Being a big fan of Kosuke Fujishima's work, and having thoroughly enjoyed the You're Under Arrest manga published by Studio Proteus and Dark Horse Comics, I was very excited to hear in late 2002 that AnimEigo was finally getting around to releasing the You're Under Arrest OVAs and the related TV show on DVD. Following current trends, the You're Under Arrest DVDs are being offered as individual discs as well as in special box sets. The first three box sets contain three discs with four episodes each (for twelve episodes total), along with a disc of extras. The fourth and final box set contains four episode discs, with four episodes per disc (for sixteen episodes total). This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of reviews of the show, with each review focusing on a specific box set.

While most of the discs in this series contain episodes from the TV show, the first disc in the first box set is not from the TV series, but rather from the OVA series, which preceded the TV series in Japan by a couple of years. Releasing in 1994 and 1995 in Japan (and soon thereafter in America), the OVA series has the typical high-quality production values that I have come to expect from OVAs produced in the 1990s. The animation quality isn't the best I've ever seen, but it is up there. Characters have good expressions and the colors are bright and clean. The audio sounds good, too, though you only get a stereo mix in both the Japanese and English audio tracks due to the age of the release. I have watched the OVAs a number of times in both Japanese and English. Both tracks are good, though I must admit I am totally infatuated with the voice of Tamagawa Sakiko, the Japanese voice actress for the character of Natsumi Tsujimoto. If you tend to favor dubs, you will be happy to know that the English dub for the OVAs is considered by many to be one of the best English dubs ever, even today. The translators at Coastal Carolina took some liberties with the translation for the dub, and they trade some Japanese pop culture references for American ones. It works fine for me, but the cultural purists may want to stick with the Japanese track. Not that there was much risk of them actually watching a dub.

The menu screen for each disc is set up to resemble the computers the main characters have in their police cars. It's pretty clean and works well, with some nice shots of the opening sequences moving in the background. One annoyance is the fact that anytime you make a selection you have to sit and watch someone drive by the top of the screen on a motorcycle. It was cute the first couple times, but it rapidly got annoying. Other than that I have no complaints about the menus.

Miyuki and Natsumi, another one of Kousuke Fujishima's marvelous inventions.	Strikeman - hero, or circus act?

But enough about the technical merits of the show. You would probably like to know what the show is about, wouldn't you? The show is about the Bokuto police station in Tokyo, and specifically about two of the female officers at the station, Natsumi Tsujimoto and Miyuki Kobayakowa. The four-episode OVA series does a good job of kicking off the story, and the episodes set up the situation at Bokuto station very well. The first episode shows how our heroes first meet, which isn't on the best of terms as far as Natsumi is concerned. She wants to break the partnership before it even starts, but a speeder intervenes and gives Miyuki a chance to prove herself to her new partner. In the second episode we get to see more of Ken Nakajima, a motorcycle patrol officer at Bokuto station and Miyuki's romantic interest. The weather effects in this episode are animated very well, in my opinion. In the third episode Miyuki goes off to an unknown event, and Yoriko Nikaido (the station gossip) is convinced she's getting hooked up with a man. This causes Ken to go into a deep blue funk, and wacky hijinks ensue when Natsumi encourages him to take action. The final OVA episode has Natsumi considering becoming a motorcycle patrol officer. She loves bikes and really wants the job, but it requires her to leave Bokuto station, which doesn't sit really will Miyuki and the rest of the station.

I really like the You're Under Arrest OVA series. The animation is great, I love the characters (Natsumi is a favorite of mine, and I am so like Ken Nakajima it's not even funny), and the stories are fun to watch. It introduces you to the characters and provides some entertaining viewing, but it's not really ground-breaking in any way. The episodes tie together a little bit, but each episode works well as a stand-alone piece, too. Somebody could watch just one or two episodes and get everything that's going on. The music sounds good (dig those theme songs!) and is used very well to back up certain scenes, but I doubt the background music won any awards. Bottom line, the OVA series is very good at what it does, and it hits its intended target. But what about the TV series? What about discs two and three in this set?

