I, for one, have long been a fan of the Japanese art form of Anime. Hell, I've been a fan of anything animated that I could get my slimey eyes on! One of the reasons for my current love of Anime was this movie, DOMINION: TANK POLICE PART 1. Many moons ago (around '94 or '95) the Sci-Fi Channel had a week long dedication to the Anime art form, hosted by American animation poineer Ralph Bakshi, the controversial fat ass behind FRITZ THE CAT, STREET FIGHT, the animated fantasy classic LORD OF THE RINGS, and the Frazetta feature FIRE AND ICE! This was the first movie of the series, and despite a bedtime of 9pm, I was determined to watch it! Why? Well, being a young lad, I had the usual healthy apetite for anything and everything involving nekkid women and sexual situations! Having seen VAMPIRE HUNTER D (my other reason for getting hooked on the Anime drug) a mere 2 months prior (though heavily edited on TBS), I was interested in any more "mature" cartoons from Japan I could find! So, I stayed up late, and within the first 20 minutes, I was experiencing young male physical pleasure, caused by nothing more than the edited strip scene of this flick! From there, I was hooked! After getting my "tensions" taken care of, I proceeded to sit through the entire movie, in spite of an onslaught of commercials for athlete's foot powder and PMS medication. Afterwards, I was a changed man, errr, man boy. The next day at school I was weighed down by an ever present fatigue, but nothing could stop me from gloating to my friends about the excellent movie I had witnessed the previous night! They were all envious and we all soon became Anime junkies! Note, this is LONG before the rise of Pokemon and Dragonball Z, so we were not poseurs, but simply ahead of our time, as always. How could one movie have such an impact? It's simply a perfcet example of what I expect from an Anime movie, just like RE-ANIMATOR is my perfect horror flick! What exactly did DOMINION have that should be in all Anime? Read on my faithful ones, read on...

It all starts in the future. Near future or far flung future, I'm not sure, but it's the future. Crime has gotten out of control, so the police need to get out of control too! They trade in their police cruisers for something a little more stylish and FAR more effective: TANKS! And they even come with their own tank-based techno theme music! Also in the future, our atmosphere has been polluted to the point where it's just too much for our puny human lungs to handle straight, and no one's safe outside without a gas mask. We're first introduced to cybernetic criminal thug and gang leader Buaku (Bwa-coo), a fat tub o' guts who plans on robbing a hospital. Along for the ride are his henchbabes/cybernetic cat-eared ex-strippers Annapuma and Unimpuma. As the trio goes about their plan to steal urine samples from the medical facility, we go to our heroes, the Tank Police! The always happy and cheery gang is in the middle of a game of interogation golf (wih grenades!) with a sealed lip mook, when they're interrupted by the appearance of their newest member, young Leona Ozaki. The new recruit makes an "explosive" first impression on the guys when she interferes in their little game, and blows up half of the garage! Back to those wacky villains, they're attempting to shoot their way out of the hospital, as the city's S.W.A.T. team has arrived to put a halt to their nefarious activities (I can feel my vocabulary expanding as I write this!). Out-gunned, the only way the bad guys can make it out is to out-class the good guys. This is done by the Puma sisters, as the girls go into their old strip show act, destracting the fuzz long enough to escape with machine guns blazing! I'm just curious as to what point they had time to slip on those bathing suits... Since the S.W.A.T. team has failed as always, the Tank Police are called in to pick up the pieces! But, after a little traffic altercation with the criminals, Capt. Britain (head of the Tank Police and just one of my many idols!) gets his prize tank scrapped beneath a heap of what used to be an office building! As for the gangsters, they wind up blown to bite-sized pieces with their viles of urine obliterated! All of this loss and destruction may not have happened were it not for the spunky new girl Leona, who already has Capt. Britain royally pissed at her, and she's only been there a day! But, with the kind words of Chaplain (the group's resident holy man... and no, his name's not Charlie) and the automotive expertise of her newfound amigo Al, Leona takes the table scraps left over from Brit's tank and turns them into the her personal pint-sized machine of mass devastation, aptly dubbed "Bonaparte". As for Buaku and his gang, they get a few tanks of their own courtesy of their financial backer! Problem being that their tanks are smaller, slower, and weaker than the Police issued tanks, but what they lack in everything else, they make up for in firepower! We're not talking *boom*boom* firepower, but a new secret weapon they'll unleash on the fuzz later. Which, they get to do very soon, because, while Buaku and the sisters are attempting another heist of bottles of piss, the Tanks get called in once more! This time though, they're left on their asses and the tanks with their wheels in the air! This courtesy of the secret weapon: giant plastic penis mines... Allow me to explain: what appear to be harmless sheets of plastic become, when run over (similar to a land mine), become giant inflated condoms that are too hard (no pun intended) to simply pop! This causes the tanks to flip over onto their heads and allows the bad guys to beat a hasty retreat. But, not to worry you lovers of good, because Leona, Al, and Bonaparte arrive in time to comence in some property damage! After some heavy artillery acrobatics, tearing up a few miles of asphalt, and taking out one of the villains' tanks, Buaka and company drop a flaming hospital on the little tank that could! Seemingly dead, Leona instead follows Buaku's crew to their meeting with their crime boss, where they can blow up all the bad guys in one convenient building collapse! All in all, despite the numerous damage claims filed against our heroes, as well as the fact that Buaku and his gang got away and Mr. Big went *boom*, Leona does manage to earn the begrudging respect of Capt. Britain and almost shoots the mayor... Want more? Well, not to worry, because all your favorite armed assailants return in DOMINION: TANK POLICE PART 2! Also, after that, there's a Tank Police series called NEW DOMINION TANK POLICE! Actually, the series isn't really anything to shit yourself over, so let's not mention that right now. TANK POLICE PART 1 epitomizes everything an action lovers requires in their daily cinematic diet, including plenty of explosions, cheap jokes, gun play, and two stipper cat girls! How can you go wrong?! Also, the art itself is astounding! The people aren't any more realistic than any other Anime, but that's to be expected! However, the amazing city landscape and the incredibly well animated tanks more than make up for this! Besides, if the people had normal sized eyes and other features, it wouldn't exactly be Anime, would it? Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go finish my article for "How To Kill" magazine. They want me to do a feature on how I killed J.F.K. I might even make the cover!

Sequels: DOMINION: TANK POLICE PART 2

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: APPLESEED or PROJECT A-KO