Cosmo Police Justy - 1985

Cosmo Police Justy is a 50 minute OVA released in 1985. It was based on the popular 5 volume manga which was released through Shonen Sunday between 1982-1984. The manga's creator, Tsuguo Okazaki, assisted with the planning of the OVA as well as the character designs. Although you don't really see manga artists assisting anime productions anymore, the benefit back then was it allowed the creator to help guide the overall creative direction in order to keep the OVA true to his original work elements such as characterisation carefully monitored to remain consistant with the manga.

It seems like a trend but while the OVA never got picked up for commercial release in the US, the manga was however released by Viz in 1988. It was one of three debut release into the US manga industry. Cosmo Police Justy got released along Area 88 and Mai, the Psychic Girl were released in the form of comics through the label Elcipse Comics. Viz released the manga in flipped (inverted) form which meant all the images read from left to right so their reader base would not be confused by the original Japanese way of reading from right to left, a trend which has plagued the US industry ever since. Although it must be said there are signs of serious changes starting to happen with one of the bext examples being the upcoming re-release of the Appleseed manga by Dark Comics in it's original unflipped form. Anyway 9 comics of Cosmo Police Justy were released (covering volumes I and II from the manga) before being cancelled by Viz in 1989 due to low sales. All of these can be commonly found on Ebay.com under the keywords Justy comics for anyone whose interested.

From the very beginning of this OVA, we can see it''s something a bit different. The story is about a character called Justy Kaizard who is the most powerful Esper in the galaxy. He is a hunter from the Galaxy Patrol System where is part of the Cosmo Police division. His job is to combat criminal espers and detain them if possible. Although not described in any detail in the anime, manga fans will know that Justy must wear his headband called psychic damper to limit his power to prevent it from becoming too overwhelming or dangerous to others, it's technical name is a psychic damper. This was probaly left out because it was considered that most fans would had already read some of the manga plus he never needed to take it off in this part of the story adapted anyway, although we do see Astaris without hers at some point in this anime. I also really liked the hijacking scene which is something we defintly won't see included in shows today because of the rising threat of terrorist activities today's decade.

The animation is really nice, characters designs are cute and friendly looking. Backdrops are detailed with some of the most impressive backgrounds being early on in the OVA with wonderful views of the enormous space colony they live in. It's simply beautiful to look at with it's unique orange glow. Speaking of which, the colour palletes for the show in general are all very bold, especially for the character's hair colours which are both striking and diverse. This was needed because alof of the later scenes are quite dark since it's set in space. I also have to give noteable mentions to the their uniform designs. They are white with each one subtly differerent pattern to the other. I can reassure you that no shortcuts have taken with the animation in this OVA and it's not like there was any need to either since Cosmo Police Justy obviously had a decent sized budget to start off with.

The music is very good if not on the subtle side for most of the OVA, still it's made to very good effect with many scenes being significantly enhanced by the presence of a soundtrack. There are two vocal songs near the end of the OVA which are very noteable. In particular the vocal song that plays at the end of the OVA is defintly an all time favourite of mine, there's no way i'd ever skip the credits for this show, not that i do for anime anyway. The vocalist is exceptional and inclusion of a unique synthesiser backing makes it a winner in my mind. You should also enjoy seeing the end song briefly match up with the final animated scenes of Justy going out on his next adventure.

Recommended to all, Cosmo Police Justy is a great and serious, science fiction, space opera. It's well executed paranormal themes really give it an edge over other titles. My only criticism is that more time should have been dedicated to branching out the characters a bit more. They were all really intrieging and i would have liked to have seen more of some focus on some of the background characters. This is however a minor nitpick since the overall story is very enjoyable and i'm sure this point would have been defunct had Justy been given another installment. Overall Cosmo Police Justy stands out from the crowd to give it's viewers something different that many will not have seen in quite this manner before.

Download - Cosmo Police Justy

Overall Grade/Rating: B+
Commercial Availability: VHS (Japan), Laserdisc (Japan)