As the film opens, a voice-over reveals "Jin-Roh's" complicated background. "Jin-Roh" is set in an alternate past where Japan's occupational government holds an iron grip on an insurgent populace. Thanks to the C.A.P.O. (Capitol Police), a heavily armed anti-terrorist unit, nearly a decade of civil unrest is coming to an end. With peace looming on the horizon, the government wants to integrate the C.A.P.O. with the regular police force. However, infighting and mistrust between the two departments hinder the process. Exacerbating this complicated situation are rumors of the "Jin-Roh" (Wolf Brigade), an independent and covert group of soldiers who are watching from the shadows and waiting to enter the mix.

Picking up the narrative, the Sect, a terrorist group responsible for much of the unrest, now resorts to savage tactics, one of which is to use young girls to carry "packages" (explosives) past police lines undetected. When one of these bombs goes off during a riot, the C.A.P.O. soldiers pursue the escaping guerillas into the sewers. A member of the C.A.P.O. unit, Kazuki Fuse, corners a young girl in a tunnel while she still clutches an armed bomb. When their eyes lock, Fuse finds himself unable to shoot her, thus granting her the precious few seconds to set off the bomb and commit suicide. Back at headquarters, Fuse's superiors reprimand him and send him into retraining. Concurrently, Fuse remains haunted by the image of the dead girl. On a visit to her burial vault he encounters Kei Amamiya, a young woman who claims to be the suicide bomber's sister. Fuse and Amamiya embark on a strange and perilous relationship, and slowly begin to question the true nature of their own characters, and the roles they are meant to play.

"Jin-Roh" is perhaps one of the last Japanese animated films to rely on traditional rather than digital animation. And a film of "Jin-Roh's" sensitivity deserves the delicate care of an artist's tools. There are no exaggerated expressions, comic squeals, or overstated character actions and emotions to betray the raw power of Production I.G's much talked about release. Some critics have expressed disappointment in "Jin-Roh" for boasting of an introverted hero and avoiding flashy futurism. However, now that computers allow for more cost effective special effects in live-action cinema, it's a perfect time for animation to try subtler themes. In this respect, "Jin-Roh" is a revolutionary piece of work.

The film's setting in an alternative post-war Japan allows art director Hiromasa Ogura to toy with various anachronisms. Rail trams straight out of the 1950s roll through wide-open streets, now almost non-existent in modern day Tokyo. Volkswagen beetles shuttle police around the city, but the department's weaponry is state of the art. Modern security monitors spy on citizens' every move, yet televisions still broadcast in black and white. Screenwriter Mamoru Oshii, in revealing this world, hews closely to the real post-war Japan where right wing groups and yakuza openly harassed those who didn't assimilate under the aegis of the police. But the design elements that depart from the reality all comment on history with often biting cynicism.

Ultimately, though, "Jin-Roh" is a tragedy, replete with one of the most gut-wrenching endings in any film, live-action or animated. Oshii's previous effort "Ghost in the Shell" also follows the discovery of a character's individuality, but it ends on a note of self-realization. "Jin-Roh" punctuates an opposite theme, being powerless in the face of self-discovery.

"I want to go to another town and forget everything that's happened up to now," Kei says to Fuse, "I want to become another person." But there is no place to which these two characters can escape. Both are anesthetized and suffocated by their alliances with institutions and ideologies of which neither has ever chosen to be a part.

This pre-determinist theme demands a strong cinematic aesthetic, something that Oshii and Ogura deliver with aplomb. Fuse and Kei's connection is very similar to the dreamlike relationship between the time traveler and the young woman in Chris Marker's "La Jettee." And Ogura makes direct references to Marker's black and white short in his shots of Tokyo's underground tunnels and the natural history museum where Fuse and Kei meet. One scene nearly mimics Marker's film frame by frame; a sequence in which still images of character faces reflect in display cases full of extinct animals. Hajime Mizoguchi's score also contains shades of Marker's film, along with haunting strains inspired by the overture to Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde."

"Jin-Roh" is less of a typical, flashy anime export and more of an art film, similar to those spilling from embattled parts of Eastern Europe. A mix of Terry Gillian's "Twelve Monkeys," Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira" and Tarkovsky's "The Sacrifice" infused into one great cinematic canvass, "Jin-Roh" can arguably stand as the seminal work of an entirely new genre of animated masterpieces.