Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade - Plot

Plot

The film opens in Tokyo with an evening scene of anti-government protests, interspersed with an adolescent girl walking alone. This girl, Nanami Agawa, is revealed as a terrorist courier – nicknamed Little Red Riding Hood by the military police – a member of a guerrilla group known as the "Sect". Her role is to deliver satchel charges. She delivers the charge she carries to another Sect member hidden among regular protesters. The protest slowly turns into a riot, and the guerrilla flings the satchel bomb into the police lines, with the result that the police anti-riot squad charges to break up the riot.

Behind the military line stands a backup force. Instead of regular water cannon trucks, rubber-bullet guns and riot sticks, the military police is equipped with armored vehicles and sub-machine guns. From his command post carrier, vice-chief Hajime Handa sums up the situation to an adjutant: this joint operation is under jurisdiction of the civilian police, and the military police is not supposed to join until assistance is requested.

The courier goes to pick up another satchel, moving through the sewer system. On the way, Agawa sees heavily armed men of the Special Unit – Panzer Cops – patrolling to find terrorists, and runs away. The Sect guerrillas moving equipment towards their next point are caught at a ladder up to the surface and are slaughtered by the Panzer Cops when one of them panics and fires at the Panzer Cops.

Agawa runs on through the sewers, until she is confronted by Corporal Kazuki Fuse. Kazuki is reluctant to open fire on an apparently unarmed child, causing Agawa to trigger her satchel charge. Kazuki survives the explosion. Meanwhile, above ground, the Self-Police (named "Metropolitan Police" in the English version) lose control of the riot after the lights go out – the power supply was cut by the explosion.

With the military police organization "Metropolitan Security Police" – aka "CAPO" for Capital Police in the English adaptation – embarrassed by the Kerberos unit's failure, an inquiry is held by the National Public Safety Commission to determine why Kazuki did not fire. As a result, he is made the scapegoat and is sent back to the Kerberos academy for punitive retraining. As he goes to visit the ashes of the girl in the little red hood, he meets a teenage girl, Kei Amemiya, who claims to be the elder sister of the victim. They develop a casual relationship and spend time with each other, talking about leaving the city and starting a new life. Along the way, Kazuki has nightmares about the incident in the sewers where he did not shoot – seeing the little girl morph into Kei and being caught and devoured by a pack of wolves (an allegory for the later revealed Jin-Roh members). Kei is eventually revealed to not be the suicide bomber's sister but instead a former bomb courier and a honey trap acting on behalf of the Special Unit's rival division Public Security – administered by Bunmei Muroto –, although a rather unwilling one.

A trap is set up where Kei calls Kazuki one night to say that strange men are following her. It is in fact a Capitol Police joint operation with the Public Security Division intended to discredit the Special Unit, showing a terrorist passing a satchel bomb to a Panzer Cop. Kazuki sneaks in, seizes Kei – neutralizing Capitol Police agents – and gets out of the place with the Public Security Division agents in hot pursuit. Eventually they throw off their pursuers and take refuge in a closed rooftop amusement park. There we are led to believe that the relationship between Kei and Kazuki is more than just friendship after all, although it should be pointed that the love story revealing Kazuki's human side wasn't part of the original storyboard.

They make their way to the sewers once more, where they are met by members of the Wolf Brigade – a secret, deep-cover unit in the Kerberos Corps led by former counter-intelligence officer Hajime Handa. They greet Kazuki and give him a full set of Protect-Gear, the Panzer Cop armor and weaponry, before leaving with Kei in tow. Team leader Hachiro Tobe, Kerberos academy instructor takes an electronic tracking device from Kei's satchel and hands it to Kazuki, while he explains to Kei that the whole affair has been a plot within a plot, as the Wolf Brigade has used Public Security Division's plan to flush out those who were most active in trying to eliminate the Kerberos Corps, and eliminate them in turn.

After following the tracking device, Atsushi Henmi – Muroto's subordinate and Kazuki's academy mate makes his way to the sewers with a platoon of Public Security agents. They attempt to find Kazuki, without realizing that they are heading into a trap. Kazuki, with his Protect-Gear, MG42 machine gun, and Kerberos Corps training, slaughters the agents, saving Henmi for last.

Eventually, the Wolf Brigade and Kei end up at a junkyard, where the brigade leaves them both. Torn between his love for Kei and his loyalty to his pack, Kazuki has to choose between the two. Understanding that Kei can no longer live, and that the police plot would be revealed if she escapes, Kazuki eventually decides to kill her. Off in the distance another member of the Wolf Brigade is seen manually un-cocking his weapon as he was aiming at the pair. The leader watching quotes the final passage of Jean Baptiste Victor Smith's Little Red Riding Hood version (1870), "...and then the Wolf ate up Little Red Riding Hood."