Dominion (manga) — BrandWiki

Dominion (manga)

type	OVA
title	Dominion Tank Police
director	Kōichi Mashimo (#1–4) Norubu Furuse (#5–10)
producer	Part 1 (#1–4) Kazuhiko Inomata Ritsuko Kakita Tamaki Harada Part 2 (#5–10) Ken Matsumoto Michihisa Abe Koji Honda
writer	Kōichi Mashimo Hiroshi Yamaguchi
music	Yoichiro Yoshikawa
studio	Agent 21 (#1–4) J.C.Staff (#5–10)
first	May 27, 1988
last	October 21, 1994
runtime	25–35 minutes (each)
episodes	10

Dominion (ドミニオン) is a Japanese manga written and illustrated by Masamune Shirow. Set in the fictional city of Newport, Japan, in a future in which bacteria as well as air pollution have become so severe that people must wear gas masks when outdoors, the series follows a police squadron that uses military-style tanks.

Dominion has been adapted into three original video animation series: the first, Dominion Tank Police, was released in 1988, the second, New Dominion Tank Police in 1993, and the third, Tank S.W.A.T. 01 in 2006. The 1988 OVA is four episodes long and animated by Agent 21, the 1993 OVA is six episodes long and animated by J.C.Staff, while TANK S.W.A.T. is one episode long and was animated by DOGA Productions. The manga was published by Hakusensha, Kodansha and later by Seishinsha. It has been published in English by Dark Horse Comics. The anime has been released in English translation in the United Kingdom and Australia by Manga Entertainment and in the United States by Central Park Media, under their U.S. Manga Corps division. The New Dominion Tank Police series was also distributed in the UK, Australia and United States by Manga Entertainment, but later expired. Maiden Japan licensed the six-episode 1993 New Dominion Tank Police OVA series for distribution in North America in 2013.[1]

Characters

The Tank Police

Leona Ozaki
A young female officer in the Tank Police, she is extremely enthusiastic about her work, and obsessively protective of her tank, which she calls "Bonaparte". Leona was originally an officer in the motorcycle division before requesting a transfer to the Tank Police. Her name, in conjunction with her tank, is likely a reference to the early 19th-century French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte.

Al'Cu Ad Solte
A young male officer, Leona's much calmer partner and co-pilot of Bonaparte. He is very taken by Leona but is always second in her affections behind Bonaparte. He is a very good computer hacker. His name was changed to Al Southwell in English dub.

Charles Brenten
Leona's squad leader. Very macho, Charles has little regard for regulations or the health, safety and property of civilians. He is the best shot in the force, preferring a large, old-fashioned revolver (which he lovingly refers to as "the Castigator") to the automatic weapons used by other members of his unit. He has a lifetime subscription to How to Kill magazine. According to Shirow, he is named after the Bren Ten 10 mm handgun, as popularized by the then popular American TV series, Miami Vice, In some translations he is known as "Britain", due to an error in translation.

Chaplain
An unofficial police chaplain and tank pilot. He once took pity on a criminal, who took advantage by shooting and killing his partner and escaping.

Jim E. Lovelock (Specs, Megane or Four-Eyes)
A scientific expert and tank commander, his knowledge and insights are often helpful on difficult cases and his calm and logical thinking are critical to crisis situations. He has a friendly rivalry with Chaplain.

Chief
The chief of police, he is prone to tearing out what little hair he has left, and what's left turned white due to the stress of the job. He has a chronic ulcer that acts up whenever the Tank Police cause too much collateral damage. In arguments with the previous mayor, he comments in the introduction that tanks are insufficient for keeping the peace, and would prefer 'replacing our guns with tactical nuclear weapons', though it's unclear if he means this to be taken seriously.

Criminals

Buaku
The "super criminal" the Tank Police was formed to fight, Buaku is specializing in bank robbery and general mayhem. He leads a gang, but appears to be backed by unknown individuals. Buaku's true origins are unclear between the OVA and the manga itself. In the OVA, Buaku was apparently a "test dummy" for the Greenpeace Crolis project, who escaped destruction when government agents raided the lab and destroyed everything except for encoded data disguised as a nude portrait of himself. He ends up living on the streets and is eventually framed for a bank robbery by an unidentified woman and later arrested by police, which starts the chain of events that led him to become a criminal. In the manga, it is said that Buaku started his criminal career over 80 years ago in Argentina.

