The second ending theme, "Hikari" by Kyoko's voice actress Saeko Chiba is pretty nice, too.
Audience-Alienating Premise: This is perhaps the reason why the show was such a failure. It looks like a straightforward sci-fi buddy cop-style action series, as opposed to the serious drama it actually is. As a result, many people wrote it off as just another buddy-cop action show, and those who watched it because they liked straightforward action shows came away underwhelmed. This even translates to its poor performance in the US, where Chad Kime from Geneon points out that for every copy of the show sold, Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) sold 4 times as much, even when Geneon marketed it as from the people who made The Vision of Escaflowne (one of Bandai Entertainment's best-performing titles), and Funimation has said that it's one of the worst-performing shows on their streams.
"Rumor": Samuel Kobayashi is a maniacal explosives expert and amateur photographer who regularly photographs women at landmarks he intends to destroy as a Calling Card, manufacturing "Beauty Cards" to be traded. Initially having targeted mailboxes and billboards, Kobayashi graduates to mass murder by targeting multiple buildings and structures, including the workplace of Special Services Officer Daisuke "Dice" Aurora, resulting in scores of deaths. After Dice realizes the connection between the Beauty Cards and the other bombings—with Dice subsequently evacuating his workplace of any inhabitants—Kobayashi's bomb taunts Dice when he cuts the wrong wire, subsequently accelerating the timer of the explosive, only failing due to the intervention of Dice's partner, the android "J".
Cry for the Devil: The show invokes this trope with most of its bad guys (except Noriega). Clair is probably the most prominent example, which plays out over the course of the entire series; but you see it with Shun too.
Designated Villain: Toward the end, some characters view Clair as a villain when he obviously isn't in that villainous a position anymore.
Most of the fanfiction in this teeny tiny fandom is DaisukexClair, even though they normally do not get along. Except towards the end, where they help each other, but not actually for yaoi reasons.
There's also a little of this between Kyoko and Mitchal, when Kyoko comes to rescue Daisuke, and there are those who ship them.
Fridge Brilliance: Shun effortlessly beats up Daisuke earlier in the series, but in the finale Daisuke has the upper hand. Is it heroic resolve? No, it's that Shun still hasn't completely recovered from the sniper bullet that went through his chest not too long ago.
Fridge Logic: If Monica can barely manage to earn enough to pay for the trailer she shares with her mother, how can she afford to keep a donkey? And how is said donkey housetrained if there's no way it can fit into their trailer home?!
Hollywood Homely: Kyoko gets depressed when trading cards of beautiful girls are being passed around and there isn't one of her. Turns out there was, but she didn't know about it.
Hollywood Pudgy Spends a chapter dieting (read: starving herself) to look good in a bikini to impress her crush at a pool party (turns out he wasn't even there!) even though she's not fat.
Ho Yay: Mitchal & Ian. The fact that Mitchal blew himself up shortly after Ian's death, and the fact that they're almost always together is certainly yaoi fodder.
Memetic Molester: Lorenzo is known to have been physically and emotionally abusive to Clair, and thought to have been sexually abusive as well. His imposing and creepy nature doesn't help any.
Moe: In a way, Clair. He comes off this way owing to his presentation as a childish ill boy and his really crappy childhood. It helps that he's also really, really cute.
The Scrappy: Again, Lorenzo. Many fans hate him for the way he treated Clair. Rumie as well, in this case much less justified.
Squick: Shows up every so often, to the point it suggests that the characters just don't have very high standards for cleanliness or hygiene. Examples include:
There's a city in Judoh's Absurdly Spacious Sewer. Furthermore, the children who live down there apparently think nothing of playing in the sewer water, nor does Daisuke think anything of jumping in to retrieve his bullet necklace.
Clair's initiation ritual for becoming Vampire involves him cutting his finger and dripping blood into a big vat of wine, from which everyone in attendance drinks.
After Noriega kills Ian, he sends (it's implied) Ian's hand back to Clair, Giovanni, and Mitchal in a box. This is already squicky enough, but then Clair fishes the ring he was wearing out of the box with a horrible squelching noise and sticks it on his own finger—without cleaning it first!
Clair injects Daisuke with Truth Serum...and doesn't disinfect the area or put gloves on first.
Superlative Dubbing: The English dub of this series is widely considered to be virtually flawless and every bit as enjoyable as the Japanese.
