Once again the heavily armored and overly-eager-to-blow-shit-up members of the Tokyo police force's Armored Tank Division blast their way into our hearts, leaving our chests as napalmed cavities of pain and admiration! Though this sounds painful, DOMINION: TANK POLICE is actually a treat for the lover of fine animated destruction and police brutality, though not containing as much hardcore heavy shelling as the first installment. But, at least that addictive techno theme music is back! "Tank Police, feel the power that we got! Tank Police, we'll give it our best shot!" If I still had the lower half of my body, I would get up and do the butterchurn dance!

This sequel to the cult favorite DOMINION: TANK POLICE Anime opens with the return of fiendish Tokyo gangster cyborg Buaku, as he and his employees (including the return of the "oh man, if they were real and completely braindead, I'd be in Heaven!" Puma sisters Annapuma and Unipuma) raid a local auction house in search of a rare and valuable painting. I'm sure that if they'd just taken the time to look for it on e-Bay they could've forgone all this effort, but then, I guess in this alternate future e-Bay was never invented. Anyway, the painting is of Buaku! He's naked and just hatched from his technological womb, in a piece called "Green Peace". I wonder if there's a copyright dispute on that...

By now you're probably wondering where our intrepid building bombers the Tank Police are. Well, they're back at TP HQ, playing yet another of their sadistic interigation games, as they take turns throwing knives at a perp strapped to a wheel of fortune! To make things more Tank Police traditional, they also shove an active grenade in the guy's mouth. Wow, wish I were a cop! The guy winds up spitting out the explosive and confessing. Back to Buaku and friends, their grand heist is foiled, when a group of "insurance" men called the Red Commandos arrive on the scene, hired to keep "Green Peace" safe! This leads to the flicks first shoot-out, as Buaku's gang and the Reds trade bullet recipes as both sides try to draw blood and keep the painting! In the crossfire Buaku winds up with a bad knife wound in the stomach... and where were the Puma sisters hiding their rifles! I've heard that term "chasm crotch", but this is unreal! To add to the property damage, the Tank Police are called in.

It turns into a three-way assault, as the three factions all get into it, bullets and flying debris left and right! It all ends however, as Leona (the plucky rookie of the first flick) and Buaku wind up stuck together, both being blasted into the sewers before it's all over. Buaku, still badly injured, evens the odds out a little, as he traps Leona in a Bio Ball: a large melon with squidlike roots that wrap around the victim's throat, becoming tighter as the person struggles, eventually strangling the victim to death! So, from here on out, Leona and Buaku must rely on each other to get out of the sewers alive. Buaku promises Leona that, if she helps get him back to their secret hideout, he will give her the only can of Bio-Ball antidote (which is probbaly just hairspray) and save her life too. After Buaku passes out from the loss of blood, Leona patches him up, much to his surprise, as we see Buaku become more human and sentimental, apparently loosing the homicidal cyborg edge he had going for him.

Throughout the duo's understreet journey, Buaku has to complicate things further, as he begins to slip in and out of consciousness, having odd flashbacks that help us piece together the fat man's history. Reading like something out of a twisted Charles Dickens - Isaac Asimov collaboration, Buaku was born as a cybernetic test-tube baby. The project that gave birth to him was apparently ruled as inhuman and indecent by the government, who sent in some uniformed thugs to bust the place up and destroy everything and everyone involved. The naive Buaku escape though, carrying with him what looks like a small fuel barrel full of water. While loitering on a city sidewalk, the homeless (and decidedly trimmer) Buaku winds up tagged for someone's murder thanx to some hot blonde in a fast car who dumps the evidence off on poor Buaku. The fuzz shows up, beat Buaku like a Pinata stuffed with 50s, and haul him off to Prison, where I'm guessing is when he learned to be the crime magnate and snappy dresser he is today. As fo r the painting, it seems it's an encoded data sheet and the only remnant of the experiment which spawned the thug. Though this could actually be of some kind of scientific worth, Buaku's just after it for the sentimental value. Aw, how sweet, I think I'm going to vomit now. Be back in a second...

.. Ah, much better. Meanwhile, as the strange bedfellows quest through the surprisingly dangerous sewers, all three tribes (Buaku's gang, the Reds and the TP) are searching them out, hoping to get ahold of the painting, which Buaku managed to snag before his escape. You know it isn't long before the three factions have at it, gang and cannons blazing as each side makes it's mark on the Tokyo landscape, turning a large chunk of downtown to smoldering rubble! You can't help but wonder how many civilian casualties result from this, especially in a country where the people fit twice as many per building as they do in New York City! Trust me, this is not a racial comment, I have actually seen examples of both, and trust me, that last statement is 100% true!... but don't quote me...

The movie's coolest scene boils down to a grand finale, as the leader of the Red Commandos (a snide and annoying guy who makes fun of Capt. Britain and his rag tag crew often) makes off with the painting, swiping it from the still injured Buaku who arrives on the scene with Leona. The celebration is short though, when one of the Pumas, in classic TP fashion blows the guy's chopper to various dangerous chunks of airborne steel! Leona is given the antidote, Buaku and his gang hobble off into the night, and the Red Commandos are rounded up and arrested. Not a bad ending to fairly action packed animation.

Where as the first DOMINION: TANK POLICE PART 1 focused on the joys of violence and flaming explosions, D:TPP2 actually played more on story and human interest. Through his journey with Leona, Buaku learns of her unselfishness and her commitment to her job, giving him a new lease on life and planting in his biomechanical brain the concept that maybe, just maybe, humans aren't all bad and he doesn't need to hate and kill them. Kinda like a fat Grinch who wears goggles and a cybernetic arm! However, this was the downfall for Dr. Seuss's most endearing villain, and it's also the fall for Buaku. I prefer my Grinches and my Buakus as thugs, complete social deviants who look out for themselves, cut all corners (even at the expense of the law), and would kill a guy over a dispute on Who Hash! Also, to really kick me in the nuts and dissuade my interest in the film and it's characters, Leona's love for her tank Bonaparte gets far more annoying than cute, leaving us to tell Al, "punch that bitch in the mouth, blow up her tank, and sell her on the slave market!" Finally, the biggest disappointment in the whole endeavor: not enough Captain Britain! In the original D:TPP1, Britain and Mohawk were my favorite characters, because they were boiling over with testosterone and ready to maim and kill the criminal element, giving service with a smile everytime! Here, Britain was sadly pushed back to make room for the Leona/Buaku angle, and I don't know if Mohawk had more than 48 seconds of screen time!

All in all though, this was a good movie, though not superior to it's predecessor, a fine installment to any Anime fan's collection none the less. After this they (whoever "they" are) came out with a Tank Polce TV series in Japan, of which a few episodes have been reproduced here in the "United" States of America, and of which most suck. They're not the worst action cartoons I've ever seen (this honor goes to the short lived "Avengers" cartoon from Fox Kids), but it's deffinately not in the same capacity as the DOMINION movies. As a special closer (and just because I watched FIGHT CLUB again last night), here's a little recipe for you hopeful home anarchists out there: frozen orange juice mix, along with gasoline, can be combined to create napalm. I think the ratio is three parts OJ for every one part gasoline, but, it your insurance is payed up, you'll have to test it out to make sure I'm right... By the way, for legal purposes, I am not responsible for the actions of those who view this site. Hope that's g ood enough for my lawyers of the damned...

Sequels: In a way, the NEW DOMINION: TANK POLICE series is a sequel

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: PATLABOR or BUBBLEGUM CRISIS