Cop Craft

Overview

Cop Craft (COP CRAFT [コップクラフト]) is an interesting anime from the summer 2019 season. It’s also made by Millepensee, the animation studio behind the 2016 Berserk adaptation — that will be an important piece of information later on in this review.

The basic premise of the series is what makes it interesting — though I admit it doesn’t sound good. A mysterious gate which leads to another dimension has opened in the ocean and alien visitors have migrated onto Earth. And, of course, they’ve brought inter-dimensional crime with them.

Our protagonists, one a Human and the other a Semanian, work together to fight alien (and earthling) crime across the city. Also the Semanians are able to use magic and stuff, so it’s basically a buddy cop, reverse isekai anime.

But remember, I said that the premise of the series is actually good. It does have many fantasy elements to it, such as the aforementioned magic (known as Mildy), but it’s not a fantasy series. The differences between the Humans and Semanians are really just there to illustrate the fact that these are two distinct cultures.

The humans use technology, value material wealth, and follow a democratic judicial system. Semanians, on the other hand, use magic, live more Spartan-like lifestyles, and have a very black and white sense of justice. Throughout the series we get to see how these two vastly different cultures mix together.

And while there are many who want the Humans and Semanians to intermingle, there are factions who want the opposite. Some Humans want the Semanians to go back to their world, and some Semanians believe their own people have been corrupted by Human values.

Characters

There are really only two characters I want to discuss in this section, and those are our protagonists. This section will be spoiling some information we learn about these characters as the series progresses.

First up we have Kei Matoba, a Human who works as a detective at the city police station. While he’s not racist against the Semanians like others in the city are, he hasn’t had the best experiences with them in the past. In episode one his partner is killed by one, and we later learn that he also fought in the initial war against the Semanians when the gate opened.

Despite all this, Kei doesn’t really care whether someone is a Semanian or not. He cares about bringing criminals to justice and protecting civilians. Other than that, he couldn’t care less whether someone is from this side of the gate or not — though he does make some racist comments.

Tilarna Exedilica is the more interesting of the two characters because she’s a Semanian. After all, we already know what Humans are like, but with the Semanians there are a lot of unknowns for us to discover.

For example, the Semanian magic system, Mildy, uses life energy known as Latena. They also have special materials they can infuse with Latena to grant special properties. And there’s the Semanian pantheon of gods which are also tied into Mildy somehow.

Through Tilarna, we learn a bit about all of these things and other various aspects of the Semanian culture. We also know that Tilarna is of a fairly high standing among the Semanians. Unfortunately, it’s never revealed exactly how important she is within this season of the anime, and I’m not sure we’ll get a second.

Is Cop Craft Bad?

Now it’s time to loop back around to something I mentioned at the beginning of this review — the fact that Cop Craft is made by Millepensee. I think we all know how bad Berserk 2016 was. Even those who have never seen it have heard the horror stories.

And so you’d expect that Cop Craft would have received the same treatment. But luckily this isn’t the case. Cop Craft usually looks pretty decent. However, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Cop Craft looks good.

Like I said, it usually looks decent. But the animation quality wasn’t exactly the best. It’s basically a slide show at times, but let’s be honest, I’ll take that over what happened to the Berserk adaptation any day.

And I know there are a lot of anime viewers to whom animation quality is a huge deal. I like when my anime is animated too, I get it. But, animation quality isn’t the most important thing as far as I’m concerned. I’m much more interested in the plot, the world, and the characters.

As far as I’m concerned, Cop Craft did a good job with all those things, so I’m willing to overlook the poor animation it often had to an extent. But if you’re someone who decides how good an anime is based on how many sakugabooru posts it has, I’m sorry to say that Cop Craft has 0 so you probably won’t like it.

Conclusion

With everything I’ve said in mind, I ended up giving Cop Craft a 7/10. That’s definitely a low 7, but a 7 nonetheless. If you’re interested in watching an unconventional crime anime which covers topics surrounding how different cultures mesh together, I’d suggest this series. It’s much better at that then something like GATE is.

And while GATE may have Princess Piña Co Lada, Cop Craft has Tilarna.

As for the OP and ED of this series, I liked them both. The OP was one of my favorites of the season, which is impressive considering all the other great OPs. I think the only OP I actually liked more than this one was for How Heavy are the Dumbbells You Lift? The ED was also good in its own right, but definitely didn’t stand out as much as the OP.

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