You’re under arrest full throttle ep 02 – well, another western boy who wants to be samurai, but…

It’s another charming a little episode from the many episodes of shows made from Kosuke Fujishima’s manga. I’m well aware that his stuff often seems really harmless and to some people, dull and not very exciting. In many ways that’s very true. Looking at the subtitle of this season of You’re Under Arrest – Full Throttle, and looking at what happened in the show so far, everything’s hardly bursting forward. No huge explosions, no bullet rains, no blood, and no death. In fact, I’m well aware a lot of people will probably get turned off by this.

However, blood and death aren’t what makes any work from Fujishima interesting (well, explosions are actually quite frequent in Ah! My Goddess). What make his work and the anime made from his work interesting are the little stuff about his characters – their hair, the facial features, the attitudes, the often harmless and not quite funny characters, the seemingly small and not quite so huge situations, and the “healing” (a Japanese term here) abilities his works and the anime made from his works offers.

The characters often want simple good and they’re not afraid to do whatever to achieve that simple good. In this episode, Miyuki and Natsumi refuse to let the people from Landy’s corporate “family” take him back to US, because these callous and unthoughtful bastards don’t really care about his feelings. Also, it’s suspected that they hired the thugs from last episode to forcefully take the boy back to US.

That’s hardly a complex plot. The section chief asks Landy’s opinion by first telling him that he has to decide for himself.

Landy decides that he still wants to see his grandpa. and Nakajima, being in love with Miyuki and wanting to help Miyuki, decides to help Landy, who wants to see a castle where real samurai lived, and takes Landy to see a castle. Meanwhile, Miyuki and Natsumi goes to find Landy’s Japanese grandpa.

Of course the old man, who’s a kendo master at his own dojo, refuses at first, but Natsumi uses her wily and some brute force and takes him along. It’s only mildly amusing but I couldn’t help and smiled a little bit.

Charming and slightly odd characters indeed.

Nakajima teaches the boy Landy a little bit, and finally grandpa show up and encourages Landy. Through a little bout between Nakajima, Landy, with grandpa watching, hearts were moved, Nakajima cries like a baby and grandpa accepts Landy and decides to take care of him. All in a day’s work for the traffic cops at Mokuto Police Station, thanks especially to Miyuki and Natsumi.

Watching this is a lot like watching one of these heart-warming sitcoms, and “Full House” comes to mind, even though the settings and atmosphere in “Full House” don’t even remotely match this show, but the feeling I get is the same – warm, fuzzy, and not completely boring. The details in the scenes, the personality of the characters, especially the main characters, and the chemistry between them (also, the seiyuu play them so well with such great chemistry) – all these and then add little bit of oddness in the situations, and you got a cynic (me) convinced that he may just blog every episode for this show, even though he didn’t even bother to pay attention to it before the Fall season began.

In short, the winning formula here is chemistry, and it’s 85% (!) recommended for your daily anime diet. I do have to warn you, if you like action, destruction, or any grand plots and epic battles, poignant struggles and romance, and so on, look else where. The charm of this show don’t reside in any of that, oh and yuri fans, find the doujinshi for this but other than that, also look else where.