Hard-Boiled Cop and Dolphin: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes (Patreon)

Manga Details

• Author: Tamura, Ryuuhei
• Author’s other works:
  • Beelzebub which had an anime adaption
• Run dates: Jun 27, 2020 to Jun 21, 2021
• Chapters/Volumes: 5/47

About the Manga

• Plot
  • Boyle Samejima is a hardboiled Tokyo cop who doesn’t play by the rules, which gets him transferred to the Ogasawara islands as a punishment. There he meets the beautiful officer Umi Nanase and his new partner Orpheus: a huge dude with a Dolphin head. As well as Orpheus’s daughter Chako, a cute 6 year old girl who was rescued by a cult that was worshipping her as an Oracle.
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  • The cult mysteriously vanished out at sea and since then the island has been victimized by weird fish-human hybrids, which are fought off by the duo of Samejima and Orpheus. It’s really funny until suddenly the series stops being a gag manga around chapter 14.
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  • The cult reappears lead by its guru Yosuke Kamuro. Kamuro has recruited the undersea mafia (AKA the fishmen from One Piece) to reclaim the five limbs of Poseidon known as the Poseidracone which will allow them to drown the world of man. The right arm of which is currently attached to Orpheus.
  • Orpheus and Samejima are met by the Marine Investigation Unit (sp?) made up of powerful warriors trained to fight and even breathe underwater. Their leader is a powerful woman named Tome Jinguji who has a history with Orpheus.
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  • Chako is then kidnapped by a cultist and taken to their underwater palace, where she briefly becomes possessed by the spirit of Poseidon and is kidnapped by Kamuro.
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  • Orpheus, Samejima, and the MIU follow them, where It’s revealed that Kamuro and Orpheus were partners in the police who were sent to infiltrate the cult. Orpheus wound up imprisoned and Kamuro abandoned the mission, ascending to the head of the cult. Kamuro, it turns out, is Chako’s biological father.
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  • Kamuro then bonds with the left hand Poseidracone and kills Orpheus, but Samejima fuses with Orpheus’s right hand Poseidracone and defeats Kamuro before he can drown all of earth.
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  • 10 years pass and Chako is now a 16 year old girl and Samejima is still a hardboiled cop who raised her as her third father.
• Characters
  • Officer Boyle Samejima
    • MC
    • Pretty much Dirty Harry
    • Got fired in the first chapter
    • His name means Shark
  • Umi Nanase
    • Big ol tiddies
    • Officer in Anegashima police
    • I like she’s aware of her sexuality
    • Okiura might be her mom? Maybe? Possibly?
    • Becomes the police chief
  • Chako
    • Can talk to dolphins
    • Princess
    • Raised by a dolphin
    • The oracle in a cult
    • Adorable. A child.
  • Lt. Orpheus F. Lipper
    • Dolphin head
    • Super tough
    • Good with kids
    • Used to be a human but was cursed
    • Badass cursed right hand
  • Tome Jinguji
    • Orpheus ex gf
    • Part of marine squad
    • Learned the style of kung fu that lets you breathe underwater
  • Seira
    • Ocean princess
    • Looking for a man
    • Double agent
    • Triple agent
    • Kinda disappears and then comes back
  • Yosuke Kamuro
    • Actual big bad
    • Leader of the cult
    • Chako’s dad
    • Orpheus’s ex partner
    • Sex pest
    • Beats his wife and kids. Just an awful guy.

Why it failed

• I feel there’s a lot of text and the plot moves kind of slow in the frst chapter
• Having a character with giant boobs as a joke is still having an overly sexualized character
  • At least she’s a fucking adult for once
• Why did a guy who stole a car report an incident instead of just bailing it
• I have no idea where this is going, it’s structured like a proper shonen action manga vs being a comedy manga so I feel it needs to have some idea of a plot
• I feel a lot of lazy jokes are just something silly and Samejima reacts to it, which can be funny sometimes but def can be a crutch
• Def cop porn which given the timing of when the series came out was ugh
• Wish it had gotten faster to the weird fish plot stuff, the first chapter kind of gives the wrong impressions
• The “character reacts to goofy thing” joke gets a little old
• It really is too coy with the lore, I like the cases but it never feels like it’s building something
• Some of the cases also take way too long like the swordfish and dolphin could have had prob a chapter cut out
• The series kinda abandons the hard boiled cop element to be more wacky cop hijinks
• Umi really has no purpose and shows overall theme of women characters not having a lot of agency until midway through
• This is another series that prob should have condensed its first 15ish chapters into 5-7
• The art on the faces can look a little...b.ichi
• JOEY Regarding the first chapter – Perhaps more of an issue with the American readers, but this debuted in the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, which had a lot to do with police misconduct being captured by civilian cameras (phones). This first chap trivializes this issue and almost glorifies police acting outside of the law / using firearms. I don’t think Tamura was necessarily referencing this, it was probably written way before this issue blew up, but it really didn’t sit right with a lot of readers I knew at the time.
• JOEY Chako’s powers are a little confusing. Is she creating these creatures? Is she attracting them? Kind of both?? I don’t think this mysterious nature is necessarily BAD but it does make it harder to easily latch on to the series
• JOEY This isn’t necessarily an issue I have personally, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a reason why it didn’t catch on was that teens didn’t really have much interest in a story about 2 adult men (even if one is a dolphin) taking care of a toddler

