You're Under Arrest - The Motion Picture

Introduction

Kosuke Fujishima is better known in the West for his delightful Ah My Goddess manga, which only relatively recently has had the full anime series treatment. For an earlier success from Fujishima, you would have to look at You're Under Arrest, a similar in tone series that relates the trials and tribulations of the Tokyo traffic police through two of their members. But as with many early anime series, we in the UK got the short end of the stick. 2 seasons, 52 episodes and more of You're Under Arrest were released in the US, and more recently the Full Throttle series has been released in Japan, but all we got were the Mini Specials, the four OVA episodes that kicked the whole anime adaptation off, and this You're Under Arrest Movie. As you can guess, continuity is up in the air without the series, so it's best to take the film at face value. It fits in between the first two series if you're keeping score.

Natsumi Tsujimoto and Miyuki Kobayakawa are partners in the Tokyo traffic police, or at least they were. For the past year however, they have been separated and transferred to other departments to improve their training. Now that the training is complete, they are returning to Bokuto precinct to be reunited and apply their new abilities to the taxing job of keeping Tokyo's streets orderly. Only things are about to turn all John McClane on their first day back, there will be no time for reminiscing and catching up, and the partners will have to work like a well oiled machine once more to save the day. For there are weapons smugglers operating in the city, a mischievous hacker is causing car wrecks by making traffic lights go haywire, a mad bomber is targeting all the bridges over the Sumida river, and the chief has been arrested under suspicion of being an accessory to a crime. And it's all tied into the mysterious 'Bee Number One'.

Picture

It's a disappointing 1.85:1 letterbox transfer, which doesn't get this section off to a good start. The added annoyance of zoom unfriendly subtitles means that an original language fiend like myself has to resort to watching the film like a postage stamp in the middle of a black bordered widescreen. But, when you do listen to the English dub and zoom the image to fill the screen, it becomes apparent that the image is overly soft and of low resolution, blacks tend more to greys, there are the occasional jaggies, and fine detail is lost, and the film really just sneaks by as watchable. The animation is up to feature quality, smooth and impressive, and the attention to detail (what gets through the transfer) is excellent. However, the prevalence of freeze-frame action moments makes this film look cheap, rather than distinctive as I assume the director was aiming for.


The shame of it is, that there was eventually a remastered and anamorphic version released, but ADV got hold of it just as their licence to distribute the film was about to expire, and it really only received a limited release in Region 1 land. Copies still being retailed are as rare as gold dust, and cost even more, while this earlier letterbox version is still ubiquitous.

Sound

DD 2.0 English and Japanese, offering much stereo-ness for your aural delectation. Translated English subtitles are available, as well as a signs only track. Fortunately, the dub, featuring the same actors as the series, is just about good enough to turn off the subtitles and watch the film zoomed in on a widescreen set.

Extras

All you get are trailers for Slayers Gorgeous, Rune Soldier, Angelic Layer, Azumanga Daioh, and Full Metal Panic.

Conclusion

I enjoyed the OVA episodes of You're Under Arrest when I first saw them, and I've grown rather attached to them the more I've watched them. It's a light cop drama set in soap opera land, where a taxing day involves saving a kitty cat, and miscreants who break Tokyo's traffic laws get a stern talking too from a sympathetic ear. It's gentle, charming, character drama, which comes from the Neighbours side of the cop show spectrum, and I was quite looking forward to the feature film.


Unfortunately for me, the creators did what so often happens in the transference of series to the silver screen, they rejigged it to play better as a film. We now get an action thriller, and the light-hearted fluffy travails of a police force that only has to deal with 'crime' as a Scrabble score are long past. With that too go the gentle character moments and soap opera storylines, to be replaced by something altogether faster paced, gritty, hard-edged and serious. It's as if you're watching The Thin Blue Line, and all of a sudden Jack Bauer shows up. It's fine if you like 24, but it still isn't what you were expecting.

I was expecting more Miyuki and Natsumi hijinks, more good natured meddling from Yoriko, more fumbled professions of love from biker cop Nakajima, what I got was a pretty intense tech thriller, as the officers of Bokuto precinct had to face up to the challenge of a sudden rash of high impact crimes, gun smuggling, cybercrime, terrorism and theft. The criminals are no longer those misguided wrongdoers that need to be shown the path back to good citizenship, these criminals are ruthless, determined, and armed. The biggest sign that we aren't in Kansas anymore is the Die Hard moment in the police station, where masked figures attack, and the beleaguered police have to somehow fight back. Add to that the prospect of corruption and criminality within the police force itself, and I found myself asking where the gentle, funny, charming world of the You're Under Arrest OVAs had gone.


There are some gentle character moments, some hints of the old light fluffiness and good-natured comradeship, but they are too few and far between. The You're Under Arrest movie is a competent and pretty slick anime thriller, but a world away from the OVAs. The disc itself is sub-par, and really doesn't cut it in a widescreen world. That it was released in 2004 means that ADV really have no excuse, and the viewing experience is detrimental to the film. Hence the low score.