My first impressions of A.D. Police: To Protect and Serve did not go particularly well. As I was introduced to the show's main character, Kenji Sasaki, I found him to be rather generic and clichéd. The same can be said for the first episode's general setup, in which Kenji takes over a hostage situation while off-duty and then gets chewed out for it by his superior back at the station. Then some later misadventures from Kenji lead to his partner getting hospitalised and his unit going on a mission without him. All of this pretty standard setup had me thinking this show wasn't going to have anything interesting in it, especially since Kenji seemed a very trite "rebel cop" character. But then something surprised me, when everything seemed poised for Kenji to save his unit when they inevitably failed to complete the mission on their own, instead the unit's mission went off without a hitch. Kenji, meanwhile, was left only to mope about, get in a fight with who will be the series' other protagonist, and reflect on his history of dead partners on the force. This was only a slight subversion, but it was one that caught my attention and made me a little more interested in the series.

I should probably mention that I did have some preconceptions of the series that may have clouded my first impressions. A.D. Police: To Protect and Serve is a part of the Bubblegum Crisis franchise, specifically it is a spin-off of the Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 reboot. The original Bubblegum Crisis even had its own A.D. Police focused spin-off, one I found to be very boring and unmemorable, which I suppose may have coloured my perception of this series. This show being a spin-off is a fairly notable aspect of it, as the show seems to follow the tone of its sister show, BC Tokyo 2040. That series mostly ditched the wild, free-spirited, high-octane tone of the original 80s OVAs for a more muted half-light-hearted, half-serious approach, i.e., fun fights and chase scenes with some drama or philosophising in the second half. Protect and Serve mostly follows this same tone, with a good mix of banter, action, and plot development. Although I would say that Protect and Serve does take itself a little less seriously in both presentation and its plot than BC Tokyo 2040 did, to its benefit, as Tokyo 2040 got too bogged down by its sci-fi pseudo-philosophising by the end.

Something that's fairly different from its sister show is the art style, which is another aspect that initially made me cautious in my first impressions. You see, although the show's style looks fairly standard for the time at first, it can get pretty unorthodox at points and, at worst, pretty ugly. As with many anime, this will differ depending on which staff were working on which episode; as far as I could tell, the middle run of episodes from about 4-8 were the most consistent and least off-putting in their art style. In terms of specifics of what put me off, some of the detail on characters' faces felt misplaced to me, for example, a lot of the characters have quite defined, big lips, and occasionally some of the extra detail on the top lip would make them look like they're wearing black lipstick. Some closeup shots of characters, where there's generally more emphasis placed on facial features, would look goofy to the extent of not getting across whatever emotion was meant to be conveyed. It's not horrendous or anything, and honestly its angular, early digital anime style has a certain charm to it and possibly even nostalgia for some. In fact, the look and tone of the show will probably be pretty nostalgic to anyone who was into Toonami during its original run. It's a show that focuses a lot on presentation and features more adult characters, like a few of the more famous titles of that era (it also kind of has an episodic feel despite having a long-running plot). But the aspect that most hearkens back to that era is the quite fabulous soundtrack, which is a real highlight of the series. The soundtrack is mainly composed of fun jazz tracks that give the series a lot of flair, as well as feeling fitting for a police-focused series. The tracks used for the action scenes are the particular highlight, including one that ditches the jazz theming and instead goes for a pulse-pumping electronic track that was always used in the right places to make a moment more exciting. Something that Protect and Serve is worse off in compared to both "Bubblegum Crisis" series is its animation quality. The show definitely doesn't seem like a lot of money was put into it, with lots of still shots and action scenes that are quite slow and lacking in fluidity. Despite this, I actually prefer the action in this compared to BC Tokyo 2040, thanks to some really well directed scenes and interesting set pieces. Protect and Serve manages to overcome its animation deficiencies by constructing set pieces over the course of an episode that eventually ignite at climatic points, that, along with some stylish direction, really helped make the show more exciting. Most of the time you'll see the characters defeat the robot enemies using the same method of just a straight bullet to the chest, done using the same kind of shot. But the direction beforehand really helps keep things fresh and prevents these different set pieces from feeling samey.

Onto the actual plot and characters of the show, the story is fairly simple and will be familiar to anyone who has seen anything in this franchise before. The A.D. Police are a specialised police force focusing on taking down mechanical "Boomers" that go haywire, and of course there's some shady backroom dealings being perpetrated by the mega corporation that controls the city, Genom. The protagonists try to deal with these Boomer incidents while investigating what Genom are really up to. In actuality the plot takes a backseat to the main focus of the show, Kenji and Hans' relationship. They start off irritated by one another but, over the course of the show, become increasingly invested in each other as partners. Their dynamic is entertaining and I enjoyed the development of their story together, but I do wish that they remained at odds for a bit longer, as they quickly ease off on each other when I felt there could have been some more tension drawn out of that particular dynamic. The story generally only focuses on the two main characters, Kenji and Hans, with a little bit of development for Hans' love interest, Satomi. This is fairly understandable given that it's a one-cour show, but at the same time it feels like there was some misplaced focus where other characters could have been given development. The most glaring example being Kenji's girlfriend, whose name I can't even remember. The show teases her in the first episode as if she's going to be important, and although she does get some occasional scenes with Kenji where she helps him through some of his troubles, she never becomes much of a character of her own.

Although it started off with something unexpected to me, the series doesn't have too many surprises on offer, but the few ones it does are its most interesting parts. This can be seen in my favourite episode of the series, episode 8, which eschews any action in favour of having most of the characters reside in a bar for pretty much the entirety of the episode. While there, we see all the characters are in some way hiding from something, which leads to a nice blend of backstory, comedy, and fleshing out some of the characters' personalities. I absolutely love it whenever an anime does something a tad outside of the box like this, and this was no exception; it was the highlight of the series for me. The series' main antagonist, Liam Fletcher, is not a particularly complex or interesting villain. That being said, his fairly elaborate schemes, as well as his consistent interactions with Kenji, make him pretty entertaining, having some fun back-and-forth between Kenji and Liam was especially well done in helping create a nice rivalry between them. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the ending is not a particularly good one; the show resolves a lot of things in the penultimate episode only for some new character to show up in the final episode so there's something for our protagonists to do. This ends up in a pretty underwhelming conclusion, as well as being probably one of the uglier-looking episodes in the series, surprisingly.

Ultimately, although I'm not sure how memorable Protect and Serve will be for me as time passes, I did quite enjoy my short time with it, which is as much as you can ask of any show. If you're a fan of this period of anime or if a fun, sci-fi cop procedural sounds like a good time to you, then I would recommend it.