Though I've enjoyed several Japanese horror films and I love anime, most horror anime leaves me a bit cold.  Their production values are usually a little lower than your average show, and the shock value of seeing someone's arm getting sliced off soon wears out since is happens so often.  So when I received Tokko to review, I wasn't expecting much and for the most part I was right.  Though the show has an interesting premise and some enjoyable characters, it wasn't able to develop either over its short 13 episode run.

Seven years ago Ranmaru Shindo and his younger sister returned home to their apartment to find their parents slaughtered.  Not only killed, but ripped to pieces and eaten.  This happened to everyone who was in the large complex that day, and the police sealed the buildings off and haven't let anyone in since.

Flash forward to the present and Shindo has just graduated the academy and is a new police officer.  He's dedicated his life to finding out who killed his parents and why.  For his first assignment he's been stationed with a tough old Sergeant who works him mercilessly, but even so the events of the past are never far from his mind.

When his unit gets a call about a maniac killing people in the streets, they speed to the scene only to find mindless zombie-like creatures that are killing everyone they can.  Bullets don't stop them and even head-shots are ineffective.  Just when it seems like the beasts are unstoppable, Tokko shows up.  This group of sword-wielding youths is a special, secret branch of the Tokyo police department.  It turns out that the monsters are people who have been infected by a demon, and the only way to stop them is to cut the demon out of them.

The government covers up the demon attack as they have all the times something similar has happened in the past.  Shindo wants to get to the bottom of what's going on, and Tokko seems to be the only clue.  When he eventually manages to talk to one of their members he discovers that they share something in common:  they're all survivors of the apartment massacre from seven years ago.  Tokko is trying to recreate an ancient artifact that released the monsters in the first place, but to do that they have to kill over 100 demons and collect the artifact part from their bodies.   They've only got 11, so it'll be a long battle.

While I though the premise was promising enough and the plot moved along at a good clip, the show never really lived up to its potential.  When all is said and done, this is a typical horror anime, with arms, legs, and heads being chopped off at regular intervals and lots of blood.  Part of the reason this show never moved above that level is because it's so short they had to cram a lot into a brief run.  I'm really surprised at the way the constructed the story too.  They could have altered things so that a single story was related, but they didn't.  The plot changes direction a couple of times over the course of the program and never really seems to know what it wants to do.  The show throws in a lot of subplots that are ignored and ideas that are forgotten.  It ends much too abruptly with a lot of things still hanging, and that's the show's biggest disappointment.

The animation is also very limited.  There're only the most basic movements and sword thrusts will often be accomplished by moving the cell itself across the background rather than animating the movement.  I also spotted a few sections that were reused the episodes which gave the show a cheap and quickly made feel.  It's too bad, because with a little more effort spent on the animation and a few more episodes this could have been a good show.
 

Audio:

This show comes with the original Japanese track, in stereo, along with an English dub that's available in stereo or DD 5.1.  I alternated between the Japanese and English 5.1 tracks, and though I enjoyed the surround sound during the action scenes, I found the Japanese audio to be the way to go.  This sounds like an early dub, thought the show was released in 2007.  Some of the voice actors sound like their just reading their lines and even the ones who give good performances didn't overly impress me.  The Japanese track sounded more natural and I ended up enjoying it more ever with only two speakers firing.  As far as quality goes, both tracks were fine, with no distortion, dropouts or other common problems.

Video:

This 1.78:1 widescreen image was anamorphically enhanced and looked pretty good.  The lines were generally tight and the colors were solid and reproduced well.  The black levels were a little on the light side at times with some sections of darkness not being quite as deep as I would have liked, but this defect was only in a couple of instances.  There was some slight aliasing in parts, but no blocking or other digital defects that I noticed.  Overall this is a good looking disc with only some minor problems.

Extras:

There are some good bonus items scattered across these three discs.  I was very pleased with the selection.  The biggest items are a couple of behind-the-scenes featurettes that run about 35 minutes each.  In these the Japanese cast and crew talk about the show, and they are more than just a fluff pieces (though there was some of that.)  They did a good job discussing the program and the characters and what they were trying to accomplish.

There's also a so-so blooper reel, a clean opening and closing, and three image galleries.

Final Thoughts:

While this show started with a lot of promise, it ended up being a typical horror anime.  That's not to say it's bad, just not great.  If you're really into that type of anime, then this is a no-brainer, but the general otaku would be better off renting this since there's not a lot of replay value.