Cop Craft - A Modern Buddy Cop Anime with a Fantasy Twist

Cop Craft takes place in a reality where a world of Fantasy and Magic crosses over with the normal mundane world. After losing his partner in a crime involving drug smuggling from the other world, Kei teams up with a Knight from the other world, Tilarna. From there we get a fairly typical Buddy Cop kind of story with a fantasy twist added in.

It's a pretty basic concept, but despite treading territory you've probably seen before, an unlikely pair are forced to work together despite their differences, Cop Craft does a great job with its premise. Rather than the typical 'Good Cop Bad Cop' thing going on, where one of the two just doesn't like to play by the rules, you have a cop who is a bit disillusioned by the current state of law enforcement, but at the same time does his best to live up to the principals behind modern law enforcement. On the other hand, you have a Knight of a foreign world that works a lot more like a Monarchy, so she has just as much principal as Kei does, the thing is though it's an almost entirely different model of Justice.You get these really funny and strange bits where you take a high noble and they kind of become the bad cop in a modern setting.

Past that you get a pretty solid story to open up the show, using human manufacturing to improve upon various magics of the other world and turning a stolen fairy into a drug that is highly addictive to humans. One of their foes is even able to raise and manipulate the dead, so you get an interesting mix of fantasy and modern crime drama and the two things mix together very well here.

There are some issues, specifically during the middle of the series you get a couple of episodes that do feel a bit like padding, and by shows end there are still a few loose ends in relation to Kei's past, a book of prophecy, and a couple other things that are just kind of brought up as part of the story, but don't really take the main focus. Throw in a pretty bad couple of comedy relief episodes and there are a few things really holding the show back.

Episode seven, however, is a huge highlight of the show for me, and it's really the part where Tilarna is really starting to see what it means to be a police officer in this world compared to a Knight in her own. I won't spoil it, but I'll say that the way the episode ends is obvious, and frankly, there was no other way for this episode to end. But in the case of this show that's okay, not everything needs a surprise twist to have an impact, and sometimes the predictable outcome is predictable not because of its hack writing, but because it's the right choice to end it on. And this show really did a great job with it, if the whole show was that good it honestly would be a contender for best show of the year.

That said, there is one thing that can be a bit frustrating that comes up, especially in the last half. See, a part of the plot involves the idea that a lot of people of this world aren't happy with the others coming in, in part because of things like the highly addictive and deadly drug, powerful magic that modern tech isn't equipped to deal with, and various other things. The first problem is this tension is almost nonexistent until the show needs it to make some kind of the point. The second is, and this is true largely in the last part of the show, it can get really preachy and seems to pull many aspects directly from American Politics. I don't know politics in Japan, so I don't know how intentional this is, but it's not hard to draw direct lines to modern Democrat and Republicans, especially in regards to the Immigration debate. While there are things I really like about the portrayal, the things I like could have existed without drawing such direct and specific comparisons, and when you notice them it's really hard not to see the show as not having picked a hard line side to be on in terms of politics, as any kind of nuance is drained from the discussion.

I really don't want to have to bring up politics at all in my reviews, but you really can't avoid it when talking about how the show ends. I think the show's decisions and actions of the characters in this situation are good enough to overcome that, but anytime modern politics is treated the way it is in this show makes me cringe. This really is the sticking point that lowers the show's quality for me.

All that said, it's still a great show worth watching. They do well with both the unique twists and the tropes it makes use of, and it has a fantastic cast of characters. I do hope that we eventually get a second season and tie up the remaining loose ends, but the show does tell a complete story despite that. If you think you can stomach a bit of forced politics here and there, give the show a watch.