Review of Police in a Pod

Since I have a biased hatred for the police, it will affect this, and there is no point in hiding it. This series did not deviate much from what I thought about it in the first episode. A cute and funny, mediocre, slideshow presentation tier, police propaganda series. It's an episodic series about two police women and the rest of their coworkers. They go on to battle crime in Japan with a story written by a former police officer. As a result, there a lot of interesting insight into what it's like working for the Japanese police. It amazes me that amount of hand holdingthat happens here seeing as though where I live the police will usually shoot first and ask questions later, and have a rotten history in general that leaves no room for respectability. I've had my own experiences with psychopathic police officers who nearly shot me in the head over a simple misunderstanding. I've been stopped and told "your kind don't belong around here," behind police sirens of officers that most likely have white sheets in their closets. As a result, this series can make me feel uncomfortable at times.

Kawaii is a coward who recently joined up and met Fuji, a psychopath that shows her the ropes with her cunning experience. The series takes an episodic approach. As a result, it's your usual hit and miss episodes back and forth since it's more difficult to write great standalone episodes back to back where the plot often goes nowhere. Fuji tends to figure things out quickly, though it feels ridiculous at times. Kawai is usually clueless as usual. The dynamic between Kawaii, the very weak person, and the sinister Fuji, is nowhere near the greatness of duos like Kei and Yuri from Dirty Pair that even make bad episodes better with their own dynamic. Kawaii is a quitter who lacks self-confidence, and became a police officer more by accident than because she really wanted to. Fuji got transferred because she was bullying another officer. They start to become close as the series goes, and Fuji becomes protective as well.

Towards the end, they went for a grand finale type of story that went on for more than 1 episode. Honestly, they should have wrapped it up sooner as it was easily among the weakest parts of the series. The author tries to at times show the reality of what being an officer is like. As a result, one moment you can be laughing, the next horrified after a suicide attempt or the sight of a mangled baby. Kawai's ant like growth and development is nearly nonexistent as she often lacks any kind of real courage throughout most of the show. It's still adorable to watch how innocent she is in her career.

The two eventually meet Minamoto and Yamada. Though they try to go out and have fun on their time off, they tend to get called a lot and can never really escape. There's a lot of focus on how much police officers get overworked here. I think the author had a coworker that passed away that way if I remember correctly.

Now over, this was mostly forgettable. It didn't help that the animation looked pretty but was very lazy. There's something scary about their eyes. The constant slideshows were annoying. None of the music was memorable, but the opening and closing sequences were nice. Right from the start, the viewers get police butt shoved in their face. The only thing it had going for me was the occasional really funny joke.