San Teresa Fantasy Vice
- Episodes : 12
- Genre : Action, Sci-Fi, Police, Magic, Fantasy
- Airing Date : July 9, 2019 – October 1, 2019
- Producers : Millepensee
Contains Spoilers
Cop Craft Introduction
Based on the hit visual novel series by Gatou Shoji (who is also the original author to Full Metal Panic), Cop Craft is a unique tale that takes the classic buddy cop theme and mixes it with fantasy. You probably have seen such buddy copy films and TV shows such as Bad Boys, Law & Order, Starsky & Hutch, Jake and the Fat Man, Rush Hour and so on, but Cop Craft takes that gimmick and adds a new creative layer, a regular Earthling cop who has to team up with a teenage female night from another dimension! 15 years prior to the series, a portal to a realm of fantasy opens up off the California coast, and the Semanians, the people from that dimension come to live the American dream. Like Tony Montana from Scarface, some live that dream with a vengeance and that is where our Kei and Tilarna come in and show why they’re San Teresa’s finest!
1. Its Combined Creative Use of Established Tropes
We can admit that when you separate most of the tropes of Cop Craft individually, NOTHING is at all original and by no means are we saying that’s a bad thing. We’ve already seen buddy cop movies, we’ve seen fantasy, and we’ve seen reverse isekai with the likes of GATE. We’ve also seen anime based on American settings or supernatural creatures run loose in them. However, Cop Craft finds a strange way of being creatively distinct and fresh just by combining all of these tropes. Thanks to combining these tropes, you get a good mix of drama and comedy, and everything just manages to naturally flow together like nothing you’ve never seen.
2. Kenjiro Tsuda
If there’s any reason that the Kei character works, it’s thanks to the performance of Kenjiro Tsuda, his respective voice actor. He does an excellent job of capturing him as a classic hard-boiled detective with his distinguishing deep and nasal voice. You can tell he’s serious about his work, but he’s also exhausted and really needs a vacation but he’s married to his job. His voice also makes his sarcasm and dead-pan humor effectively believable, and you can tell he’s world weary. Last, he has excellent chemistry with the rest of the cast, most notably with Mayu Yoshioka, Tilarna’s voice actress.
3. The Story is Well Organized
Despite being 12 episodes, each third of the series is excellently organized into their own distinct arcs and it feels kind of episodic. In a way, it makes you feel like you can jump into this series by watching any random episode and you can quickly grasp the series within one episode. The first arc does a great job of introducing San Teresa and our cast, and from their we get an idea of the world of the Semenian’s from an external sense and despite its loose organization, the series does a great job of developing the relationship between Kei and Tilarna of being partners and friends.
1. Controversial Politics
Towards the end of the series, a lot of what’s portrayed is very relevant to modern politics in context to the US and Europe. Considering the original novel series debuted long before Trump was elected, we can’t say the anti-immigration attitudes portrayed in the last part of the series are a direct reaction to him, but considering recent events, what is portrayed may make viewers come to conclusions that the material portrayed here could be a reactionary criticism of him. Of course, when the mayoral elections are held towards the last act, one notable candidate largely mirrors Trump’s immigration stance on how some of them are criminals and want to leech off society.
2. We don’t see much of the other world
Considering that there’s a gateway to another dimension off the California coast, we see the Semanians come to our world to live the American dream, but the series does little to portray their world internally. Considering the Semanians resemble traditional elves and that vampires and fairies come from that world, we can get some idea of what their world might be like, but we DON’T see it. We see how their presence changes what we can assume to be Los Angeles, but we don’t see things like humans trying to live in their world or see more of their culture first hand despite seeing Tilarna frequently using her native language throughout the series.
Final Thoughts
Considering that the novel series is still on-going, we can hope there can be future installments. What this season offers is merely the tip of the iceberg of the true potential this series has. It takes a lot of what we’ve already seen before but makes it entirely fresh. Granted that Japan has no concept of Miranda Rights upon being arrested, we thought it was a nice touch that the series, which takes place in the good old United States of America, makes references to it every time Kei cuffs his perp. It adds a sense of authenticity to the setting and some comedy. We have an idea of the Semenian world in an external point of view, let’s hope season 2 shows us more from an internal sense.
Author: Justin "ParaParaJMo" Moriarty
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