Arakawa Under the Bridge episode 13 (finale)

In a move that should sur­prise nobody, the last epis­ode stayed removed from the plot and was basic­ally a ‘spe­cial’. Which is a good thing because the plot worked per­fectly as it was and I would have been pretty dev­ast­ated if they changed it at all, what with all my blub­ber­ing in the last epis­ode post over how per­fect it all was.

(For the record, I’ve swapped from the Nut­blad­der subs I’ve used for the past 12 epis­odes to God Speed subs, for the simple reason that it came out earlier. Scamp = impatient)

Epis­ode 101: The Last Samurai

Nino’s bed hair is like surfer-dudes hair in extreme mode. Salt water does that to your hair, but the Arakawa river doesn’t look big enough to be a salt water river. It must have some­thing else crazy in it though because that’s some wild hair right there. It’s like it’s made out of ahoge’s. Since I made Nino and her awe­some hair my avatar, I’ve found I have a soft spot for it now. In fact, I think it’s given me a soft spot for Arakawa in gen­eral. The reverse has happened too though. Now that I no longer have Hare as my avatar I’ve found myself won­der­ing what it was about the show I loved anyway.

Ser­i­ously, that hair! It’s what Tok­u­chi Toua’s hair would look like if he didn’t cut it for sev­eral years. Nino’s hair has gone down as one of the most awe­some hairdo’s ever. Or is it? I must verify this fact! *runs off to my MAL account*

OK, for anime char­ac­ters most awe­some hair, remem­ber­ing that crazy does not nessesarilly equal awe­some (so no Yugioh) I came up with some con­tenders. Lyuze from Cas­sh­ern Sins, Eureka from Eureka Seven, Tessa from Full Metal Panic (the pony­tail twirl in front of the mouth. Got me every time), The Count from Gankut­suou and Rakka from Haibane Rem­nei (remem­ber the static from the halo?). You know, I’d prob­ably still give Nino the award for most awe­some hair.

(I just spent half an hour on MAL search­ing for char­ac­ters with awe­some hair. No won­der these posts take forever to write)

Epis­ode 102: Haircut

I sup­pose he has to be a pretty skilled hairdresser to get that cute little bow effect on the top of P-ko’s head like that, along with the sun-kissed gradi­ent effect it has. It looks like someone has lit a bulb under her head.  Maybe her scalp glows? It’s a pretty awe­some hairdo in it’s own right. Not quite at the level of those I men­tioned earlier, but around the same level as Min­ami Chiaki. Oh what am I say­ing? The only reason I took this screen­shot was to mar­vel at Nino’s hair once again. It looks like a thistle.

I feel a little bit relieved Last Samurai wasn’t in the reg­u­lar show. The best he can hon­estly do is a ref­er­ence to Samurai Blue? Which, BTW, is the nick­name the Japan­ese Gov­ern­ment gave to their foot­ball team for the world cup. Yah really. Spend all that money on people to pro­mote their national foot­ball team and the most ima­gin­at­ive they could come up with is ‘Samurai Blue’? Bleh, almost as lame as this character.

How­ever, intro­duce lame char­ac­ter A to Sis­ter and sud­denly he becomes hil­ari­ous. Ah Sis­ter~! What would the minor char­ac­ters of this show do without you?

Epis­ode 103: Billy and Jaqueline

OK, I approve of this char­ac­ter already. Besides lady, I’m pretty sure they’ll be OK with your for­bid­den romance. If a man can share his wife with 9999 oth­ers, I’m pretty sure he’ll be OK with another one, even if it is a par­rot. I won­der why she’s not with her fam­ily though. Did she elope with Billy to under the bridge? If you go by the gen­eral theme of Arakawa res­id­ents, then she’s hid­ing some­thing under that Queen Bee facade. I guess we’ll find out in the second sea–sssh­h­h­h­hhh Scamp, don’t men­tion that yet! Quick, show them a hot pic­ture of Jaqueline.

Yup, this show needs more Jaqueline and Billy. Also, I just got the whole crown thing. She’s a Queen Bee. Ged­dit? Queen wear­ing a Crown? Yes yes, I’m a slowpoke.

