Kerberos Panzer Cop, also known as and Hellhounds: Panzer Cops, or just Hellhounds overseas, is a Japanese alternate history political thriller manga series written by Mamoru Oshii and illustrated by Kamui Fujiwara with mechanical designs by Yutaka Izubuchi, running from 1988 to January 2000. Part of the Kerberos Saga and set before Oshii's 1987 film The Red Spectacles, the manga details the history and events surrounding the Special Armed Garrison, nicknamed "Kerberos", a Tokyo-based counterterrorist police tactical unit operating in an alternate history authoritarian postwar Japan.
Part I (Act 1~4) of Kerberos Panzer Cop was published in various Japanese comic magazines from 1988 to 1990, it was later completed with Part II (Act 5~8) published in Monthly Shōnen Ace from 1999 to 2000. Translated versions of the complete series were issued in South Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia and Taiwan in the early 2000s. An English language adaptation of the first four acts was published under the title Hellhounds: Panzer Cops in 1994 by Dark Horse Comics. The American translators from Studio Protheus, Alan Gleason and Toren Smith, randomly used the alternative titles Hellhounds (Cerberos: Panzer Cop) and Hellhounds. This adaptation was later issued in the United Kingdom by Diamond Comic Distributors in 1998, and a translated version was published in the German magazine in 1996.
In 2009, an -style issue, , was published in Kerberos Panzer Cops: Tokyo War, the Kerberos Sagas definitive guide.Kerberos Panzer Cops: Tokyo War, page 154, March 17, 2009 In April 2010, for the 20th anniversary of the Original Edition (1990 volume compilation), publisher Gakken issued , a digitally refined and corrected reissue of the entire manga, alongside a special pamphlet and a Protect Gear model figure.Kerberos Panzer Cops: Tokyo War, obi strip information, March 17, 2009
Kerberos Panzer Cop has been adapted into films twice: first in 1991's StrayDog: Kerberos Panzer Cops, directed by Oshii, loosely based on the manga's premise; and again in 1999's Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, directed by Hiroyuki Okiura and written by Oshii, based on Act I of the manga. A sequel, Kerberos Saga Rainy Dogs, was serialized in Ace Tokunoh magazine from 2003 to 2005, then published as an extended single volume in 2005.
Plot Setting Kerberos Panzer Cop is set in the 1950s in the Kerberos Sagas alternate timeline, where Nazi Germany won World War II, eventually denazified and restored the Weimar Republic, and occupied Japan (part of the Allies in this timeline) to establish authoritarian rule. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the German occupation attempts to globalize and urbanize Japan through a government called the , sparking massive increases in poverty and class stratification and resulting in the rise of anti-government movements that escalate into terrorism when their protests are met with repression. The Japanese government, unable to effectively handle rising terrorism and violence using regular police, but unable and unwilling to deploy the Japan Self-Defense Forces, forms the Metropolitan Security Police Organization (commonly "Metropolitan Police" (MP) or to counter the terrorists and restore order to Tokyo. The Metropolitan Police's main combat force, the paramilitary Special Armed Garrison ("Special Unit" in English), nicknamed "Kerberos", are issued powerful military equipment such as MG 42 machine guns and powered exoskeletons called "Protect Gears", and are permitted to use deadly force against their targets.
The Metropolitan Police and Kerberos succeed in their goals, quelling the spike in terrorism and forcing most of the terrorist groups to merge under a single group called the Sect. However, the Metropolitan Police faces friction from the Self-Police ("Local Police", "Metropolitan Police Force", or "NPA" in English)—officially the Tokyo Metropolitan Self-Police Department, whose jurisdiction overlaps with the Metropolitan Police—as well as the JSDF, while Kerberos's division, the Defense Division ("Capital Area Security Police Agency" in English), experiences interservice tensions with the Metropolitan Police's intelligence agency-like espionage unit, the Public Security Division. Additionally, into the 1950s, changes in Japanese society over time—improving living standards, the loss of the Sect's public appeal, and Kerberos's increasingly brutal tactics—lead to the necessity of Kerberos being brought into question.
A dedicated prologue to the manga, detailing the setting and history of the saga's fictional universe, as well as why the Metropolitan Police were formed. In the English adaptation, this is replaced by a single-page synopsis with no illustrations nor references to Japan, which is simply referred to as "the country".
Metropolitan Police rookie Toru Inui, part of Kerberos, engages with Sect terrorists in the storm sewers of Tokyo, but fails to kill a suicide bomber and is unable to apprehend a suspicious wounded man escaping through a manhole with an innocent woman; the man is shot by Metropolitan Police snipers and revealed to be an armed terrorist. Unsure why he was unable to perform his duties and doubting his ability to work in Kerberos, Inui is transferred back into training for reevaluation. When he is brought back to field duty as his unit's rearguard, he encounters the same woman escorting another injured man. Before he can act, the woman reveals herself to be a terrorist and shoots Inui, killing him.
