Anime Crimes Division

Genre(s): Comedy, Parody, Live-action

Age-Appropriateness: 13+ (Violence, mild profanity)

Platforms: Crunchyroll, YouTube (RocketJump channel)

Episodes: Nine 10-13 minute episodes

TheAwersome Rating: 7.6 / 10 (A stupid, funny good time)

Premise: In Neo Otaku City, there are two kinds of people. The kind of people that can recite the Sailor Moon theme song from memory in the original Japanese, and the kind that don’t belong there. When someone commits a crime against anime, they don’t call the police. They call: The Anime Crimes Division.

TheAwersome’s Thoughts: This short series, starring Sungwon Cho (ProZD), takes hilarious jab after jab at both anime and its fans in a wonderfully loving way. Everything from the contrived plots, ridiculous solutions, and overly dramatic, well, everything is on the table.

While we didn’t understand all the references, I’m glad that we had waited to watch this until getting a good grounding under our belt of anime watched and culture understood. If you aren’t a huge anime fan, a good amount of this will go over your head, but if you know the basic tropes you’ll still be able to follow along and have a decent time, but it’s definitely richer the bigger an understanding you have.

TLDR: Take the humor of ProZD, strictly apply it to anime, add a production crew and cast.