Hyper Police is a manga by Minoru Tachikawa that ran in Gekkan Dragon Magazine from 1993 to 2004. An anime adaptation produced by Studio Pierrot aired on TV Tokyo in 1997.
The series is set in the twenty-second year of the new Holy Century, in a post-apocalyptic version of Tokyo, where humanity is an endangered species. The focus is mainly on the lives of the main characters, Natsuki Sasahara, a young cat girl, and her co-workers: fox girl Sakura Bokuseiinmonzeninari, werewolf Batanen Fujioka and his cousin Tomy Fujioka. The monsters are usually taken from Japanese mythology, updated for the modern era. In the anime, repeat criminal offenders in Tokyo have their memories wiped. However, in the manga version, they are castrated. Mithril exists in this world as a sort of specially enchanted silver that is especially effective against supernatural characters.
Hyper Police Provides examples of the following tropes:
- Action Girl: Naoko Kondo.
- After the End: Many buildings are still destroyed. Other parts of the city, however, have been rebuilt or weren't damaged in the first place (e.g. Osaka seems more than OK). One of the effects of this calamity was a shift of the Earth's axis which altered the climate in a way that there is no difference between summer and winter anymore.
- Age-Gap Romance: Natsuki is 17; Batanen is 35. Doubling as Mayfly–December Romance, since Batanen is an immortal werewolf. Really, it's a wonder he's only that old, he could just as easily have been in his hundreds, like Sakura, who is hardly more mature than Natsuki.
- All Men Are Perverts:
- Amazon Chaser: Sakunoshin got together with Sakura, a powerful and busty eight-and-one-fifth-tailed fox and professional (licenseless) bounty hunter. In the alternate timeline that was created when Sakura went back in time, killed Sakunoshin's girlfriend Kasumi and that way deleted herself from the timeline because Kasumi was actually Sakura's ancestor, he got together with Naoko, a strong, muscular, tall and busty professional bounty hunter, and Kasumi herself was a kunoichi so there's a pattern.
- All Amazons Want Hercules: Sakura returned his sentiment and was especially impressed by his prowess with the sword (e.g. cutting magically strong metal with a normal sword) and bravery.
- An Ice Person: Poe
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Natsuki.
- Babies Ever After:
- Tommy and Poe get together and have nineteen kids...er, pups. It should be noted that the boys look like proper wolves while the girls are all a Little Bit Beastly.
- Sakunoshin and Sakura make 3 little rascals during mating season.
- Big Bad: In the anime, it's the police superintendent Tokijiro Murota, who hates monsters about as much as Fonne does or likely even more, but has a monster minion to do his bidding. His evil plan was to manipulate Natsuki into closing the door between the human and monster realm and thus removing monsters from the human world (her being able to do that might be a part of her goddess heritage). His plans are foiled in the end, of course, and he gets arrested for assault and attempted murder.
- Big Brother Instinct: Batanen with respect to Natsuki.
- Bland-Name Product: Panasonic becomes Papasonio and "Del Monte" "Del Monde"
- Amazonian Beauty: Naoko is rather tall, muscular (but hates being called e.g. burly) and strong but also good looking and has a quite the bust.
- Book Ends: The anime series start and end with Natsuki trying to arrest someone.
- But Not Too Foreign: Sakura is from Osaka, which is, as far as anyone's concerned, out in the boondocks. Natsuki is half (Ancient) Egyptian.
- Bounty Hunter: What the main characters and their rivals are.
- Bowdlerise: The anime adaption contains much less sexual references, nudity, gore and violence than the manga original.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Batanen with regard to Natsuki.
- Color Failure: Sakura after she realized the guy she met was Sakunoshin but also realizing that he didn't rape her while she was unconscious.
- Conveniently an Orphan: Natsuki's father is an archaeologist, so he spends most of his time away. At least until Natsuki reunites with her mother
- Cat Girl: Natsuki, which is due to her mother being a nekomata. It's later revealed her mother is in fact the Egyptian goddess Bast, and naturally she's depicted as a cat girl as well.
- Chekhov's Gift: Remember these paired windchimes Batenen buys (one for him, one for Natsuki)? The windchime is broken, the magic stone from it placed in Natsuki's necklace bell and when she almost closed the door between the monster and human realm due to the manipulations of the police superintendent, the chime reminds her of her love for Batenen and convinces her not to close the door (she shatters the shackle-bands around the door, so it may not be possible to close it again).
- Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends: Batanen and Natsuki, Tommy and Poe, and Sakura and Sakunoshin.
- Cute Little Fangs: All the monster-people protagonists.
- Da Chief: ...is a [minor] god. He is, however, never taken seriously.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Poe
- Dying Race: Because of an unspecified world-wide calamity that started the present era, humans are considered an endangered species and killing a human caries the death penalty (in the anime, life imprisonment is also mentioned as a possible punishment).
- The Ditz: Natsuki.
- Ecchi: Either it is, or it's doing a pretty good imitation.
- Fanservice: Among many other things, the female police uniforms. Then there's the proposed "update" by Natsuki's boss.
- Fantastic Racism
- Naoko (she got better, though and at least had something of an excuse: Her parents were killed by monsters right before her eyes when she was a child)
- The anime version of Fonne, whose hatred and racism is so extreme, it's fantastic in the other sense of the word; she's truly a horrible person, on the level of Mrs. Havisham's views on males in Great Expectations and thanks to her position and success rate, remains completely unchecked for her actions. To her, they vary from objects to be exploited, to targets to antagonize, such as trying to hurt Natsuki's feelings further when their mutual friend Kondo is critically injured by a monster, just because Natsuki is part monster; or threatening to kill Natsuki, Sakura or Tommy for being near her or her territory. In the manga, however, she actually does charity work for the non-humans.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: While in the manga original, the cat robber gang is called "Cat Crusaders", the building they operate from is clearly a Christian church and the cleric they donate their loot to is a Catholic priest (he is addressed with "Father", takes confessions in a confession booth, lets Natsuki read to the children about the "feeding the multitude", pray to God and so on), in the anime, all references to Catholicism were removed and instead, the cleric is a priest of a fictional religion worshiping a "Cat God", is addressed with "Father Superior", supported by the "Cat Cross Army" and operates a refuge shelter called "House of Cats" instead of a church.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Loads and loads of Japanese folklore.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Sakunoshin.
- Floating Continent: Natsuki's father uses one as a base of operations and means of transport.
- Football Hooligans: When they visit Osaka on an assignment, they happen to witness a brawl between two opposing sports team fan groups.
- Frothy Mugs of Water: Justified for obvious reasons: Natsuki drinks milk laced with catnip.
- Gainax Ending: The events of the anime's ending have a logical explanation, but the exposition is rather sudden, and as presented, the surface impression is that the entire thing may be All Just a Dream.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Sakunoshin looked that way at the street punks who wanted to extract a "toll" from him.
- God in Human Form: Natsuki's mom is Bast. Mudagami is a minor god with the ability to teleport and notice changes in the timeline. Natsuki's ability to also perceive changed timelines and her resistance to certain kinds of magic may be caused by her mom being a goddess.
- Handsome Lech: Batanen.
- Happily Ever After: Played straight.
- Half-Human Hybrid: The main characters. Natsuki's dad is a bonafide human. Sakura had a human ancestor.
- Harmless Freezing: The official police has a prison where the prisoners are not only kept in normal prison cells, they're immobilized in blocks of ice so that only the head and arms stick out (the ice is kept from melting by ofuda provided very likely by Peau, who would convey her ice and water elemental magic through them).
- Healing Factor: In the first episode, Natsuki inadvertantly shoots Batanen right in the head. He shrugs it off as a minor injury and quips that he'll be right as rain by the next full moon, then uses it as an excuse to heckle the nurses for the next several episodes.
- Heartbreak and Ice Cream: Sakura coped up in her room in Natsuki's house and started to eat a copious amount of food because of a much nastier reason than heartbreak: she (thankfully mistakenly) believed, that Sakunoshin raped her while she was unconscious. Actually, he thought she was his girlfriend and just wanted to tend to her wounds. Thankfully for both, that misunderstanding was cleared up soon..
- Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It: Some unspecified world-wide calamity made the people of this setting adopt a calendar system called the "Holy Era" or "Holy Century" (and since according to Tommy the 10th year of the Tensho period (the year 1582) seems to be about 700 to 800 years ago, the story is set in the year 2282 to 2382 according to the Gregorian calendar).
- Henpecked Husband: Mudagami.
