Cop Craft Episode 3

Midnight Train

Due to unforeseen circumstances, yesterday’s review of Cop Craft episode 3 was pushed back to today. And, since Tuesdays are supposed to be Okaa-san Online episode review days, I’ll be pushing my review of that back until tomorrow.

With that out of the way, let’s get right into the part of the episode review where I admit that I was wrong about the series. And no, I’m not about to admit that this series actually isn’t good. I do think it’s slightly less good than previously, but that has nothing to do with what I wanted to admit here.

Last week I’m fairly sure I predicted that the terrorist organization was going to be the sub-antagonist while the drug cartel was going to be the main antagonist. I’m not going to go back to check what I said then, but I’m almost certain that’s the stance I had.

So for anyone who’s already seen this week’s episode, you’ll know that my original stance is likely incorrect. The leader of the drug cartel was killed by Tilarna, and the terrorist organization came to the forefront. I get that terrorists are a flashier antagonist group, but since this is a cop series I figured the drug cartel route would make more sense.

Tilarna Hits the Club

You may recall that Tilarna ran away at the end of the previous episode. I’m pretty sure she did this because she didn’t like the way in which the humans were handling the case. They simply didn’t view it as an urgent situation the same way Tilarna did, in part due to their ignorance.

To take matters into her own hands, she seeks out the help of the criminal Kei uses as an informant. She requires a fake ID and some clothes that will help her blend in with the crowd in a club owned by Dennis Elbaji, the leader of the alien drug cartel. Luckily she knows someone who can get those things, the criminal informant Kei uses.

It doesn’t take long for her to meet Dennis Elbaji himself, and the two go into his office where they can have a private conversation. Their conversation quickly takes a turn for the worse and a fight ensues. However, Tilarna left her sword behind with Kei when she ran away for some unknown reason.

Was she leaving her sword behind so that Kei would follow her? Or was it truly a mistake on her part? Considering how connected she is to that sword I have a hard time believing it was the latter. But at the same time, it’s not like she needed Kei’s help anyway, at least not if she had the sword to begin with.

Anyway, Kei does eventually show up with Tilarna’s sword and she uses it to kill Dennis Elbaji.

High Quality Animation

Let’s take a break from the summary format for a bit and discuss this fight between Tilarna and Dennis. Honestly there isn’t much about the fight itself to discuss. They both use swords because apparently aliens with swords are more effective than aliens with guns.

What really matters about this fight is the animation quality. I know the title of this section is “High Quality Animation,” so let me explicitly say that I was being facetious when I titled it that. The animation of this fight, and most of the episode afterwards, is terrible.

The majority of this fight is still frames or shots with extremely limited movement. Perhaps I didn’t notice that the animation was this bad in the first two episodes, but I really don’t think it was. This episode seems to have extra bad animation, and I’m worried the rest of the series will follow suit.

However, it wasn’t only the animation which seemed to tank. The art quality suffered as well. Don’t get me wrong, this series hasn’t ever looked amazing, but it looked pretty decent most of the time. Compare that to the shot of the Red Wizard and the chief towards the end and you’ll see a clear difference.

The character models look like they were supposed to be for background characters, but ended up front and center. It’s not good a good look when the most action-packed part of an episode is mostly still frames and the big twist is done with terrible artwork.

The Red Wizard

As you might expect if you’ve been reading my reviews for any amount of time, I don’t know what the Red Wizard’s actual name is. I know it starts with a Z, but since I can just refer to him as the Red Wizard, I’m not incentivized to go back and figure out what it was.

But his name doesn’t actually matter. What matters is what he’s done and what he plans to do. So let’s start off with what he plans to do because that’s been laid out pretty well so far. Basically he seems to be the mastermind behind both the terrorist and drug cartel organizations.

When we were first introduced to him he was playing the part of lackey to Dennis, but it’s pretty clear by now that this was only so he could use Dennis. He actually had an alliance with the police chief and has the distinct goal of destroying human-alien relations, whereas Dennis just wanted to make money.

And how does the Red Wizard plan to destroy human-alien relations? By working with humans to set of a psychic bomb so that the humans will realize they should actually fear the aliens rather than be friendly with them. Yeah, I don’t think this plot point is all that well thought out.

The second big reveal regarding the Red Wizard (the first was him teaming up with the chief) is that he’s actually someone from Kei’s past. He’s the man who slaughtered Kei’s entire unit during “the war,” which we can assume happened right after the gate appeared.

However, this plot point is a bit strange as well. Wouldn’t this have made a far bigger impression on Kei’s character than the loss of his partner in episode 1? You’d think this event would be why he didn’t trust Tilarna at first, but no. Maybe it was such a tragic event that Kei’s PTSD blocked it from his memory.

Conclusion

What did you think of this week’s episode of Cop Craft? Do you agree that the animation quality decreased in this episode? Do you think the plot is also beginning to falter? Let me know in the comments. If you don’t agree with me, let me know why as well.

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My review of the next episode is available here.