Arakawa Under the Bridge episode 11

The open­ing mono­logue this week was bor­der­ing on pre­ten­tious so I’m going to ignore it and instead focus on a pic­ture with Nino stand­ing on a comet. Or maybe she’s stand­ing on a paint stroke that the artist acci­dent­ally put onto his beau­ti­ful pic­ture of the earth. Both are just as likely as each other.

Epis­ode 87: Oath

Inter­est­ing how the people under the bridge now look to Recruit for advice. Sis­ter is more for emo­tional sup­port than decision mak­ing, which is prob­ably why he hasn’t been given the job of the Mayor. While the Mayor’s advice may be abso­lute non­sense, his deliv­er­ance and repu­ta­tion under the bridge makes him a per­fect leader. How­ever turn­ing to Recruit when there is genu­ine, tan­gible trouble is because he actu­ally has plans that makes sense.

Well, sort of make sense. What’s com­mon sense anyway?

Epis­ode 88: Com­mand Aura

I won­der what Ric was wor­ried about when he told Sis­ter to dress up. I mean, obvi­ously he doesn’t look like a grizzled war vet­eran under that nun cos­tume until he draws some­thing from his vast arsenal under his robes. But surely he knew that if he told Sis­ter to cam­ou­flage that he’d go and do some­thing crazy. Maybe he thought Sis­ter would put on the suit again. I’m more sur­prised he’s not dressed in proper camo gear, com­plete with the hel­met with leaves on and camo paint draw­ing leo­pard stripes on his face. He surely has the equip­ment lying some­where in that church of his.

If Recruit is truly going to beat his daddy then he might just need to dabble in some pos­sibly illegal activ­it­ies. But deal­ing with the mafia would not suit someone like Recruit. Nope, he would be the type of per­son to dabble in the occult. The untouch­able tech­no­logy. The Geoss.

“Lel­ouch vi Ichi­nom­iya com­mands you all, to stop work­ing and go home!”

(OK, I know it was Whitey who sent the blokes home, but give me this moment of pho­toshop­ping extra­vag­anza. I gotta hold up my geass end of this web­site somehow)

Epis­ode 89: Under the Bridge without Ric

At first I thought this was Recruit who just had a fight with a per­man­ent marker. The per­man­ent marker con­stantly attempt­ing to end the fight with one quick jab to the eye but Recruit took a les­son he learned from Sis­ter and deflec­ted each shot onto his cheekbones where the only res­ult would be aes­thetic dam­age. Hence the fol­low­ing minute or so baffled me because I genu­inely thought this was Recruit in dis­guise and I was try­ing to work out what reason he had to be in dis­guise amongst the workers.

Fist of the North Stella make a re-appearence, this time to offer fake-Recruit her skilled sup­port. Quite a use­ful skill if you think about it. Remem­ber all those times you’ve sat in bed, totally incap­able of fall­ing asleep. The wouldn’t you love a Fist of the North Stella of your own to put you asleep with a rel­at­ively small amount of men­tal and phys­ical scarring.

Maybe it’s because I now have Nino as my avatar, but I’ve found myself feel­ing for Nino a lot more this epis­ode. The enthu­si­asm at which she greeted fake-Recruit along with the dis­ap­point­ment ooz­ing out of her as she tried to recall his face, start­ing from the tie up, man­aged to get to me just a bit. It’s an epis­ode not­ab­ley low on laughs and much stronger on the sense of com­munity under the bridge. To be per­fectly hon­est I prefer the other Arakawa. When they were able to use the comedic moments to put together the image of com­munity under the bridge.

Epis­ode 90: Father and Son

I should prob­ably stop with all this photoshopping.

Now this was inter­est­ing. I prob­ably should have expec­ted it, but learn­ing that all poor daddy Recruit wanted was a bit of love in return. Well, maybe not love. He’s afraid dir­ectly talk­ing to his son, but for what reason? Is it because he feels he wasn’t a good father, or is he just nat­ur­ally incap­able of con­front­ing people. Both seem extremely unlikely, you don’t become that suc­cess­ful without being able to manip­u­late and con­front other people and as far as he’s con­cerned, he’s raised his son in the best way in order to be suc­cess­ful. Won­der what it is then.

Epis­ode 91: Plan

Let me ask you this ladies. Would you really like to wel­come back a man who, upon see­ing you, sends his beads of sweat hurt­ling in your dir­ec­tion? Yeah, I thought not. No won­der every­one went to Takei instead.

What a lov­ing rela­tion­ship~! Well, I sup­pose it is Nino’s way of show­ing her affec­tion. She’s been hold­ing that fish in preper­a­tion for when her lover finally returns. I’m sure Recruit would love a kiss instead of a fish shoved in his mouth but beg­gars can’t be choosers. At least she knows it’s him now.

(I’ve been des­per­ately try­ing to think of a sexual innu­endo for hav­ing a fish shoved in your mouth but my per­ver­ted side is hope­lessly off form today)

So that means they cur­rently do have a psy­chokin­esis bar­rier up? Maybe that’s what those bottles flut­ter­ing in the wind are. Noth­ing to do with telling the wind dir­ec­tion (although I sup­pose it would help with Sister’s snip­ing). Or maybe it’s just one of those non­sensical plans by the Mayor involving cucum­bers and kappa semen mixed with freshly squeezed grapefruit juice bur­ied under a full moon. Yeah, notice how each one of the mem­bers under the bridge wants some­thing built that isn’t there already? Recruit’s right, bunch of moaners.

Epis­ode 92: The Power of Ichinomiya

The only real laugh out loud moment of the epis­ode and, sur­prise sur­prise, it comes from Sis­ter. Look at his, spark­ling from sheer inno­cence. Or course he thinks he’s done noth­ing wrong. He knows noth­ing else. Prob­ably a good thing Recruit never saw him in his bear costume.

Epis­ode 93: TEL

Leav­ing aside Recruit’s beau­ti­ful phone wall­pa­per for a second, I’m sure we all want to know exactly how scary Recruit’s dad can be. For this valu­able inform­a­tion we shall ask our res­id­ent expert for his opin­ion on the fright­en­ing level of this much feared man.

And with that, this post comes to an end. It wasn’t really the greatest of Arakawa epis­odes I sup­pose. With the end in sight it’s quite easy to guess how it will shape out but appar­ently the manga keeps going so a second sea­son is on the cards. We’ll have to wait and see I suppose~