- House Husband: After Sakunoshin knocked up his girlfriend Sakura (after she mounted him in heat during mating season), he seemed to stay at home and take care of the kids, since he wasn't shown to follow his girlfriend to work or having another job. Since she and others started to refer to them as husband and wife, it is reasonable to speculate that they got their marriage certificate without a wedding ceremony, possibly so that she and her kids can profit off the government benefits Sakunoshin receives as a human (but of course not only for that, they loved each other for reals before that).
- Human Shield: After Sakura said she bribed Mudagami with a photo of Naoko during work-out (she apparently used pantyshots of Natsuki for the same purpose before) and showed said photo, Naoko threatened to kill her with some kinda bazooka, so she hid behind Natsuki.
- The Idiot from Osaka: Sakura. Her Osakan accent is so thick, even non-Japanese speakers can tell the difference from how other characters talk. The dub used an over-the-top Scarlet O'Hara southern accent.
- Incompatible Orientation: In the manga, Natsuki tried to seduce a prison guard, but the guard declined with saying he was gay.
- Interspecies Romance: More like lust, but all over the place. You Have Tommy/Poe (Werewolf/Human), Natsumi/Batanen, and Sakura/Sakunoshin.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence:
- Tommy is a masochist and wanted to give Poe red heels so she may walk on him with them. He is also shown being in a bound in a net by an humanoid female spider and makes out with her off-screen. He has also a master-slave relationship with Fonne.
- Sakunoshin mistook the mating season for an ongoing war until Sakura did some mating with him.
- Involuntary Shapeshifter: When Batenen experiences strong emotions such as sexual arousal, he transforms into a slightly more monstrous werewolf form (longer claws, more pronounced wolfish facial features and so on). He also sometimes starts to howl, growl, pant and gets bloodshot eyes.
- Kissing Cousins: Tommy and Batanen are cousins. In the manga, one of Tommy's very first scenes features Batanen dragging him a shower to blow off some steam.
- Law Enforcement, Inc.: It's unclear if all police are bounty hunters or not; there are signs of an official police force, but it isn't really expanded on.
- Living Weapon: Natsuki has weird hamster- or mouse-like creatures called Fujin and Raijin that turn into bracelets and release powerful lightning bolts. They're not only heed Natsuki's conscious commands, but also react to strong emotions or even nightmares she has, can detect threats against Natsuki on their own (e.g. a Sakura trying to attack her in her sleep to steal her powers) and are affected by their user getting intoxicated. Sakura also has a similar weapon (she calls them "parasites", even though they don't seem to parasitize on Natsuki, but have a mutually beneficial relationship) and is surprised hat Natsuki can wield two instead of just one.
- Loyal Animal Companion: Natsuki's cat, Bob. Inverted in that Bob is actually older than she is, and is her legal guardian when her father is away.
- Made of Bologna: While there a few characters getting killed on-screen, no gore or even blood is seen (and if blood is shown, then only very briefly), even when they are shown to be shot through multiple times.
- Magitek:
- Peau uses water elementals to animate police robots (who only in the English dub sound like stereotypical robots, in the original Japanese audio track they have normal voices but sound as if they're coming from an old telephone or door phone).
- The "airbikes" and also some cars seem to be kept afloat and propelled by some kind of glass spheres.
- Mayfly–December Romance: Sakura and Sakunoshin.
- Missing Mom: Initially, Natsuki's mother Bast is this She shows up in later chapters of the manga, though reincarnated as an actual cat, though Natsuki's happy to see her either way.
- Mistaken for Gay: When Sakura moved in to Natsuki, the beekeepers at their favorite bar thought they were lesbians despite Sakura denying it.
- Mugging the Monster: Some literal monsters wanted to extract a "toll" from Sakunoshin, but didn't knew that he was a highly competent swordsman.
- Mundane Fantastic
- Multiboobage & Extra Eyes: A hooker that offered her services to Sakunoshin shortly after he went though time had three boobs and three eyes.
- N-Word Privileges: It seems that a human using the word "monster" is seen as very rude, but other non-human sentients such as Mudagami (a minor god) using it seems to be acceptable.
- Nipple and Dimed:
- While in the anime and manga Sakura tried to eat Natsuki's pyjama-clad ass a couple of times, in the manga she also one time stripped off Natsuki's pyjama-shirt and tried to eat her naked breast. She also once got drunk on a party and tried to eat Natsuki again, which Batenen and Tommy found realy hot.
- There have been other instances of topless in the manga such as women in strip clubs, Batenen's one-night stand, and Sakura and Natsuki a few times.
