YMMV / Angel Cop

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The entire subplot about the American Jewish bankers. Not only do they not appear in any significant way in the series, their only relation with the rest of the story is that whole thing about the Hunters and dumping nuclear waste in Hokkaido (something we never see, and no one refers to it except for Taki, Maisaka, and Dogawa)... and even then it's implied that Maisaka and Dogawa are the ones responsible for the whole mess, with the Americans being the ones who created the Hunters in the first place. Lucifer is the only one shown to be truly evil, compared to Freya and Asura. It is speculated that the whole subplot was only added to make the series even more shocking and offensive than it already was.
• Complete Monster:
  • Governor Maisaka of Tokyo is the true Big Bad of the series. Seeking to get rich, Maisaka forms the Red May terrorist group and has them bomb Japan's infrastructure and civilians, killing innocent people by the truckload, before creating the monstrous Hunters to slaughter their way through the terrorists and many civilians. When the special forces begin investigating, Maisaka has the Hunters attempt to exterminate them, even torturing one horribly to keep his plan to use nukes against manufactured enemies secret, all so he can grow richer.
  • Lucifer is the leader of the Hunters, a group of psychics out to stop terrorism. A self-righteous sadist, Lucifer doesn't care who stands in her way, viewing everyone who tries to stop her brutal murders as an accomplice to the Red May. When Hacker and Peace take Tachihara with them, Lucifer tortures a scientist for information, causes a massive pile-up on a highway, and kills Peace in front of Hacker to torment him. When Asura and Freya refuse to partake in her murders, Lucifer labels them as traitors and kills Freya. Participating in an attack at the Special Forces base, she kills Ichihara and Asura before trying to drain Raiden of his energy.
• Cult Classic: Mostly due to the hilariously awful English dub.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Japanese bubble burst soon after this OVA was made.
  • Writer Sho Aikawa would later go on to work on Fullmetal Alchemist (2003). Considering the plot of Conqueror of Shamballa, in which the villains are Those Wacky Nazis, the blatant anti-Semitism of Angel Cop becomes pretty hilarious.
  • Masashi Ebara, who voices Raiden, ended up voicing another cyborg years later, except he's the villain this time. The hilarity came with the fact that the character that Ebara's character fights against is another cyborg named Raiden.
• Memetic Mutation: The English dub is full of it. It's probably the only reason to watch the series.
  • "If this is justice, then I'm a banana."
  • "Fuck AND PIIIISS!"
  • "You've underestimated the power of Japanese technology, you evil bitch!"
  • "I've heard some bullshit in my time mister, but yours is the best."
  • "That's an anti-tank motorcycle!"
• Misblamed: Seeing as how Sho Aikawa was the writer, many people blame him for the anti-semitic plot point. However, he only wrote the first three episodes, and episodes 2 and 3 (3 is when the anti-semitic stuff comes in) were rewritten heavily by Ichirō Itano to the point Aikawa wasn't even credited.
• Narm: The English dub for the series. It’s filled with nonsensical phrases, hilariously bad voice acting, and an egregious amount of Sir Swears-a-Lot dialogue.
• Older Than They Think: Angel Cop has an unique relationship with Ghost in the Shell, the most known Japanese cyberpunk franchise protagonized by a wild, blue-haired female cyber-cop, of which AC is widely believed to be a Whole-Plot Reference. The original GitS manga kicked off only one month before the promotional AC manga did, while the AC OVA series finished a year before GitS got its first animated adaptation, so there's a fair possibility that the two franchises actually influenced each other instead of one being just a raunchy pastiche of the other as it is often thought.
• So Bad, It's Good: The dub. It was recorded in London by a bunch of Brits trying to sound American, and the script was written by a guy who shoehorned a bunch of supposed American slang into a very English cadence. Also they were told to "fifteen" it — deliberately add more cursing in order to force a higher rating from the BBFC.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Between the clothing, Japan's superpower status, and communist villains, this anime is clearly a product of The '80s. It even has a scene with a Hair Metal band!
• Values Dissonance: Since Japan doesn't have a significant Jewish population or much knowledge of anti-Semitic canards, the idea of having the villains be Jewish financiers backing communist terrorists is almost completely unproblematic there ^note especially when you consider the fact that anti-Semitism has never been a widespread phenomenon in the country. Not so much in the West, which is probably why the English dub changed them into a cabal of non-specific American bankers.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Some of the telekinetic scenes are pretty damn neat.
• Watch It for the Meme: Watch it for all the utterly hilarious lines spoken in the English dub.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • The story can be seen as a criticism of how the Japanese political system is considered by many locals to be overly subservient to the USA, and also of how Japan at that time had enough power to control the global economy (since Japan, along with South Korea, had a near-monopoly on advanced technology and could, if they wanted, cripple other economies by denying them that technology ^note An example of this in action is Apartheid-era South Africa's Honorary White policy towards Japanese and other valuable East Asians (Chinese and Koreans), since even the phenomenally racist South African government was smart enough to not run afoul of the Japanese). Unfortunately, the whole plot is derailed with the whole American Jewish banker thing — they serve no purpose in the story except to further demonize Americans.
  • The Red May terrorist group is possibly inspired by the real-life Japanese terrorist group, the Japanese Red Army, who committed many terrorist acts in Japan and Israel in the 60s. Also, the whole OVA does a veiled criticism against the mindset of that group, both the fictitious and its real-life counterpart, since it implies all their members are hypocrites and the only reason for their acts is just to cause mindless mayhem.

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