You're Under Arrest! Review

story 7.5/10

First of all, this will be a bundle review which will deal with the first OAV and both of the TV Seasons. They go together and doing a seperate review for each would just duplicate what was already written in another review and so on. The movie however demands a seperate review and that goes for the 5 specials, as well as the last one episode OAV - "No Mercy! ". So, TV S1 is a direct continuation of the first OAV. Actually, they've bundled it up so that the first four episodes in S1 are the first OAV. So you can either choose to get your hands on the "OAV" or simply just get the first TV Season. Alright, enough rambling and onto the show.

This is a police drama/action about the crew at Bokuto station in Tokyo. We have a set of characters that we get to follow, and Miyuki & Natsumi are two of them. These are the main characters who get most screen time, although the other colleagues in the traffic department get a lot of screen time as well. It feels like a good mix and you don't get the "isolated" feeling where you only see a fraction of what's actually going on at the traffic department, which is great. But of course, with 78 episodes, a movie, side story specials and a final OAV there is plenty of time to develop the characters.

Most of the episodes are episodic and only a handful are resolved by the end of two or three episodes. There are still some things which are latent through parts of the story and surface every now and then. Like some comical relief figures appearing, love situations, emotional strains on some persons, etc.

This show doesn't quite remind me of any other in terms of content, and not in terms of the theme either, actually. Of course, there are other police shows out there but not as thoroughly depicted as this one. There isn't much of a plot since this is a "everyday depiction" type of story. Cases come and go, things are resolved and that is that. Characters get angry at each other at times, which is fully natural. But they also visit the beach, the bar occasionally as well --which is fully natural . Although this is a drama show there isn't much emotional drama, so those of you who are only looking for deep love drama should look elsewhere. It's got an okay dose of it though, although I would've liked to see more of it sometimes. But it's alright, there are other shows out there which satisfy that part of me.

I'm normally not a big fan of episodic series but that simply doesn't matter in this case. There is always something new and interesting going on. It's basically a depiction of your normal, half-dysfunctional (in a comical way) traffic department and what they deal with during the days, with a twist. Of course there have to be things happening. Just putting parking fines on cars or stopping speeders might not be so fun to watch...or...well, it can.

animation 7/10

Being drawn by the same guy who did Ah! My Goddess there's bound to be lots of well detailed motor-influences and some guns. Well, there is.

The visuals are quite alright with the first OAV being the most detailed, although the mini-specials were quite detailed as well (but that's material for another review). Actually, with so many episodes it holds a most acceptable standard and it reminds me of the animation standard in the Oh! My Goddess OAV. It's got bright, sharp, yet neutral colors in the show and the scenery is well depicted with lots of tall, medium and low buildings where there are supposed to be. Then we have the bridges and especially the Bokuto bridge which, during the show, is always under construction. The scenes are naturally depicted with the specific location scenes drawn from Tokyo City. The character design and animation standard stay consistent throughout the show and we dont get any surprises on that department.

The majority of the characters are older than twenty and all look mature with good facial profiles and not too round eyes. The females have good, neutral body-frames -- not too curvy and not too busty. This also tells the viewer about what kind of show it is -- a more natural not too overly flashy IRL like drama. Somehow I can't quite say the same about some of the males though, who look very hunky and strong. Perhaps I'm just very biased towards the female designs though, who knows. Tall, wide shoulders, you get what I mean.

sound 7/10

Alright section. The various tracks which are mostly synth based are all used well to fit in with the mood. They didn't feel repetitive and the tracks were always kept a bit in the background and didn't overshadow what was going on. The amount of tracks which were used weren't overwhelming if I should put it like that, but considering that they didn't use any background music for most of the time makes that less relevant. The various OP and ED tunes were for most of the time good catchy J-pop tunes.

The VAs all perform well throughout the show and there isn't more to say about that.

characters 7/10

We have a variety of characters and personalities in this show. We are given lots of time to acquaint ourselves with the characters and the habits they have. They don't develop that much though, and stay quite consistent throughout the series. They probably evolve as much as...as one would evolve in the normal world I think. If I look back and use myself as an example I don't think that my personality has undergone any revolutionary changes the past couple of years. These aren't characters who suffer from dysfunctional symptoms, are suicidal etc. They are quite normal from the stars. The relationships evolve to some extent, though. We have confrontational situations both fueled by anger as well as love and helplessness; these situations are handled well and are believable, and how the situations are handled depends entirely on the characters involved. We also have situations where the crew visits the pub to have their occasional share of sake, beer and whatnot. We also have vacations, beach volleyball and so on. This is a show which takes place over a period of at least three years or so I'd guess.

So, considering the time frame we of course have new characters being introduced into the series. Characters which we meet early in S1 might come back every now and then later on. The small kids down the block grows a bit and moves on from play-school up to elementary school etc.

There is a bit of love going on throughout the show as well. These are one of the things which lie 'latent'. We, for example, have Miyuki -- the techie when it comes to both electronics, mechanics and weapons. She's a timid introvert who isn't very good at expressing herself and gets quite nervous when the subject is about love. Then we have Ken, a biker-cop, also in the same department. He is..well he's an introvert and quite clutzy with the love issue as well. These two, however, have a crush on each other...but enough about that -- we don't want to spoil the fun. We also delve into some of the other characters love, or perhaps absent of said thing, life.

The characters are a bit stereotypical. As I said, the timid introvert techie, Natsumi the strong yet clutzy extrovert. The traffic dep. chief who acts with a cool head etc. But they all have their twists so I wouldn't rank them as fully stereotypical, more like...Normal with some traits a bit more accentuated.

overall 7.5/10

This is a great show for those who want to watch a good police action/drama which stays quite true to the real life, but there are of course some incredible things happening to make things a bit more fun. Natsumi, for instance, could probably rival bodybuilders in terms of strength and sumo-wrestlers in terms of eating.

This is a good drama without over done action a la lots of shootouts, exploding cars, gangsters who blow up a whole neighborhood etc. It's got a lot of lightheartness every here and then, but things also gets rough at times so it's not all a walk in the park. Even though it was episodic it still managed to capture my interest. There are so many things happening in this series, so it never gets boring!