If it wasn’t already clear that Studio Trigger is trying to cement a wacky over-the-top tongue-and-cheek image in our minds, Space Patrol Luluco is the next wave of evidence. Co-directors Amemiya Akira and Imaishi Hiroyuki, who between them directed Inferno Cop, Ninja Slayer from Animation, Kill la Kill, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and even had a major part in FLCL, are no strangers to absurdity and condensing an epic story into a short length for comedic effect, right at home in Luluco’s seven-minute format chock full of references and action on a galactic scale. With that said I come away from this show feeling like that was exactly it: a comedic show that exists to be a condensed short full of references and action on a galactic scale. It is an ode to itself, and to the directors and studio that produced it, but like their previous short Ninja Slayer I leave with the unsatisfied feeling that I am left with nothing once the credits roll.
The first tip-off is that the titular character Luluco advertises herself as a normal everyday student, poking fun at the typical magical girl or shounen anime setups in that we know how abnormal everything is about to get. Sure enough, ten minutes later she is an interstellar police officer who transforms into a gun for the sake of meting out justice, along with her new exaggerated love interest, the expressionless and classic cool-guy Nova. They crack down on an app that uses black holes to help people “space shoplift”, aka stealing things, and the leader of the ring ends up joining their team. When their entire home city suddenly disappears however, they go searching for it along with the police chief Inferno Cop in a meandering adventure that encounters various caricaturized worlds, old family members, and plenty of black holes.
But the show’s claustrophobia comes from trying to develop their characters, even jokingly, while trying to maintain a constant level of insanity and unpredictability, as well as padding things out with fight scenes. The romance between Luluco and Nova can be a bit distracting and annoying, even if the ultimate plot twist for the show revolves around her vapid middle school crush, and the other characters exist simply for one joke apiece. While the transformation sequences from human into gun are amusing enough, the actual fights lie awkwardly between making sense and being completely ridiculous. It tends towards the latter, which is certainly the correct choice for Trigger’s style, but the game being played is filling up enough time with fights so as to not make the “plot” and “character” elements overbearing without making the fights overbearing themselves. With this tightrope to walk, thirteen episodes of seven minutes ended up being much more enjoyable than the even more awkwardly timed Ninja Slayer, but it still felt too long overall.
As for the humor itself, I can’t tell if the studio is being lazy or overly self-indulgent. The headlining joke about being the type of ordinary student you could find anywhere turned supernatural is getting tired, and certainly doesn’t require a whole thirteen episodes to tell over and over. Referencial humor is the lifeblood of Luluco, from Inferno Cop starring (twice!) to lifting Kill la Kill's soundtrack, from an episode styled after their Japan Animator Expo short Sex and Violence with Machspeed to the appearance of a Little Witch Academia character right after the final credits. The characters that aren’t being blatantly recycled from previous Trigger works are being recycled in spirit and form; as a particular instance that stands out from the first episode, Luluco and her father feel suspiciously similar in personality to Mako’s family from Kill la Kill. And the referential humor itself stands as a sort of brag—or just for the sake of being ridiculous—rather than to make an actual statement about the genre they have been and are continuing to parody here. Space Patrol Luluco stands somewhere between a compilation and a summary of its creators, both less amusing than the originals and less amusing itself for viewers not already in the know.