripts written by Yuichiro Higashide and music done by Ryo Takahashi.
The show is animated by ANIMA&CO and airs currently on AT-X, Tokyo MX, SUN, TVA and BS Fuji in Japan when the first episode aired on October 6, 2019 under the Animeism program block. Oldcodex does the OP theme "Take on Fever" while SCREEN mode does the EP theme "One Wish". The show ran for 12 episodes.
While Muse Asia has licensed the series and is streaming the anime in English sub on their YouTube Channel, Funimation has licensed it for streaming the original Japanese version with English subtitles and an upcoming English dub track in North America while AnimeLab streams it in Australia and New Zealand. Wakanim is responsible for streaming it in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
The show takes place in the present day years after a mysterious group has been found responsible for a terrorist attack on an international airport hub; the event known as the Airport Attack. The only survivor is Seiji Nanatsuki, who was in middle school, when he was injured in the attack.
Meanwhile, the world has been made aware of the presence of various creatures such as dwarves, elves and vampires in an unknown event. They were able to integrate into society without any problems after being in conflict for a short time, except that some of the crimes committed today are done by those groups. To resolve this, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department creates a special unit to tackle special crimes known as the Special Crime Investigation Unit.
And it happens that Seiji is recruited to the unit after being involved in a hostage situation gone wrong.
Special 7: Special Crime Investigation Unit has the following tropes:
- Casting Gag: Kenjiro Tsuda voices Kei Matoba from Cop Craft, who worked in a police unit that's tasked to tackle Semanian crimes. In SCIU, he's leading a unit tasked to investigate crimes that have supernatural/paranormal elements in it.
- "Die Hard" on an X: You know the bank heist in "One Brings Bad Omens, Seven Brings Good Luck"? It was done with the help from a heist crewman who doubles as a bank employee in order to help them find a diamond.
- Driving Question: In-universe, people wanted to know who was responsible for the Airport Attack.
- Far East Asian Terrorists: The pro-dragon cult terrorist group "Children of Nine" is a Japanese organization led by Warlock, who turns out to be a dragon himself.
- Genre-Busting: It's pretty out there in terms of combining genres, being an Urban Fantasy Police Procedural (or Cop Show) Conspiracy Thriller anime. Try to wrap that around your head.
- God Needs Prayer Badly: Dragons draw power from faith, so Warlock deliberately organized Nine like a cult to gather faith to strengthen his magic. This then gets turned against him in the finale, as once people see him take damage when fighting against Special 7, they stop believing in his invincibility, starting a death spiral where he becomes easier to hurt, which further shakes their faith, which further reduces his strength, and so on until even he is unable to believe in his own power anymore, at which point he is arrested.
- Goroawase Number: The members of the Special Seven all have Japanese numbers in their name. Including their former member turned enemy.
- Great Offscreen War: It's mentioned that humanity was previously at war with dwarves, elves and vampires before the show started.
- Hostage Situation: In "One Brings Bad Omens, Seven Brings Good Luck", Seiji was (unfortunately) inside a bank that was being held up by armed men in animal masks.
- More Dakka: The Casspir APC seen in "One Brings Bad Omens, Seven Brings Good Luck" has a Browning M2 machine gun on top. It was used to take out an unmarked SCIU squad car, but Nijo was able to dodge the incoming bullets.
- Shout-Out: In one episode, Bellemer the ninja shouts "Cowabunga!" when swinging in to attack.
- Wire Dilemma: "The Threefold Trap" involves the team attempting to defuse four bombs hidden in three buildings, which are wired so that they will all go off if disarmed in the wrong order.
- Urban Fantasy: The show takes place in a world where magic is merely nothing but rumors, even though a handful of groups and people know that they exists. There was a cult terrorist group known as Nine that was supposedly taken down years ago for trying to usher in dragons and bring magic back.