From the position of technical merit, the TV show doesn't hold up as well as the OVAs, which is only to be expected. The sound is pretty good, though if I run the discs straight from my PS2 into my TV, the treble is really shrill and hard to listen to. If I run the signal through my receiver or watch the disc on my computer, I don't have that problem, so I don't think it's the disc itself. If you're watching these discs on a PS2 and outputting straight to a TV, you may want to keep this in mind, though. As far as the English dub goes, most of the voice actors are the same ones that worked on the OVAs. The big exception is Miyuki, who is now voiced by Juliet Cesario, who voiced Belldandy in AnimEigo's release of the Oh My Goddess! OVAs. She does a great job, and it is really hard to tell there was a change at all.

Then there's the video. The transfer looks good, but the animation quality in many episodes is average at best, and sometimes the quality is sub-average. It is pretty obvious that multiple studios worked on this show, as after watching a few episodes you will notice two distinct looks for the characters. One version has nicely defined lines and moderately-sized eyes, while the other one looks a little sloppier and uses bigger eyes. The changes in look and feel are somewhat annoying at first, but I got over it.

The TV show episodes, plot-wise, are pretty much more of the same. The stand-alone feel of the show continues, as most of the episodes are self-contained. Some of the episodes provide development for existing characters or introduce new ones, but most episodes just put the characters in different situations and we get to watch them react. Episode plots contain a mix of action and comedy, with comedy often getting the upper hand. In the second DVD we get to see some characters that recur throughout the show. The first episode introduces a new main character, Aoi Futaba. Long story short, Aoi is a cross-dresser; a man who dresses and acts like a woman. He is much more feminine than any of the women at the station, and the comic potential here is milked heavily many times throughout the series. Aoi is a lot of fun. The other episodes include a visit from a station inspector, Natsumi and Miyuki's first encounter with Strikeman (a funny parody of superheroes), and Yoriko getting challenged to a duel by a classmate from her time at the police academy. The episodes on the third disc cover Ken getting caught snooping around a pastry shop talking to the cute girl who works there, the police-women searching for a stolen scooter, tracking down a robber dressed as Santa Claus, and dealing with a teenage girl who wants to be a police officer and gets into trouble when she tries to solve a case on her own.

Music in the TV show is sparser than in the OVAs. There are many new songs, but they do re-use a number of songs from the OVA series, which is nice for the sake of continuity; it helps you feel like you're watching the same show, which in some respects you are. Overall, I'd say that the quality of the music is on the same level as the OVAs. I do really like the ending song, "Thank you, Love," a lot, but I think the opening song is just average.

But wait, there's more! If you get the boxed sets, you get a bonus disc. The disc contains 3 groups of extras. First, there are four line art galleries, all of which contain sketches used in the design of the shows. Second, there are color image galleries. These include promo images for the show, as well as some pictures of animation cels. I like the color image galleries, due to the large variety of images included. Third, you get some "behind the scenes" video footage of the various English voice actors recording their lines. There are around a dozen of these, and they run for a while. If you're really interested in how English voice dubs are recorded then you will probably dig this, but the rest of us will find it mildly entertaining at best. The images in these scenes are pretty fuzzy and small. Lastly, if you click on the trash can, you get to the Easter Egg menu, where you can play around with the numbers until you get the right codes to unlock a few extras, like before/after views of restored images. I am annoyed that there are no clean opening and ending animations here, but maybe the next disc will have them.

There is not much that is serious about this show. Sometimes there are moral messages mixed into the plot, like "don't steal," or "obey traffic laws," but for the most part it's situation comedy with some drama mixed in for good measure. It's a little different than what some anime fans are used to, as there are no giant robots, no magical girls, no aliens, no anything like that. Everyone even has realistic hair color! It's not the most exciting show I've ever seen, nor is it all that deep. What it is, however, is a lot of fun to watch, and it makes a great change of pace from the sci-fi, giant robot, or other fantastic shows that people normally think of when they think of anime. You're Under Arrest has become one of my favorite series, and I'm looking forward to the other box sets.

Distributor: AnimEigo
Creator: Kousuke Fujishima / Studio Deen
Released: 1997

Video Quality: A (OVA), B(TV)
Audio Quality: B+ (OVA), B- (TV)
Presentation: A- (OVA), B+ (TV)
Content: B
Overall: B+