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EP. REVIEW: Akudama Drive

Although saying that no single cop gets sympathy in cyberpunk... yeah, that's not how it goes. It's pretty usual to find the single cop/soldier/agent who has to learn the hard way that the system they served was manipualting and using them to hurt themselves and everything they thought they stood for.
That said, even though she will get more scenes Pupil's case is not so important, since she didn't fight for justice, peace, the country, the people or whatever, she fought to serve her groomed hatred for Akudama.

90s-shonen-fan wrote:

and its unequivocal hatred of cops fully assuaged those fears This is what cops are as an institution, and they deserve no sympathy or well-rounded character arc for it. It's beyond reformation. Especially in light of If anything is going to call itself “cyberpunk,” this is the bare minimum amount of revolutionary messaging I want out of it. Please explain?

Cyberpunk is punk.
The purpose of the genre is to use the convenience but also the alienation of technology to denounce corporativism and authoritarism, and how that technology is used to drill propaganda 24/7. Repressive forces like the police get little sympathy because they're one of the key instruments of that all-devouring authority.

Although saying that no single cop gets sympathy in cyberpunk... yeah, that's not how it goes. It's pretty usual to find the single cop/soldier/agent who has to learn the hard way that the system they served was manipualting and using them to hurt themselves and everything they thought they stood for.
That said, even though she will get more scenes Pupil's case is not so important, since she didn't fight for justice, peace, the country, the people or whatever, she fought to serve her groomed hatred for Akudama.

Then again, this show WAS particularly criticizing police forces (and in the end Boss was just power hungry, not righteous but misguided). Afterall what Hakobiya sliced in half wasn't a government hall, or the Seal Office or the Shinkansen which was the highest symbol of Kanto's rule (someone else did that, not by accident); it was the Kansai Police Dept.

SHD wrote:

Reviewer having their "North-American-In-2020" glasses firmly welded on, and thus not noticing that the show is commenting on authoritarian systems and not the police per se. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And the authoritarian system it's commenting on is the police. I don't know what mental gymnastics you managed to get "this show where the cops are a corrupt force that arbitrarily uses the label of criminality to justify violence" is somehow not commenting specifically on policing but you get the Gold.

lossthief wrote:

SHD wrote: Reviewer having their "North-American-In-2020" glasses firmly welded on, and thus not noticing that the show is commenting on authoritarian systems and not the police per se. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And the authoritarian system it's commenting on is the police. I don't know what mental gymnastics you managed to get "this show where the cops are a corrupt force that arbitrarily uses the label of criminality to justify violence" is somehow not commenting specifically on policing but you get the Gold.

No, the authoritarian system it's commenting on is presented as Kansai under Kantou's rule upholding their power using the Executioners, giving them a license to kill as they please.. It's not the police itself, it's the system using the police (or rather, mostly the Executioners, not as much the actual cops, as we see) as their violent arm to keep citizens in line, making it so that the only difference between the "cops" and "bad guys" is pretty much the license to kill and that the former can designate these labels as they please. Like, this is spelled out quite literally in the show! I don't know what mental gymnastics you managed to get... oh wait, I know. You've been (understandably) influenced by events in the USA this year, and are stuck in this very narrow way of parsing anything that involves cops. Look deep inside your soul and ask yourself if you would interpret this show the same way if you had seen it last year, not this year.

Yeah.

And before this gets ugly and accusations get thrown at me, as it so often happens, I'd like to make it clear that 1. I live in a country with an actual authoritarian system (a dictatorship in anything but name), and no, it's not "like the US", I wish it was like in the US; and 2. I'm no fan of any police or authority; 3. also my politics are the kind that certain Americans like to call "extreme left" (which is kind of hilarious considering it's actually not anything particularly extreme, even as far as leftists go).

No, the authoritarian system it's commenting on is presented as Kansai under Kantou's rule upholding their power using the Executioners, giving them a license to kill as they please..

If you believe that cyberpunk takes an anti-police stance in general then explain:

A. Ghost in the Shell (section 9 plus lots of side characters that are regular beat cops)
B. Akira (Colonel Shikishima, combined military/police role)
C. Armitage (both main characters)
D. Appleseed (combination of B. and C.)
E. the Bubblegum Crisis/AD Police franchise
F. Dirty Pair (another combination of B. and C.)
G. Patlabor (entirely about police)

And that is just off the top of my head. LOTS of cyberpunk works are about bedraggled police officers doing their level best to maintain/impose a modicum of order amid chaos created by superpowered techno-criminals, corrupt bureaucrats, shady corporations and conspiracies involving a union of all three. As for cyberpunk works that depict the police as being uniquely bad and a threat to everything else as opposed to merely being an extension of a corrupt or autocratic government or decadent unaccountable upper class which is the true cause of all the problems, I have yet to encounter any. I am intrigued if any exist and can be recommended. And no, this work being reviewed is not an example.

Like, this is spelled out quite literally in the show! I don't know what mental gymnastics you managed to get... oh wait, I know. You've been (understandably) influenced by events in the USA this year, and are stuck in this very narrow way of parsing anything that involves cops. Look deep inside your soul and ask yourself if you would interpret this show the same way if you had seen it last year, not this year.

SHD wrote:

No, the authoritarian system it's commenting on is presented as Kansai under Kantou's rule upholding their power using the Executioners, giving them a license to kill as they please..

It's almost funny that you still repeated the actual argument against cops while pretending it's not about cops. Cops being able to kill with impunity *using the laws of the government* is a structural problem with cops having too much authority. Congratulations you're like 90% of the way to understanding the argument that was being made.