Space Patrol Luluco is a thirteen episode anime that’s not based on any existing property. It’s a short anime though as each episode is only around seven minutes long. The anime is animated by Studio Trigger, so you should completely expect the usual craziness in its plot. The art style is also striking in that it uses a simpler aesthetics that’s reminiscent of anime more targeted towards younger audiences.
The story follows Luluco, who is a human living in a city where aliens are commonplace. She is supposedly normal in her life right up until now, however, through a bizarre series of events, she ends up joining the Space Patrol, effectively to fight crime. The anime fully expects you to go along with it, not questioning too much and if you do that, you’ll have a great time.
The biggest strength with the anime is how random and unexpected it gets. As a result, you look forward to every episode eagerly anticipating the next turn of events. You might think you’d have an episode figured out before it throws something out of the blue at you, usually with hilarious consequences. It knows its silly but it fully embraces that silliness and it never gets out of hand or outstays its welcome.
As you can expect, there’s a lot of yelling from the characters. The scenes are also melodramatic and there is a high degree of exaggeration. Each scene tries to be more over the top than the last, but never quite drowns it out, striking a good balance. There’s a neat crossover / reference to previous Studio Trigger anime that makes sense in the context of things and a really cool aspect to include.
Despite feeling episodic at first, it quickly establishes an overarching plot arc for the whole season. This results in Luluco and the main cast to hop from place to place, giving us imaginative new settings that further increase the anime’s unpredictability. Despite constantly using twisted logic to makes its point, it somehow… still manages to feel like there is some rationality.
The only slight negative is how Luluco pretty much falls in love at first sight with Nova based on his attractive appearance alone, so that can feel superficial at first. The anime is aware of that and so it ends up portraying it as a cruel first love. Yet due to the short nature of the anime, there is not enough time to build up the relationship to as strong as it wanted to depict it. It tries to make up for that through the high impact visuals and the passion of the characters through the over-the-top but awesome voice acting.
There is a strong ending which carries a theme that was prevalent throughout the anime. It’s satisfying and in line with the tone and direction it was going for. Reflecting back on the thirteen episodes, it’s impressive how much was achieved. Sure, there were instant resolution of some things and yet, it works wells and only served for the next thing it had planned.
Overall, Space Patrol Luluco is a blast from start to finish. With the short episodes, the story couldn’t be too complex but it is so satisfying and managed to compensate for its short length by its fast pace. The animation style suits what the anime wanted to achieve and the sheer ridiculous of the over-the-top delivery and nature of episode carries you into the moment for a huge rush.
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