What it did well

• SCIENCE BITCH
• Good art, backgrounds galore
• Funny like the punch a victim and then getting fired in the same double page spread was great
  • Him trying to tank a hit to the head from the kid and gets knocked out
• I really like this contrast of a hard boiled cop and everyone pointing out how he’s trying too hard (JOEY one of my first indications that there was good stuff going on in this series is the joke in the first chapter where he’s looking cool, smoking on the ferry to the island, but everyone else is disgusted with him)
• This is how you do a manga parody and is actually funny vs being lazy
• Good fight scenes and I really like the use of shadows to show intensity
• Post arc cooldown scene, I know jordan’s gana love this after the big fight pages with the swordfish dude
• JOEY love the setting. Tropical remote island just has great vibes and it’s nice to have a series outside of the usual locations like Tokyo or Kyoto
• JOEY The ending is really good! It seems like it came on earlier in the story than intended, but Tamura is able to make it feel somewhat natural. I think 1 of 2 things is probably at play here:
  A) Tamura having had a hit series in the past had a little more wiggle room with editorial and maybe an earlier heads up that his series was eventually going to be cancelled than usual.
  B)  Tamura being a veteran author at this point was able to see the writing on the wall that he was going to get cut eventually, and started working towards the ending
• Some of the best art I’ve seen in shonen jump. It’s more subtle. You don’t notice how good it is until there’s a panel that I want to print out and tape to my wall

Where it could have gone

• Had a fucking crossover with Moriking, shit have Jotaro show up and be like yea science yea dolphins
• JOEY I think it ended the way he intended, but we could have gotten more adventures with various sea creature people villains, built up the undersea world a bit more, before then.
• JOEY A lot of the characters & ideas & maybe even parts of the flashback introduced in the final arc could have been sprinkled in throughout several arcs rather than all at once

Misc Thoughts

• I feel the MC and the dude from way of the house husband would be friends, in fact ill say they’re in the same universe
• I was hoping for more cool sea facts
• Man imagine if Jotaro just showed up at the end
• This is the energy build king wishes it had had
• This series would have been a pain to animate
• JOEY This comic, especially the color pages gave me huge City Pop vibes. Perfect to read while listening to Tatsuro Yamashita.
• Chako reminds me of Arale from Dr Slump. Cheery-faced chaos.
• I wish that when we see Haebaru (Dolphin’s human form) that he was a big guy like he is as Orpheus.
• My fav chapter is the one where Chako lies about breaking Orph’s mug. Giant evil cartoon character who says “Wassup!”

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Chemychems: Not cop drama, just ocean fighting.
  • GenericMan: H 2 O: Just Add Combat
  • T Wolfwood: Poorly timed comedy has hard-boiled Dolphin
  • Agpuh: Jurisdiction: 20000 Leagues Under the Sea
  • Ozyrat: Waterworld buddycop bromance for the ages
  • Meowth: Dolphin was cute, cop was sexy
  • Victor: The cops are gonna be busted
  • Tucker: What if God was one por-poise?
  • David: Goofs, Gags and tig ol biddies
  • David: The Life Aquatic with John Woo
  • JOEY: A Hard-Boiled Cop And A Dolphin (the title says it all!)
  • Three Men and a Little Lady
• Flop or not
  • If flop, what they could read instead
  • If not, how it compares to Chainsaw Man
• Is this the best/worst series we’ve talked about

Shoutouts

• Props to Jordan for making the opening and ending theme, being a great co-host, and helping with editing
• Props to Mer Liel for the awesome cover art, you can find her online at liel_mer and Nigel for being our generous art benefactor
• Thanks to Tucker for assistance with pronunciation, translation, and other miscellaneous research.
• Thanks to Nicole for helping with social media
• Thanks to Luke for being our community producer
• Thanks Dylan and Shaun from AOOC for being based
• Jordan thanks David for editing
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