Hyper Police Vol. 1
Hyper Police is one of my favorite comedy anime series and it made me a catgirl lover for life, so I knew I had to pick the manga up as soon as possible. It's year twenty-two of the Holy Century, and humans are an endangered species. Monsters now mostly populate the world. Demons, werewolves, kitsune, gators, giant fleas, mushrooms, you name it, it's there. Crime is so rampant that private police companies work as bounty hunters to arrest or "collar", as the characters call it, criminals.
Natsuki, our main character, is an eighteen year old catgirl (half-human, half-cat) who works as a bounty hunter for Police Company. Her sempai is Batanen, a muscular, perverted werewolf who is in love with Natsuki. Tomy, also a werewolf, but more much more feminine in body and manners, is Batanen's partner. Kondo, a tough-as-nails human is Natsuki's partner for a little while, but Natsuki's usual partner is Sakura, an eight-and-a-quarter tailed kitsune who joined Police Company purely to eat the innocent, yet powerful Natsuki, thus grow her ninth tail and become a true kitsune.
Natsuki's main weapon is her short sword, though she uses her two lightning-producing parasites, Raijin and Fujin, as her ultimate weapon, frying her hunted criminals into a coma. She lives at home with a horde of cats, the chief of all being Bob, a twenty-one year old cat that Natsuki uses as her legal guardian. When she learns that Sakura is homeless, Natsuki insists that she moves in until Sakura can find a place of her own. Sakura is more than happy with this living arrangement; all the better to catch Natsuki off guard and eat her. Unfortunately for the kitsune, Natsuki's cats and parasites are aware of her plans and thwart her attempts every time. Despite Sakura's cutthroat attitude, she is slowly warming to Natsuki, becoming a true friend to her. The first volume ends with Police Company going bankrupt, leaving all of the bounty hunters unemployed. What will Natsuki do now?
In comparison to the anime series, Hyper Police the manga is more ecchi and less focused on action, though the manga chapters match up to anime episodes very closely. MEE obviously loves to draw full-breasted women and half-monster creatures, judging from the number of busty females and illustrations of porn magazines that Batanen is reading or imagining. The artwork shows a good variety of tones and layouts, but the panels can be confusing at times, as MEE is quite fond of large textual sound effects, which TOKYOPOP has left untranslated. The dialogue is witty and full of double entendre, chiefly with "getting some tail" and other sexual euphemisms.
Fans of the anime will love this book, though it definitely merits the "OT - Older Teen. Age 18+" label on the back. Comments are made about animals going into heat (which makes sense, as all of the main characters are not human, save Kondo), so if you're uncomfortable with that thought, then don't pick up this manga. If you like catgirls, action and mildly dirty language, then Hyper Police will collar that desire for a good manga to read.