Arakawa Under the Bridge episode 10

A ‘wish’.

It isn’t a shim­mer­ing glass ball which will shat­ter if grasped firmly. It is a darkly lus­trous ball of mud which only firms up when one squeezes it. Its form may be uneven, but it’s the form of one’s own fin­gers. Not to make it a beau­ti­ful gem someday, but to make it the world’s most beau­ti­ful ball of mud.

Aww, that’s quite the ima­gin­at­ive meta­phor. Will admit I’m at a bit of a loss as to what it has to do with Arakawa Under the Bridge though. Still, the world is always in need of more qual­ity metaphors…I’ll think up of a good meta­phor for how much the world needs a good meta­phor later. For now, onto this fab­ulous epis­ode which, accord­ing to some for­ums I read, has LOTS OF DRAMA!!! Yeah, some­times I won­der if I’m watch­ing the same epis­ode as every­one else.

Epis­ode 77 Fire Drill

This is such an awe­some shot. Sis­ter doing that typ­ical badass shot of turn­ing his back to dis­aster because he’s seen it all before. Bet­ter yet, it’s a fire he cre­ated. Turn­ing your back on destruc­tion you caused your­self is even bet­ter. It does become sig­ni­fic­antly less badass when you real­ise this is a ‘sim­u­lated’ fire where the most valu­able thing des­troyed might be some grass and an unsus­pect­ing ladybird.

(Also, it only only occured to me after the epis­ode, but the joke here is that fire drills shouldn’t actu­ally have a fire…right? There’s not some weird cus­tom in Japan to cre­ate a fire when doing a fire drill, is there?)

(Semi-related note: Fire drills in Ire­land are hil­ari­ous. You could be in a house made out of Christ­mas trees and pet­rol, beside a fire­works fact­ory and a deten­tion centre for juven­ile delin­quents and nobody would move an inch if the fire alarm went off. Well, they’d move their heads to see if there was any smoke, but that’s about it)

I know the rest of the epis­ode poo-pooed this deep debt of Sis­ters, but I won­der what it actu­ally is? Sis­ter wouldn’t say he owes the Mayor a debt unless there genu­inely was some­thing. This goes bey­ond just respect for being the depend­able (lol) mayor. There’s some­thing more to this that both we and Recruit are miss­ing to the Mayor’s lead­er­ship qual­it­ies. Until we get suf­fi­cient evid­ence that the Mayor really is suit­able for lead­ing the pla­toon by the Arakawa River, then I stand by my state­ment that Sis­ter should be the Mayor under the Bridge.

Epis­ode 78: Teamwork

Your leader catches fire and all you’re wor­ried about is your nos­trils? Recruit, I expec­ted bet­ter from you. Actu­ally I lie, I expec­ted no bet­ter from you what­so­ever. Can you not see what he puts him­self through? Did you not wit­ness as he drilled the team into the per­fect bucket-chain team around with his sumo stomp­ing? And how he used the water for the bene­fit of the people?

Totally pre­dict­able, still hil­ari­ous. Well, no, I only knew this would hap­pen once Recruit was passed the bucket. Until then, I was con­vinced P-ko would take it, trip up over an unsus­pect­ing speck of dirt and spill the water all over her­self, drench­ing her top and turn­ing it totally see-through. OK, I didn’t think that last part would hap­pen. It’s just what I hoped would hap­pen. Still would have been funny though.

Epis­ode 79: Mayor under the bridge

Clearly a ref­er­ence to hal­fa­deck­short.

Oh look. More yaoi pair­ings. I hon­estly thought the char­ac­ter designs for the men in Arakawa were far too bizarre to attract any slash fic­tion. A quick browse on pixiv told oth­er­wise. See­ing numer­ous amounts of HoshiXRe­cruit pic­tures was really weird. I mean, I sup­pose they fit the yaoi ste­reo­type of two rivals who are actu­ally ~in wuv~ but see­ing Hoshi depic­ted in bishounen man­ner really threw me off. Then again, it’s not like it’s that far away from head­less porn that’s res­ul­ted from Dur­arara. Who knows, maybe there’s women out there with a fet­ish for dudes who’s head looks like a star.