In part 1 of the OVA his goal is to retrieve urine samples for a mysterious go-between for the unseen crime boss "Mr. Big". The Tank Police thwarted his plans, but are unable to arrest him.

In part 2 of the OVA he tried to retrieve the encoded data from the Greenpeace experiment, which is on display at a local auction house in Newport. In the manga, his final criminal act is the theft of the Space Colony "Embryo", in which he succeeds and escapes to the stars with his gang, with the exception of the Puma Sisters, who were left on Earth to organize the final getaway.

AnnaPuma and UniPuma
Anna & Uni are a pair of tall, beautiful blonde android

Others

Greenpeace Crolis (or Chloris)
A mysterious green-skinned girl with wings, kidnapped from the Critical Science Development Agency by Buaku's Gang. She is briefly seen in the OVA, but is still an important element for the antagonists to reach throughout the course of the episodes.

The Counselor
Buaku's client before the Greenpeace incident in Part 1 of the OVA, he provides Buaku's gang with intelligence and "weapons" (vintage tanks) to obtain the urine samples necessary for the completion of Greenpeace.

Voices

The additional voices in the English dub include Bill Bailey, John Bull, David Graham, Garrick Hagon, Kate Harper, and Peter Marinker.

Manga

Dominion

The first chapter of the manga was published in 1985 in Hakusensha's magazine Monthly Comic special feature. After that the manga was serialized in Hakusensha's Monthly ComiComi magazine in 1986 and was later released as a single tankōbon in the same year. The plot of the manga is set in the future on a highly polluted Earth. Due to unbearable air quality, the people who inhabit the metropolis of New Port City are forced to wear oxygen masks when outside.

Bandit Buaku, accompanied by two android twins called the "Puma Sisters", tries to capture a top-secret government project that applies a plant's biology to a human's genome allowing for self-oxygenation. In doing so he hopes to prevent the establishment from forcibly changing the human race instead of solving the pollution issue. Captain Brenten and his squadron of Tank Police, composed of officers Leona Ozaki and Al'Cu Ad Solte among others, set out to put a stop to Buaku using their brute military force.

Phantom of the Audience

An omake (or short story) titled "Dominion: Phantom of the Audience" was originally published as part of a "Special Graphix Dominion" ComiComi special issue in 1988. Seishinsha collected it in the Dominion F volume with a reprint of the original manga on January 27, 1993, and in North America it was published by Dark Horse Comics on March 1, 1994.[2] It involves a fictional sport called "Smartball" and features Leona and the rest of the Tank Police crew.

Dominion Conflict One: No More Noise

Dominion Conflict One: No More Noise (ドミニオン) by Masamune Shirow was originally published in the Comic Gaia magazine in 1992 and 1993, and one collected volume was published on February 21, 1995, by Seishinsha and in North America in March 1997 by Dark Horse Comics. It is not considered to be part of the same continuity as the original stories.

While the story revolves around Leona Ozaki and the members of the Newport Tank Police, and Conflict One contains some of the same elements as in the original stories, other aspects have been downplayed, altered, or completely removed. Originally planning four Conflict series, Shirow has placed Dominion on hold while he worked on other projects. These included the various Ghost in the Shell anime and Man-Machine Interface. Conflict Two, originally planned for 1997, has yet to be published.

Many elements set Conflict apart from the original Dominion story. Shirow has asked people to think of Conflict as another time line altogether.

Set in November 202X, Conflict One presents the changed Newport City. It is no longer plagued by severe pollution. The story begins with Urushi-maru the "Skyscraper Pirate" and his partner attacking the Nankaiden department store while being pursued by the Osaka Air Police. Tank Police Sergeant Leona Ozaki gets involved when she fires on Urushi-maru's plane, causing the pirate to drop his stink bombs on Nankaiden's rival Hokutenro (the presumed backer of Urushi-maru's attack).

While searching for Urushi-maru, Leona must deal with the selection of the next generation of police tanks, relationship issues, public backlash against the Tank Police, personal rivalries with the current members of her old traffic division, and—to her greatest displeasure—the addition to her unit of the former criminal android AnnaPuma.