Like the show’s title suggests, Chojo is a super psychic policeman, but his daily responsibilities are hardly glamorous. He’s stuck doing meaningless work like helping an ojisan unlock his brand new smartphone or impressing elementary schoolchildren with his mad yo-yo skilz. Ah well, it beats doing the usual police work, i.e. stalking women via Flock cameras, needing eight other colleagues to fully handle a non-emergency call about someone with a mental illness (translation: using excessive force and killing them), and… and what else…? Oh yeah, harassing minorities! But I digress. We’re here to talk about anime, a famously non-political medium.

The real problem with Chojo is that he has no boundaries. Sure, he can read anyone’s history and background, but that doesn’t mean he should shove it in their faces. But this guy has no interest in social mores, so he quickly turns everyone against him, even Nao, his latest rookie kouhai. He just starts rattling off her personal details outta nowhere. Our parents are supposed to teach us proper etiquette, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Chojo has a tragic backstory or whatever. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t change the fact that he’s currently a jackass.

Speaking of Nao, our unfortunate sidekick got stuck with Chojo because she dared to defend herself against a sexually harassing superior. I like how this is just glossed over like a minor detail. Sadly, Nao having a strong sense of justice hasn’t always paid off. Even though she managed to fend off a group of yakuza hoping to prey upon her grandfather’s dojo, they still haven’t given up. They later come back and literally smash the place to bits with a wrecking ball. The only reason Nao joined the police in the first place was to protect her family, and all she got was a groping. Wait a minute, is this really supposed to be a happy, fun show about a wacky psychic cop?

Of course, this is all just setup for Chojo to redeem himself in our eyes. So far, he has earned his unpleasant reputation. But hey, if he manages to help his cute, precious kouhai out, we gotta look at him in a new light, right? Meh. As predicted, Chojo uses his psychic tricks to turn the tables on the yakuza. He’s the type of cop to cause a ton of infrastructure damage, but he still manages to put the troublesome gangsters behind bars. Would you consider that a win? Well, Chojo even apologizes to Nao for not acting sooner; he should’ve known they would wreck her grandfather’s dojo. This small bit of contrition allows Nao to feel a bit better about her new partnership. Only slightly, though. He gives her all the credit for taking down the yakuza, which means she has to do all the follow-up work. Also, everyone now thinks she’s a psycho who would smash the streets up with a wrecking ball. Welp, the good mood between them was short-lived.

Personally, I don’t really understand why someone as talented as Chojo would be doing “the rounds.” If he’s a bonafide psychic, which it looks like he is, then why isn’t he tackling some of Japan’s famous cold cases? What? There are plenty of them. Any serial killer enthusiast has probably heard of the Setagaya Family Murder. But how ’bout the Vending Machine Killer, who tried to kill people by injecting poison into health drinks? There were also three unfortunate women who were shot to death in a supermarket, and yet the store safe was full of money. What could possibly motivate someone to murder two teenagers and a middle aged woman? Sounds like a question that only a psychic could answer! Granted, this would turn the anime into something very different. Currently, this feels like one of those wacky, high energy comedies about two cop buddies. But I just can’t wrap my mind around a psychic policeman wasting their time on patrols. Cops get a bad enough rap, so go do something useful for once.

I don’t think there’s enough depth here for a long post every week. This’ll go into the Everything Else pile.