Summer is the best time ever to watch character-driven, slice of life anime. Two summers ago (or thereabouts) I enjoyed Kimagure Orange Road; this summer the treat is You’re Under Arrest. (The catch to this is that I only have the first twelve episodes of YUA.) Sooner or later I’ll get around to watching Patlabor and Maison Ikkoku, which are two other shows I’d lump into this group.

There’s something about these shows: each episode seems to take an eternity to end (despite being thirty minutes each), yet it’s not that the time is dragging or unenjoyable… it’s just slow. They also have a sort of goodhearted nature about them—something that you wouldn’t necessarily know you were missing until you found it again. They’ll put a quiet smile on your face, so long as you don’t expect action action action.

The first four episodes of You’re Under Arrest were originally OVA episodes, and played the lives of two female traffic cops rather straight; the TV series that followed/engulfed those episodes elected to take a much stronger comedy bent. As a result we were introduced to a cross-dressing police officer, the crazy “super-hero” Strike Man, and a whole host of other, borderline-idiotic-yet-somehow-hilarious characters and/or plots. The worst crime committed has been theft, and the thieves are almost always stopped by unfortunate run-ins with other crazy (non-police) characters (e.g. the aforementioned Strike Man).

…

The episodes Marin and I watched this evening fell in stark contrast to the news we learned afterwards: police have charged a man (who’s currently awaiting trial in New Mexico) with rape and aggravated murder in the Brooke Wilberger case. Though—assuming he’s guilty—that’s pretty much the best outcome we could hope for after all this time… it’s still depressing.