Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1999) Review

A review of Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1999)

#anime

[MayumiTakezoC-chan]

My husband cosplayed as a Kerberos Keisatsu special trooper. My husband built it from EVA foam and a steel copy Stahlhelm.

[GodzillaX]

Those armor suits are so sick. Very haunting film, the animation is both beautiful and slightly unsettling. Got to see one of the helmets someone made at a con, heavy but was a real treat.

[thObserver]

This, Patlabor and 95' GITS are still my standard when it comes Japanese animation. Their mature slow burn dystopian storylines are usually not for a general audience, But Hey! That's what I liked about it.

[doublep]

The S. Korean live-action movie puts more emphasis on the action/ political thriller, less on the psychological aspect and changes the background story a lot. It takes place in modern times, not during the 1960's and they also changed Japan with Korea. Basically the plot revolves about a potential unification of North & South Korea.
The biggest change they did though, was the ending. The anime has a very grimdark ending, while the Korean live-action movie has a more stereotypical happy-ending, which surprised me, because many S.Korean movies have no problem with tragic/ ''bad'' endings. The ending felt very ''Hollywood'' if you know what I mean.
I did like the action sequences & production design though, specially the Kerberos body-armor looks amazing and they recreate the 2 iconic action scenes from the anime very well.
If you watch it as it's own thing, it's a pretty decent political/action-thriller, genres in which the S. Koreans really excel. But as a faithful adaptation of the original manga/anime, yeah... it's not that good.

[vrdfrdcf]

From what I have heard about the lore/history of Jin-Roh, It is suspected that the history of Japan and China are swapped, with Japan never turning into a proper empire, and China turning into a powerful empire invading much of Asia. The invasion of Japan was performed by Germany as a part of the Axis, though the reasons are unknown. It would also explain how the USSR was defeated, as a unified imperial China in combination with Germany could do this, with troops to spare by Germany for other expeditions.

[ThommyofThenn]

Axis winning WW2 is a well-trodden premise in alternative history, but that by no means indicates it's a spent genre.
To this very day we are getting great works of alternate history with stuff like this and the Machine-era Wolfenstein games

[pilotmanpaul]

This show is so peak and the Edits that came out of its aesthetics is just amazing. The Kerberos Panzer Cop armor is so amazing and the tunnel shootout between the Insurgents and soon, the Secret Police is still some of the greatest fight scenes I've seen.

[terrified.]

Legit one of the best anime movies I've seen, though I do concede that it was a bit jarring that Germany invaded and occupied Japan, who was somehow democratic. felt a bit of a whitewash. However, I don't know enough about early 1900s Japanese history to know if that is/was a viable alt history scenario.

[ThommyofThenn]

1:09 in case anyone isn't familiar, the movie "Valkyrie" covers this plot

[DavidCowie]

I saw this film a couple of years ago. It was sold to me as a love story between a riot cop and the sister of a suicide bomber, but it turned out to be about a turf war between the riot cops and the regular cops. With explosions and cool armour and tragic love.

[__taka__]

During the Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade
There are some German Vehicles and German Weaponry, like the Stg-44, Luger P-08 and the Walther P-38, Mg-42 and for the Vehicles. the SDKFZ 232 along with, i think Light Recon cars

[RayleeRaven]

been itching for people talking about the movie itself (and also the series in general), i think i found the greatest one. thank you

[Fiendishfool]

People who don’t like animated films need to watch films like this

[sigmar]

A quick alternate history lore for Jin-Roh like you said july 20 plot succeeds, Britain and it's colonies was forced to surrender (maybe because of operation sealion or just conditional surrender), Germany managed to win both Stalingrad and Leningrad by using a prototype of the Cerberus Armor, US stay neutral in the war and did not provide a lend lease program to the Allies, Finally Japan was nuked 17 times and with the help of the Chinese Kuomintang forced a unconditional surrender on them.

[dekuzilla]

The live action version keeps the cool armor but leaves out the back story and meaning of everything. It is a personal favorite of mine and gets more attention every year. The ending is always referenced it is a great seller to bring in new fans. It very much is a political thriller and the same level as Tom Clancy films, just in a anime form.

[Bytional]

Jin-Roh did so well in capture the feel of class conflict because its writer and director really study and heavily influenced by Japanese student movement in 60-70, you can always see this idea in their work: Patlabor, GITS and Jin-Roh.

[AlexRoivas]

Probably the best anime movie ever made. I think the 90s was when anime reached its zenith since starting in the late 50s. Once the 2000s started you had anime go back from having serious series and movies and almost everything becoming high school stories and moe which is OK since that is what Japanese audiences wanted but it was stuff that didn't interest me.

[dingusbingus]

Theres a Korean knock off live action of this that's really good, They adapted the script to make sense in Korea, with the same overall premise

[shaider]

I watched this on VHS as a kid. Very action packed.

[ashifabedin]

Legit one of the best anime movies I've seen...its a gem