- Obfuscating Ditziness: Natsuki is probably the single most powerful magic user in the world, but you'd never realize it under her fangirlism and ditziness.
- Orichalcum: Natsuki's sword. It's also used for ammo and guns.
- Overly Long Name: Sakura Bokuseiinmonzeninari. Dare you to say that 3 times fast.
- Perpetual Poverty: The company's finances need to be tightened up.
- Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: The reason why Sakura couldn't shapeshift was her feelings of self-doubt. When that was resolved, she finally was able to transform, was able to return to her normal youthful appearance and even got her lang-awaited ninth tail.
- Raging Stiffie: When Mudagami proposed an absurdly stripperiffic costume for his female employees, Batenen imagined Natsuki wearing it and got a boner in the manga from it. In the anime, it was just a nosebleed.
- Rapid Aging: When Sakura was hit with a bullet made from a "Killing Stone", a magical artifact that nullifies or at least severly weakens her magic power (she said it was a miracle that it didn't prove its name true and killed her), she aged into a emaciated-old-hag version of herself (because of her still existing insecurity she was afraid that Sakunoshin would leave her because her face didn't remind him his ex Kasumi anymore, but he reassured her of his love for her and only for her).
- Reading Your Rights: Used word-for-word, but Played for Laughs when Natsuki has to check her card to remind herself of how to finish it.
- Really 700 Years Old: Sakura is 191 years old. Since she looks 19, it is suggested Kitsune just age very slowly.
- Reincarnation: Natsuki's mother, Bast is reincarnated as an actual cat, not that Natsuki cares, she's just happy to see her mother.
- Reincarnation Romance: Sakura is the reincarnation of Sakunoshin's lover.
- Shock and Awe: Natsuki's power.
- Shout-Out:
- Kondo calls Natsuki "Hello Kitty" on page 18 of volume 1, when the two meet for the first time. After snarking about being partnered with the catgirl, of course.
- Natsuki has several cats, but the cat taking up most of the screentime looks very similar to the sidekick of Sailor Moon.
- Batanen looks very similar to the mutant kangaroos from Tank Girl.
- Natuski has The Scream (screencap) when she hears how much it costs to even set foot into a realy, really expensive clothing store.
- The cashier in the snack stall in episode #18 looks like a clone of Oolong from Dragon Ball.
- When Natsuki begins to feel the effects of being in heat, the line that forms behind Batanen includes Sasami of all people.
- Sitcom: Despite having some of the trappings of a Police Procedural, the series is this.
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: The mushroom guys gang traffic human children to rich non-human folks as pets (in the manga, also as snacks). That makes Natsuki very angry and warrants the response of the official police and their water spirit-animated robots.
- Yoroi, the guy Sakura and Natsuki fought before Sakunoshin came via time warp and killed him, engaged in the combination of two "special evils": He sold women into forced prostitution, threatened to do the same to Sakura and Natsuki, but not before raping them first ("sampling the merchandise").
- Space Jews: Sakura is from Osaka, and a Kitsune to boot, ergo she is a crafty trickster spirit that robs and kills people to absorb their powers, and is a stingy haggler of epic proportions.
- The Spartan Way: How Tommy conducts his swimming lessons, not even his wife and children are safe.
- Spell My Name With An S: Tommy/Tomy, Poe/Peau, Samantha/Samansa etc.
- Suicide Attack: Kasumi tried to kill her father that way to give Sakunoshin the time to escape (he was flung into the future instead and she survived to sire one of the ancestors of Sakura, Sakunoshin's girlfriend/wife and mother of his children).
- Sunglasses at Night: Batanen.
- Sunken City: Accoridng to Sakura, Nagoya sunk into the sea over 100 years before the events of the manga.
- Super Drowning Skills: For a water/ice elemental, Poe can't swim for crap. This is actually justified as she used her powers to keep herself out of the water, similar to Saber in Fate/hollow ataraxia.
- Talking Animal: Thanks to reincarnation, this is the form Bast takes when she finally shows up, specifically a talking black cat.
- 10-Minute Retirement: Happens to Natsuki.
- Unexplained Accent: For some reason, Nupu is portrayed having a British accent/dialect in the English dub.
- Voodoo Doll: When Sakura mistakenly believed, that Sakunoshin raped her while she was unconscious, she created a voodoo doll of him to have her revenge.
- What Measure Is a Non-Cute?
- Youkai: Natsuki is half-nekomata, while Sakura is a kitsune.
