YMMV / Police in a Pod

• Harsher in Hindsight: The chapter "Mental Hell-th" talked about having the officers having to put up with criticism from the public when things go wrong and having been constantly on duty with little time to see their family with overwork. Miko Yasu mentioned that when she took leave because she had to look after her child, one of her colleagues passed away due to stress from work.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In "Beginner's Luck," there is a line referring to Kawai, "Well, it's not like she went out and caught a Pokémon." This became funny when days earlier, two Los Angeles Police Department officers were fired for catching a Snorlax in Pokémon GO instead of responding to a robbery.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: At the time of the anime's release, its sympathetic portrayal of police officers attracted backlash from reviewers in North America, as there had been a number of publicized controversies concerning Police Brutality in the United States (and to an extent, Canada, thanks to controversial reports of RCMP/provincial police misconduct in the late 2010s to early 2020s) around that same time. As a result, one way this anime suffered during its airing was that many big-name anime Youtubers refused to mention this show on their channels when talking about the Winter 2022 season.
• Spiritual Successor: Critics/readers called it a 2010s/2020s successor to You're Under Arrest!, but with the story written by someone with actual experience as a police officer.
• Values Dissonance: One storyline revolves around Atsushi, a stereotypical high school delinquent, whom the main characters think is acting out because of his mother's neglect. When the cops perform an autopsy on his recently-deceased grandfather, they see how well his mother cared for him, which causes Atsushi to stop his delinquent ways and start going back to school. While the story is intended to show his Character Development by realizing how much his mother is dutifully performing her societal expectations, leading to him maturing and doing his own part, to Western viewers it's baffling how she's treated as a dutiful parent and such a good role model it gets her son to change his ways—because, well, she was neglecting him, her only child, for her elderly father-in-law. Western viewers would expect her to get called out in this situation, even if she was still intended to be sympathetic.

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