Login
Once in a while out of nowhere comes an original anime that renews my dying interest in the new stuff from the medium. 2020 had a bunch of them but they were either quite basic or couldn’t end in a good way for being either too ambitious or rushed, or incomplete, or having bad writing near the end. This year’s pleasant surprise was Odd Taxi which unlike those managed to wrap up things in a satisfying way. It was made by the Pokémon studio and another one which I never heard of and had no previous hype before airing whatsoever, the premise isn’t amazing by any means either, just an anthropomorphic walrus driving a taxi, big deal. I checked the first episode out of pure boredom and by pure accident I found the title I liked the most from this year full of sequels of stuff I didn’t watch and new stuff I don’t care about.
Before moving on with the actual show I’ll just talk about the stuff I care the least about in a hurry, the visuals aren’t very good, the setting is just your more or less known Japan by any anime watcher with anthropomorphic animals thrown in but it looks good. The rest, not so much, the furries’ designs are simple and kinda generic but at least they are not sexualized, they don’t quite match with the backgrounds at times, the motions aren’t very fluent and the CGI cars clash a lot with the rest of the visuals.
As for the sound, both the effects and the music are fine, neither of them are nothing special but they do their work just fine, I don’t care about the ending, to me is just idolish crap which I always skip after the first episode but at least it fits a little with the show, on the other hand the opening is amazing, easily the best of the year for me, and it’s accompanied with catchy visuals too. The voice acting is very good to me, far more mature than what I expected and I was surprised by the performances, given the voice actors behind them, aside from a few of them, the rest gave an unexpected and refreshing performance, good stuff, Odokawa and the rapper were the best.
With that out of the picture, Odd Taxi is initially nothing really special, just a comedy about talking animals on a taxi, but the dialogue is pretty good thanks to the forty year old cynical Odokawa passively aggressively questioning everyone else about how futile the stuff they do or worry about actually is. From there, in a way, the series makes fun of modern things such as a guy whose whole life is literally dedicated to the idol group he’s fan of, another who dropped out of the university to seek quick bucks and fame by spreading lies and scamming people on the Internet and being obsessed over being relevant on social media.
It also deals with a gatcha addiction theme, a very relevant topic today, but I have to say I don’t think it was explored very well, since the character suffering for it has a very unbelievable tragic background, lost his cellphone in a kinda contrived way, and has very composed internal monologues reflecting on his own life for a character that is supposed to go completely insane. I know that his episode is among the most populars of the show but I couldn’t buy the whole thing.
But it’s not a boomers anime with a millenials are a lost generation type of message, the older cast deal with their own issues and are flawed as well, from an easily manipulated woman caught up on drugs traffic because of a naive love to a literal monkey desperate to marry with whoever he finds and just like the younger idiots he posts his income on the Internet. Heck there’s even a comedy duo where the older guy can’t catch up with the modern society, constantly complains about it and can’t up his game and is jealous of his younger more succesful partner, he is the pure boomer of the show and look how he is portrayed.
It also deals with dark topics within the idol industry being in shady and illegal business but I can’t go into details regarding that. If the series would stop at that it would be a kinda funny and unorthodox slice of life comedy with interesting themes in the background but decided to go further by becoming a crime adventure, an internal battle within two mafia guys which ties its seemingly at first unrelated stories kinda like the “Go!” 1999 movie which starts as a teen comedy and turns into a crime adventure midway. All the characters end up being caught in the main conflict and are somehow connected with the others by the end.
As for the characters, everyone is kinda colorful and has something that makes them stand out a little, such as the capoeira practicer nurse, and eventually most if not all of them have their background revealed and face the consequences of their actions and are affected by the events, going through their own character arc.
Despite all the good things I said about the show, I don’t want to oversell it as a kind of hidden masterpiece or something, since there are definitely contrivances to make the stuff happen and simple and convenient resolutions, such as characters appearing out of nowhere to save someone else or stuff like that, and whenever there’s action it’s hardly exciting, the choreographies are not very good and as I said the visuals are not very good to back those scenes up. Also things go Odokawa’s way quite easily, you almost feel like he can play around with gangsters and cops however he wants without much struggle and tension. Plus, despite dealing with different stories and characters coming together, it lacks the interwoven narratives used by those late 90s and early 00s movies such as Go! and of course those made by Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, or even Baccano! within the same medium, it’s much more straightforward in that regard. I can at least say that this title has better characters, as memorable and fun as those other casts may be, they lack the character arcs and kind of depth found here. Compared to those titles, Odd Taxi is nothing special and memorable and lacks the same level of refined style, but within the anime medium is kinda unique and definitely worth the watch.
7/10