Epis­ode 104: Arakawa Dreamland

Main char­ac­ters in anime quite often suf­fer from being extremely bland so you can insert your­self in their situ­ations. They might have char­ac­ter attrib­utes but often they are things that don’t effect their every­day thought. What I like about Recruit is that he a very defined per­son­al­ity. He’s a bit of a dick, slightly full of him­self who struggles when it comes to being nice to people because he wasn’t brought up that way. He’s kept the pom­pous part of him­self as he lives under the bridge but he’s been mak­ing a notice­able effort to be less of a dick to every­one who isn’t the Mayor or Hoshi. There’s a clear char­ac­ter here who you can’t just pro­ject your­self into. So good job there Ms. Author. You’ve made a proper main char­ac­ter with Recruit.

This had me in stitches though, if only because this isn’t entirely unbe­liev­able. Ima­gine if there was a Twi­light theme park. It wouldn’t have to stretch your sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief too far to see that a ver­sion with Edward or whatever his name is as a chair for you to clam­ber into could exist.

Me after writ­ing a typ­ical Arakawa Under the Bridge post. Ser­i­ously, never before has blog­ging a series taken me so much time. I love doing it but argh, takes bloody forever! Plus judging by the hit­counter, not very many people read these posts. Ah well, I like read­ing them so bleh to you guys. Well, not bleh to you guys read­ing this because you are the actual few people who do read these posts.Good job guys. Here’s a happy pic­ture of Nino and P-ko for you.

OK, I know the pic­ture isn’t per­fect because Nino doesn’t have any sort of bed hair, but frankly I think we got enough of that at the start of the epis­ode to last us for the rest of our lives.

Epis­ode 105: Rides

Why oh why do horses hold such appeal over girls? This is a pretty accur­ate depic­tion of horses you know. They’re far from being the nicest creatures around you know. Think about how excited they get when they go to a horse stud. You know what a horse stud is, right? It’s wear one dude horse fucks all the women horses that come to him because he ran fast in a few races. It’s like the world cup win­ning team were then all trans­por­ted off to sep­ar­ate brothels. You are vis­it­ing that brothel. Lovely stuff. Aren’t those horses cute~?

Each crazy part of Arakawa had a for­mula. Some­thing crazy looks like it’s about to hap­pen. Recruit gets all pan­icky and turns into his mean self. Then the char­ac­ters reveal some­thing that’s actu­ally rather nice, which leaves Recruit feel­ing a bit guilty for being pre­ju­dice against the res­id­ents. Then, just as he’s won over, they reveal that they are nut­ters after all and he goes straight back to his doubt­ing self once again, start­ing with a dead­pan reac­tion face, fol­lowed by yelling loudly.

When I put it like that, Arakawa sounds like a rather unin­spired series. I won­der why I like it so much then?

Thanks Sis­ter. I’ll be see­ing this in my nightmares.

Epis­ode 106: Unfor­get­table Parade

I know this is the last epis­ode, but I don’t have a whole lot more to say. I did all my prais­ing of the series over­all in the last epis­ode post because that was the true end to the sea­son. But not the end of the series over­all. Yup, for those of you who haven’t already found out, a new sea­son of Arakawa Under the Bridge has been announced. Judging how the series was announced instantly after this one ended, I’d say it will air this upcom­ing Autumn sea­son although don’t quote me on that. I’ll admit, I’m a little bit wary of a second sea­son. Yes, I love the show, but a large part of what I love about it is how well struc­tured it was from start to fin­ish. I don’t feel like it needed another sea­son, although I sup­pose we won’t know until we actu­ally see it. But yeah, I am wary, espe­cially when the next sea­son pre­view included this.

Epis­ode 107: Treasure

WTF? A rejec­ted Cobra char­ac­ter design has decided to join Arakawa Under the Bridge? Oh well, I sup­pose it’s time to say good­bye to Recruit and Nino for now. Look for­ward to see­ing you all fight Won­der­wo­men next sea­son. Or fly off to Venus with her. Whichever makes more less sense at the time. What’s com­mon sense anyway?