released 21 jul 05 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* The long-running BUBBLEGUM CRISIS and AD POLICE Japanese animation series seem to take their cue from Ridley Scott's classic sci-fi movie BLADE RUNNER, imagining an urban future where androids known as "Boomers" are found in every walk of life, and their manufacturer, the powerful Genom Corporation, doesn't seem to be up to much good. From what I've seen of both BUBBLEGUM CRISIS and AD POLICE, they're on the cheesy side, and AD POLICE tends to push the sleaze and violence.
However, the recent one-shot DVD PARASITE DOLLS, which follows from the AD POLICE series, did seem interesting on the surface. It imagines an offshoot of the AD Police known simply as "Branch", a special investigations unit featuring a terse, tough lieutenant named Buzz Nikvest, a chatty and combatative femme cop named Michaelson, a cop Boomer named Kimball, a sexy platinum-blonde undercover agent named Angel, and a wound-too-tight techie named Myers. The DVD is somewhere in between a movie and a "micro-series", consisting of three loosely-linked half-hour episodes that are presented as a continuity.
At the outset, PARASITE DOLLS seems to have potential, with its promising characters, dark-as-night ambience, and urban cyber-disco soundtrack. Unfortunately, it fails to deliver on any level: the characters are never really developed; the production is slick but never impresses; and the script is no finely-tuned machine, being more like a set of gears that mesh together loosely, spinning a lot for visual effect, but not getting very much done. It seems to try to follow in the tracks of Masamume Shirow's GHOST IN THE SHELL, but that comparison only makes PARASITE DOLLS seem even weaker.
PARASITE DOLLS is completely superficial, which would be okay if it were fun, but it's just a mechanical bore. It only goes through the motions of presenting a story, and though it's visually pleasant to watch, in the end it's also forgettable -- and quickly forgotten.