Metropolitan Police Aerial Squadron pilot Hachiro Kishu is assigned to aerial reconnaissance and traffic enforcement in a Focke-Achgelis Fa 330, much to his dismay, as he dreams of experiencing real aerial combat. However, this changes when the Aerial Squadron receives a new Fa-666 "Jagdhund" attack helicopter, and Kishu is assigned to pilot it. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police Public Security Division attempts to apprehend a Sect mole within the Metropolitan Police, but a Kerberos platoon interrupts their operation by raiding an accomplice's house, killing several Sect members but losing the mole. When the Public Security agents inform their director Bunmei Muroto of what happened, they learn the Sect plans to sabotage the Fa-666 in an upcoming aerial demonstration; however, Muroto chooses not to inform the Metropolitan Police Defense Division out of retaliation for their botched operation. The Sect mole, revealed to be a Metropolitan Police aircraft mechanic, plants a bomb aboard the Fa-666 and detonates it during the demonstration, destroying the helicopter and Kishu's aspirations.
Public Security Division director Bunmei Muroto, realizing society has evolved to the point that it will eventually no longer need Kerberos, and deciding there is no room for them in the Metropolitan Police anyway, begins to work against it. He proposes to merge Public Security with the Self-Police to create "a new public peacekeeping apparatus that has the Public Security Division at its core", and implies this move would dismantle Kerberos. However, knowing Defense Division director Isao Aniya and Kerberos leader Shiro Tatsumi would view this as betrayal and attempt to strike back, Muroto realizes he must discredit or eliminate Kerberos for the merger to go ahead. After meeting with Self-Police officials, he accuses an underling, Tsujimura, of leaking secrets to a friend in Kerberos; however, as Public Security agents arrive to apprehend him, Tsujimura unmasks Muroto's ambitions and draws a gun on him, prompting the agents to shoot and kill Tsujimura. Later, a stray dog finds Tsujimura's corpse in a junkyard surrounded by decommissioned Stahlhelms, Protect Gears, firearms, and armoured personnel carriers from Kerberos lying throughout, with the gleaming office buildings of Tokyo prominently visible in the distance, symbolizing the coming of a new era without Kerberos.
The Sect attacks the German Embassy in Japan, taking several hostages and threatening to kill them, which could spark an international incident; Kerberos is deployed to handle the crisis, and they storm the embassy, eliminating the terrorists within minutes. However, it is learned that the attack was not the work of the Sect, but rather the Four Seasons League, a communist terrorist splinter group (loosely based on the Japanese Red Army) formed after the Sect's leadership, making a compromise with the government while in custody, agreed to abandon its most extreme and violent members, including radical Fujiwara, who promptly formed the group. The Metropolitan Police are then alerted that Fujiwara and the Four Seasons League have hijacked Lufthansa Flight 666, a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor, at Tokyo International Airport, and that the embassy crisis was a diversion to draw police attention away from the hijacking. The Four Seasons League intend to face off with Kerberos.
Kerberos is charged with defeating Fujiwara and the Four Seasons League, and they are deployed to Tokyo International Airport. However, they have a conflict over jurisdiction with the Self-Police, who normally have jurisdiction over the airport grounds and intend to deploy their Spezial Sturm Gruppe (inspired by the German Federal Police's GSG 9) to resolve the hijacking instead. The jurisdictional conflict comes to a head when unit commander Hajime Handa orders his Kerberos unit to ignore the Self-Police's blockade of the scene, which leads to a public armed standoff between the two police forces in the airport terminal. The resulting backlash leads to Kerberos being kicked from the airport, with the risk of arrest if they violate Self-Police jurisdiction again. Unwilling to allow the Spezial Sturm Gruppe to fight the terrorists instead of them, Handa procures a Volkswagen Type 26 service truck and sends Kerberos members Koichi Todome, Washio Midori, and Soichiro Toribe—three members closely associated with each other, and later nicknamed the "Devil's Trio"—to board Flight 666 disguised as caterers delivering food to the hostages.
As Handa launches a diversion, Koichi, Midori, and Soichiro storm Flight 666 and kill most of the Four Seasons League terrorists, but before they can fully secure the plane, Fujiwara orders the pilot to take off. Koichi, Midori, and Soichiro promptly shoot the engines of the plane, forcing it to crash-land in a landfill on Showa Island. With Koichi and Soichiro dazed from the crash, Fujiwara attempts to escape, but Midori climbs the fuselage and begins setting up her Mauser C96 sidearm for long-range shooting. Handa and Kerberos rush to the crash site but are beaten there by the Self-Police, who surround Fujiwara and attempt to apprehend him; however, before they can do so, Fujiwara looks back at the plane and sees Midori, who shoots him between the eyes with her C96, killing him and securing the operation as a success for Kerberos.
Tetsurō Kai, the young leader of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force's 1st Airborne Brigade Panzer Jäger Unit (ギア部隊), nicknamed "Molosser" and equipped with Protect Gear and anti-tank rifles, enters Kerberos's Academy Training School (首都警·養成学校) as an undercover trainee, where he falls in love with Midori and invites her to a JGSDF public equipment exhibition at Mount Fuji. Midori visits the event with fellow instructor Hachiro Tohbe and sees Kai demonstrating the Type 61 Protect Gears used by the JGSDF's Panzer Jägers.