| about
trismugistus.com
and digital-bondage.net
are my web sites.
trismugistus.com
is where I upload my anime, manga and tv&film reviews,
and also where I occasionally post short stories and longer
works I've written.
digital-bondage.net
is my wallpaper site and provides anime, manga and other
desktop wallpapers in a variety of resolutions. I also
have a few tutorials and some resources, such as psds
for you to download.
I also run a site called scan-city.org,
which provides scans from the latest japanese anime magazines
for you to download and use in your wallpapers.
You can also read my blog here
or check out my anime list here. |
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| you're under arrest (oavs)
review |
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| details |
| The Genre: Comedy |
| The Format: 4 eps @ 28 mins each on 1 DVD |
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| The plot: Bike-nut Natsumi Sujimoto has just
been transferred to the highway patrol division
of the Bokato precinct of the Tokyo police force.
Will she get on with her new partner Miyuki Kobayakawa,
a shy car-nerd and will she fit in with the team?
And, more importantly, will she ever get to work
on time? (See, that’s a cheesey gag right
there.) |
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| opinion
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| Before creating the phenominally successful
(and long running) Oh My Goddess! (OMG) manga, Kosuki
Fujishima put together a manga by the name of You’re
Under Arrest! It was, as the name implies, a cop
story, but it was a long way from being serious.
Indeed, it was very much a comedy tale, with an
odd-ball cast of characters.
The stars of the piece were Natsumi Sujimoto, who
was a bit of a bike nut and Miyuki Kobayakawa who
was essentially a mechanic - if you think Keichi
from OMG in a dress, you’re on the right track.
These two highly attractive highway patrol detectives
worked alongside a Ken Nakajima, who formed Miyuki’s
love interest, and Yuriko (I forget her surname)
who was was a bit of a wolf in sheeps clothing. |
I enjoyed the manga a great deal, as it
was essentially very similar in style to Oh
my Goddess, of which I am also a big fan.
There were some interesting little tales with
the odd twist, the stories were all humorous
and characters interesting and well developed.
The only problem with the manga was that
it was very short. There are only two, fairly
thin volumes and it’s very much a case
of leaving you wanting more. This is presumably
because Fujishima moved onto bigger and better
things with OMG.
With the shortness of the manga, a set of
OAVs would seem to be the perfect format for
a direct anime adaption. Surprisingly, then,
the OAVs are only partially based on the manga.
All the characters are exactly the same, but
the stories are all completely original. The
only big difference on this front is that
the role of the Captain is significantly boosted
in the OAVs. |
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A risky move, then, but it’s definetely
a predominantly succesful one. Whilst the stories
are new, they fit well with the style of the original
and maintain the same sense of humour and fun. The
only thing missing are some of the little surprises
and the cheekyness of the original, which is a little
surprising for OAVs, where traditionally these are
bumped up. |
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The story focus here is two-fold. The main one
is the relationship between Natsumi and Ken and
the second is between our two heros. Both of these
are portrayed well and lead to some truely funny
moments. Really the only critiscism I would make
is that the second episode is rather dull, mainly
because it doesn’t put any stress on either
of these two relationships.
It also tries way too hard to be “cute.”
One intersting thing about it, though, is that the
small children in the episode seems to have been
dubbed by actual small kids. This is an unusal move,
but does work quite well. |
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Unfortunately, not everything is completely
rosey.
This DVD collection is dub only and lacks
anything significant in the way of special
features, with just a “photo gallery”
consisting of still frames from the series.
Now normally, dub-only would put me right
off, but in this case the dub is extremely
good. The voices all match really well with
the characters, the story is coherent and
the lip synch is spot on. Of course, I have
no idea if the original story was in any way
butchered, but the usual signs of an incoherent
story and general incosistencies are not evident.
The animation is generally of a very high
standard, as is often the case with OAVs,
with the relatively high budget for a lower
epsidoe count minimising the use of repeated
and simplistic animation. The anime is quite
old though, so the various digital animation
techniques used routinely today are not present,
but for cell animation this is generally quite
good. |
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Probably my only real complaint beyond the dub-only
thing is with the theme music. It really did nothing
at all for me, falling squarely into cheesey J-pop
genre. Still, these are easily skippable with this
being a DVD and all.
Overall then, I really enjoyed watching this disk
and it comes highly recommended. It’s not
particularly deep, and it doesn’t make you
think, but as a way of passing an afternoon you
could do a lot worse than give this a go. |
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| back
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|
| summary |
| The Summary: Nice, fun adaption of Fujishima’s
short-lived manga tale. |
| The Score: 4/5 |
| The Pictures:
(click for larger version) |
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