"Apollo and Latell are partners who are always at each other's throats, cops who get fired for reckless behaviour on a regular basis. Yomei is a pirate chief whose cool exterior cloaks burning ambition, and the mysterious Katz with his C.A.T. system is out to deliver control of the solar system to the pirates. Things aren't looking good for the fast talking, bad mouthing, crazy shooting duo..."
Language Format: English Language Running time: 50/50/50 mins Certificate: 18/18/18 Catalogue no: WEST 011/WEST 012/WEST 013 Label: Western Connection Price: £10.99 each Release Date: 31st May/31st May/31st May 1995
This series, also known as THE ENEMY ARE PIRATES, is based on an award-winning SF novel by Kambayaski Chohei. At first viewing it seems highly disconcerting; a fast-paced mixture of cop show, space opera and reality warp, with two detectives, Latell, and Apollo from the Cat Planet, sweet young cop Marsha, and a talking computer, Dolar. They reluctantly take an assignment to rid the universe of the Galactic Pirates - yes, "the enemy are pirates".
I'm not sure if the plot makes any sense but it might. There is a contemporary music soundtrack and once one has got over the shock of hearing Apollo talking American street jive, the dubbing seems quite good. And the character designs are attractive.
Bizarre and excellent acid head SF comedy/space opera/cop show, seemingly aimed at a sophisticated audience, and the police girl is very cute too. Only the first volume was given an 18 cert, for reasons best known to the BBFC, and the other two could have been 15 but were labelled as 18 by the distributor. The complete antidote to Star-Trek. Try it. [Geoff Cowie]