(No, I wasn’t on pixiv look­ing for yaoi pic­tures, des­pite what my tastes in anime might inform you. I was look­ing for a new avatar, see­ing as I’ve had my Hare one for 2 years now. I even­tu­ally settled on one, tell me what ya think in the comments)

Epis­ode 80: Enlightenment

Really? If in Ichi­nom­iya land, fool=handsome and youth­ful then yes, Recruit does look like a fool. I mean, holy crap, look at him in that pic­ture. He’s fuck­ing gor­geous! If liv­ing under a river can do that to you attract­ive­ness level then I’m mov­ing now. Besides, he does have inter­net access there so I can still blog. Now I’ve just got to nearly drown and have a space-case girl with an epic ahoge ask me to be her lover. Yup, sounds like a pretty achiev­able life goal if you ask me.

I love the way Recruit’s own lines are com­ing back to haunt him. He used to say this quite fre­quently at the start of the series. Now here he is, star­ing at someone say­ing that very line, about to ruin his hap­pi­ness. Stranger still is that he now con­siders liv­ing under the bridge his hap­pi­ness. Not once over the course of the rest of the epis­ode does he con­sider that it might be bet­ter if he moves away from under the bridge. I can’t even recall him men­tion­ing the deal with Nino for the past few epis­ode. That kiss must have totally won him over.

Sis­ter, you are awe­some. I think all you need is one more abso­lutely hil­ari­ous one-liner for you to cement your place as one of my favour­ite anime char­ac­ters of all time.

This was one of those clas­sic moments where I had to pause the video because I was laugh­ing so much. Sis­ter, con­grat­u­la­tions for that. Not only have you cemen­ted your place as one of my all-time favour­ite char­ac­ters, but Arakawa has also almost cer­tainly earned a place in my top 30 anime list. That list needs updat­ing at the end of the sea­son because DRRR will prob­ably take a spot as well. Although DRRR has been pretty weak lately. Heck, Arakawa is way bet­ter than Dur­arara at the moment.

Epis­ode 81: Emer­gency situation

I’m not going to be pre­tend to be an expert on law or any­thing, but don’t they have squat­ting rights now? No, this is not another point­less off-topic debate. This is quite rel­ev­ant to the plot. Nino has been here at least 4 years, see­ing as that’s when she met Hoshi, and I’m pretty sure the Mayor must have been here longer than that. Don’t you own land once you’ve been on it for 5 years? Even if Recruit’s dad bought the land, he didn’t effect­ively buy it off the people who now own it. I’m sure Recruit is smart enough to know these laws bet­ter than me. Then again, he’s up against his dad, who will almost cer­tainly be able to hire the best law­yers to take them down. There must be plenty of illegal activ­ity under the bridge. As Recruit said, Sis­ter is illegal by his very existence.

This was so lulz worthy. You can just ima­gine Sis­ter stand­ing over some dimin­ut­ive Japan­ese police­men say­ing ‘Nihongo Wakari­masen’ and watch­ing them cower in fear at the sight of this massive, cross-dressing gaijin.

Epis­ode 82: No need to worry

The Mayor gets straight to the heart of what I was talk­ing about earlier. Recruit instantly finds him­self wor­ry­ing about the people under the bridge, even if they do think that bury­ing cucum­bers will res­ult in awe­some kappa magic. I won­der when Recruit will come to real­ise how he’s changed him­self. He’s not the most self-aware per­son around now, is he.

Epis­ode 83: Official

“Hey Shinbo. What should we put in between these two scenes?”

“How about a close up of Recruit’s eye?”

“Err, we’ve done that 12 times already this epis­ode Mr.Shinbo”

“Really? OK, how about do some quick cuts to pic­tures of the bridge”

“Sir, we’ve done that sev­eral times this epis­ode too”

“I know! Let’s make the pic­tures go by even faster to sim­u­late dra­matic stuff happening!”

“Err…ok Mr.Shinbo”

“Why yes, I am a genious”

lolshaft

Epis­ode 84: Pig

Now I haven’t been that mad about Maria so far because I’m not exactly one for the whole S&M thing. How­ever Maria com­ing out dressed in that black top, in all-out sad­ist mode would have made my day if this epis­ode wasn’t already packed full of so much win oth­er­wise. Work­ing for the gov­ern­ment does have its perks. Also, did you guys notice the foot­prints on his back afterwards?

Epis­ode 85: Here

Any more? A hint into Nino’s past? A dra­matic end­ing to the series? An end that has some sort of res­ol­u­tion to the main plot? The pos­sib­il­ity of see­ing Nino stand up to Recruit’s dad? I am look­ing for­ward to this!