‘Seibu Keisatsu’ put a bomb on a runaway bus 12 years before ‘Speed’

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the unforgettable 1994 action film Speed. The Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock flick told the story of a cop trying to stop a moving city bus full of passengers from succumbing to a bomb planted on board by a terrorist. As it happens, a very similar plot was the opening episode of Japanese police drama Seibu Keisatsu Part II.

We’re not saying Speed copied Seibu Keisatsu. In fact, writer Graham Yost says that the idea for Speed came from a different Japanese work, Akira Kurosawa’s Runaway Train. Regardless, there are some entertaining parallels between Speed and the premiere episode of Seibu Keisatsu Part II.

The original Seibu Keisatsu was a hit, and lasted 126 episodes between fall 1979 and spring 1982, when television shows still had seasons that followed actual seasons. Producers decided to alter the show for fall of 1982, introducing some new settings and characters while getting rid of some old ones. Though intended as a sequel to Part I, some fans call it an alternate dimension version set in a different multiverse world.

As the name of the opening episode — “Daimon Corps: Another Fierce Battle – Okita Appears!” which aired May 30, 1982 — implies, a new team member named Goro Okita joins the team, played by Tomokazu Miura.

Okita is thrown right into a trial by fire as a terrorist begins calling in bomb threats to the Western Tokyo Police. The terrorist says that a bottle of nitroglycerin, an unstable liquid that can explode when jostled, has been left in a truck somewhere in Tokyo. Police are sent to track down the truck, but it’s a trap and the first responders are taken out by the bomb.

The terrorist calls in a second bomb threat, and this time it’s on a bus! The squad identifies which bus it is, but just as they arrive on the scene to intercept it the villain takes out the bus driver with a sniper shot from a nearby rooftop. With the bus careening out of control it’s up to our boy Okita to do the Keanu thing and hop on board.

Though relatively young at 30 years old Miura was already somewhat famous at the time, having starred in a series of romance films opposite Momoe Yamaguchi, who became his real-life wife. He was thought of as a pretty boy, and there were doubts about his ability to play a role in which guns and fists generally do the talking. Perhaps anticipating this, the directors had Miura actually hang from the side of a moving dump truck and bus. This kind of scene would be unthinkable for most actors today, who would likely use a stuntman for the action scenes.

Even Sgt Daimon in the C210 Skyline 2000GT Turbo and Detective Hatamura on his Suzuki GS600 can do nothing but shout at Okita, “You idiot, it’s going to blow!” But Okita succeeds in saving the bus and everyone on board, just as it’s about to slam into a line of schoolchildren crossing the street at the most inopportune time imaginable. There are a few more bomb threats but in the end they get the bad guy and all is safe in Tokyo, at least for another week.