Ranmaru Shindo’s nightmares are a mystery to him: he recognizes the brutal flashbacks of the day he and his sister Saya found their parents and the rest of their apartment complex devoured by strange creatures, but there’s no explanation for what happens next, as a topless, red-haired woman with a sword slashes through said creatures and stares portentously at Ranmaru. Our confused hero then wakes up, usually to find Saya, with whom he now shares an apartment, shaking her breasts in his face and joking about “providing some stimulation for my poor, celibate brother.”

And that’s the most disturbing moment Tokko has to offer.

Both Ranmaru and Saya are police officers, and Ranmaru’s just been promoted to the department’s Mobile Investigation Force, along with his maid-obsessed friend. They’re quickly hazed: Kunikida, the division’s insane, foul-mouthed chief puts them on latrine duty, while a flirtatious blond woman in uniform licks Ranmaru’s face in the hallway. He soon learns that his new admirer is Suzuka, a member of the “Special Public Safety Task Force,” mercifully abbreviated as “Tokko.”

The members of Tokko do more than lick faces, as Ranmaru and his fellow officers learn at a gruesome murder scene. When bullets fail to bring down a pack of shambling, demonically hijacked street punks, Suzuka and the rest of the Tokko squad intervene, dicing up the creatures and the shrill-voiced, human-faced maggots that infest their bodies. But in spite of all the gory revelations around him, Ranmaru’s most interested in Tokko member Sakura Rokujo, who looks an awful lot like the blade-swinging redhead from his dreams.

A dull romance driven by brief childhood acquaintance and cheap plot contrivances? It's like Love Hina with swords.

Though it initially drenches itself in blood, Tokko comes off as surprisingly mild. The first batch of episodes leans toward trite humor as much as it does visceral action, with running gags about Ranmaru’s toilet-cleaning duties and his downright nauseating banter with his sister. It’s no surprise that the original Tokko manga came from Tohru Fujisawa, creator of Great Teacher Onizuka, as Tokko shares the same bent for lightweight, sexually charged comedy. It’s just not as funny.

Nor is Tokko much of a horror story. Perplexed and occasionally competent, Ranmaru makes an uninteresting lead, and his relationships with Sakura and a mousy scientist are unconvincing. Beyond the playful, sarcastic Suzuka, the Tokko unit itself is rather dull, including the bluntly serious Sakura, a silent swordsman, and a fretting, glasses-wearing superior officer. Their name’s also odd, seeing as how the real-life Tokko was essentially the Japanese government’s secret police from the early 1900s to the end of World War II. Perhaps we can look forward to another monster-hunting anime called Gestapo.

The most disappointing characters are the monsters themselves; while they shuffle around and lunge toward any human flesh, they aren’t zombies in the traditional brain-eating sense. Easily dispatched and unimaginatively designed, they're just another type of monster in just another monster-hunting show, and their origin is a mixture of arcane sorcery and the same science-gone-mad drivel that anime writers have warmed over one time too many.

Yet it’s the animation that ultimately sinks Tokko. Washed-out and ugly, it resembles a cheap early-‘90s TV shows, even though it was made last year. Director Masashi Abe tries the same stiff, brutal style he used in Blue Gender, but any tension’s undercut by an obviously limited budget and a brainless script. My favorite moments come when Ranmaru and the other cops repeatedly empty their revolvers (which often spotlight the show’s animation quality by not revolving) into the creatures, even though the Tokko officers repeatedly warn them that GUNS DON’T WORK.

Yes, they’re just like the Krankorian chicken-men from Prince of Space.

Tony “Rick Hunter” Oliver passes muster as Ranmaru in the dub, and Doug Stone chews as much scenery as possible with Kunikida, but most of the other actors, including Kirk Thornton (Samurai Champloo’s Jin) and Michelle Ruff (Bleach’s Rukia), aren’t at their best. Some are actually at their worst: Saya’s a uncomfortable, needlessly prominent little-sister character to begin with, but Meghan Hollingshead drives the point home by giving her a horrid valley-girl dialect that had me praying for Saya’s immediate and preferably painful demise. Lenneth Valkyrie can do better.

The dub offers one nice touch with the voices of the corpse-animating bugs; they’re high-pitched and childlike, providing a single creepy undertone in Tokko’s otherwise drab atmosphere. Conversely, the white worms sound unremarkable in Japanese version, though Saya’s actually less obnoxious there. And for one final annoyance, Manga’s DVD only has five chapter stops. What if I want to watch that awesome scene where...Oh. Never mind.

Tokko’s a complete letdown. Pale and lifeless, it's particularly inferior when compared to other Manga offerings like Noein, Karas, and even the upcoming Highlander: The Search for Vengeance. If you want the anime equivalent of Dawn of the Dead or any other decent horror flick, move on. The only true zombie here is Tokko's badly reanimated corpse of a plot.

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