Blast from the past: You are under arrest

Man, I do miss this series. I remember when I was very young (put that like 6-7 years ago), they used to play this series at midnight when I was still a non-convert to anime. It was in fact a chinese sub that was played in the free-to-air TV on Channel 8, even before the whole Mediacorp-Mediaworks saga.

I remembered this anime fondly, because I really found the animation techniques then as really great. I found myself sneaking out of my room (since my house then only had one TV, and it was in the living room), trying to watch the anime quietly at 12 am in the morning. That was the time when I was young and was generally not allowed to watch any television after 10pm. Heh, those were the memories.

You are under arrest does not have ground breaking plot. In fact, most of the scenes that were portrayed in the anime, now that I watch it, are hardly classic material. However, YAUA was one of the series that I fondly remember. Why so? I presumed it was probably because that it made a classic plot look good. Sometimes, having really cliche plots work very well in a series, simply because it was executed with superb precision. That is what i see from YAUA.

The two female leads are clearly likeable, using the theme of traffic police that was not exciting at all. It is probably a slice of life series, with pretty good humor to go with it. I personally think if given the context of today’s anime, I would probably not be too interested with it. However, it is just good to watch the first episode from mere past interest.

I remembered i used to watch Love Hina and laughed crazily at the antics of the characters in the series. They never failed to make me laugh and the fact that the guy gets bashed so much makes me feel even sympathy to him during the time that I watched it. Many other series that I watched when I was young were so off-beat that I would not dare to tell most people about it last time. Series such as Ranma 1/2, Orange road and many other classics were shows that I have watched and fanatically kept up with, as they were my only source of anime during the time when the Internet was not as prevalent as now.

Do you guys remember how you can get your information about anime before the Information age? Most of you, who were born into this age, would probably not see it at all. I was in a transitional stage where the Internet was not part of my life til this very instant when it plays an integral point of my life. I knew people online, I learned things online, I found information online, things that were impossible to gather 10 years ago. It is really amazing how a single thing can change my life so drastically.

Thinking of such things are reminiscing. I mean, before the Internet, the fact is that I never knew the existence of anime. Now, i am like a released bird, learning much more and growing out of the old series that I used to fixtate myself with. Still, i think back of the anime that I have watched. Maybe I would not call it progress, because that will mean that the older series are not as good as the newer ones.

It’s really hard to decide.

However, remembering all these anime is really interesting. I think I will re-visit a few of my old animes, thinking why I used to watch them…With that, I leave you with these screenshots and the question: What anime of the past have you watched recently?