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Hyper Police - An Episode-by-Episode Tour
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The Studio Pierrot TV series Hyper Police ran in 25 episodes in 1997. Based on a manga by MEE (Minoru Tachikawa), the series was directed by Takahiro Omori (soon to do the same for Fancy Lala, a 1998 Studio Pierrot series). Character design was handled by Keiji Gotoh, a wideranging animation veteran with credentials ranging from Neon Genesis Evangelion to the recent Slayers Revolution and Vampire Knight.
However, as with many series being completed at this busy time, the episodes were assigned to a diverse slate of animation teams, which included both veterans and newcomers. Among the most distinctive of the latter was Tatsuya Ishihara, who directed several episodes, assisted by a circle of artists who worked with him later on his successful projects AIR, Haruhi Suzumiya, and Clannad. The Hyper Police episodes completed by the "Ishihara-tachi" (as I call this group of artists) are among the most interesting and artistically accomplished. But there are visual joys in the other episodes as well.
As I began by collecting sketches rather than cels from this series, I could immediately see the contrasts among the animation approaches to specific episodes. It was not until recently that I was able to identify more clearly which animator was responsible for what task. So this tour celebrates this diversity of styles, as well as my growing knowledge of the individual artists who practiced them.
You can learn much more about this series and its characters by visiting HyperPolice.Net: A Hyper Police fan page, a full and well organized tribute to this show.
Production art from this show seems uncommon. On Rubberslug, Vapalla's Cels has a fine selection of cels, while BlueBlade Anime Art displays another nice series of layouts and gengas from earlier in the series. (It was thanks to these two collections that I was drawn to this series.)
But for a really spectacular collection of Hyper Police art, you should visit A Hyper Police Anime Gallery. This is a comprehensive, easily browsable site that has the largest publically accessible gathering of art from this series, ranging from cels to cards and pencil boards.
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