You're Under Arrest: Specials

Summary: >

Welcome to the world of Natsumi and Miyuki. While their precinct of Tokyo is usually a safe place, there are always some strange happenings in the area. Have no fear though, because when these two girls are on the job, no underwear stealing pervert will get away.

Thoughts: >

It's sort of hard to describe this set of You're Under Arrest. The specials are a series of very short stories, each with a separate and distinct storyline. Each segment lasts about 15 minutes, so as you can imagine there are certainly limits to what any story will accomplish. Each story seems to revolve around various facets of some Japanese male perversions. Specifically, there is a lot of stories relating to panty thefts. Now this probably does happen in Japan to some extent, I mean this is the country that has a black market for previously worn school girl outfits. However you get the impression that if every Japanese woman did not have her undies under lock and key 24 hours a day, then the perverts would be crawling out of the woodwork to run off with them. Strangely enough it doesn't get old as you would think it would in this show.

Music is sort of the throw away kind and nothing all that interesting, although it fits well enough. The really big pitfall for this series is most certainly the poor quality animation. While designs aren't extremely detailed, the overall design is quite good. The animation is terrible however. Actually it's almost non-existent. Pretty much each scene has stills with significant panning, with most of the animation simply being characters talking. When anything IS animated, it's painful to look at.

The thing which really draws you into You're Under Arrest is the balance between action, and the cute stories that intermix - which the OVA did beautifully. If the movie was top heavy with the action and deficient in the cute, the YUA specials are the opposite with a lack of action and a bit much in the cute department.

Personally I rather liked them. The stories are cute, and short - much like reading a manga issue. The length of the stories makes them perfect for sitting down and eating a bowl of cereal before school and getting a quick anime fix to start off the day. Overall the specials are nothing spectacular. I probably wouldn't recommend them to just anyone, unless you're already somewhat of a fan of You're Under Arrest. Those wanting to check into this series would be better served taking a look at the OVA series.

Screen Caps: >