[.ca] Tokko - Volume One

Monsters:
Monsters, blood, swords and the potential destruction of the world. Good stuff! It's also most of what "Tokko" is made up with, along with a generous amount of totally gratuitous cleavage. The first five episodes are mostly to set up the action, but there's some great mystery, gory action, and lots of disgusting monsters right up to the last scene. Five years ago, a hole appeared in front of a Machida apartment complex. Savage demonic creatures emerged and slaughtered almost everyone in the building. Now Ranmaru Shindo is on his first day's duty as a cop, when his team is attacked by zombies controlled by shrieking demon larvae. Great name for a band. They're only saved by the intervention of sword-wielding cops from the mysterious division, TOKKO. One of them is a childhood friend of Ranmaru's, Sakura, who has been haunting his dreams recently. He becomes convinced that the zombies and TOKKO are connected to the Machida massacre... and the strange tattoo that's appeared on his arm. He begins poking around some secluded hospital rooms and a special crime lab, looking for answers -- and discovers an ancient alchemical experiment gone horribly, grotesquely awry. And it may have something to do with Machida. The first several episodes of "Tokko" are basically a police detective story wrapped in some supernatural trappings, with lots of demons, zombies, swords, and some nasty alchemy. Things really start heating up in the final scenes of the fifth episode, when Ranmaru has to deal with something REALLY disgusting. But it's got lots of unpretentious fun -- it rarely takes itself too seriously, or pretends that it's about anything but hacking up monsters. Aside from the detective work, there's lots of creepy cliffhangers, spraying gore, dismembered bodies, zombies, monstrously carnivorous demons, swords, and (for the boys) utterly gratuitous boobery. There are a lot of creepy moments, like a mutated demon scientist, the gory massacre at Machida, and those little screechy larvae faces in corpses' chests. But there's plenty of humour there as well, usually from the bombastic police chief ("Listen up, turkeys! We just got the okay to RAID THE CRIME LAB!" followed by cheers). Ranmaru is a pretty typical action-anime hero -- sorta boyish and cute, and sometimes prone to embarrassing situations. Especially when his creepily nurturing sister is involved. Sakura and Tokko remain a bit too distant and mysterious in this round of episodes, but Kunikida is a pretty hilarious character -- a foul-mouthed, womanizing, tough-as-nails police chief who says everything in a dull roar. "Tokko" focuses on grotesque monsters and detective work in the first several episodes. A nice warmup to a solid -- if incomplete -- series.