Arakawa Under the Bridge episode 4

Any­one won­der­ing why the epis­ode star­ted with LOLQUALITY anim­a­tion at the start, you can put this down to Shafts infam­ous organ­isa­tion abil­it­ies. They weren’t able to edit the epis­ode down enough to fit in the TV sched­ule so put a part of the epis­ode online. I know I shouldn’t com­plain about more Arakawa but really Shaft, what on earth is going on behind the scenes there? I mean, this is nowhere near as bad as announ­cing Bake­monogatari to air its last three epis­odes online in Octo­ber and yet here we are still wait­ing for the last one, but they cer­tainly aren’t the most organ­ised anim­a­tion stu­dio around.

Epis­ode 25: First Date

Best part about Recruit’s pan­icky first date plans? How enthu­si­ast­ic­ally Nino took the whole thing. As amus­ing as the idea of Nino doing this all for shits and giggles is, I can’t help feel she’s also feel­ing nervous about the date. As much of a space-case as she is, I bet she’s try­ing her best to make this first date a suc­cess. I dare say her enthu­si­astic leap­ing behind rocks was just her way of try­ing to show Recruit she was ready to enjoy this first date for him. As much as Recruit prob­ably feels like he’s doing this for Nino, Nino is prob­ably try­ing her best on this date for Recruit. Recruit seemed really pumped for the whole thing and I bet Nino is doing this because she wants him to have a good time. Both of them try­ing to con­vince the other they’re hav­ing a good time res­ults in leap­ing behind rocks and hedges.

I was going to make a joke about hur hur porn but think­ing about it logic­ally for a second, would Recruit really ever buy porn? Everytime he pleas­ures him­self using pic­tures of naked women, he would then have to go to the model in ques­tions house and pose naked on her bed for her enjoy­ment. Women, this isn’t as bad as it sounds. Remem­ber that Recruit is a dash­ingly hand­some man, although I doubt you’d want him on your bed with his shlong on the duvet. It’s not like he could just send the model pic­tures of him­self nude either. I mean, how would he ever know that she got suf­fi­cient enjoy­ment from these pic­tures? He’d have to be there in per­son. Or send one of his body­guards to inspect…ok, I’m get­ting off this train of thought now.

Epis­ode 26: Rela­tions between Planets/The Sexes

I’ll admit, I was far too excit­ing to see this hap­pen­ing. Arakawa has already proven itself to tickle the romantic side of me to the point that I get excited at the pro­spect of see­ing them in any­thing remotely romantic. Which makes my total dis­like of Shojo series a bit hypo­crit­ical. Of course, the pro­ceed­ing scene was the fun­ni­est since Sister’s ori­ginal intro­duc­tion in epis­ode 2. It’s the con­tin­ued ser­i­ous­ness of the two of them that makes the whole thing so funny. Both of them know what they are doing is stu­pid but they’re so intent on hav­ing a proper date that you end up with that prin­cess car­ry­ing scene.

Noooo, Nino! Come on Recruit, save the day here. Prove your­self to the audi­ence. Have you learned enough about Nino? Can you make her happy? You know what a harsh critic anime audi­ences can be when it comes to our female leads. Only the most per­fect of men are allowed near our god­desses. Just look at how many people hate Shinra from Dur­arara because of how we per­ceive his actions towards every­ones favour­ite head­less moeblob. We are harsher crit­ics than Simon Cow­ell and the ANNCast hosts com­bined. Did he prove him­self? Did he ever!

What was best about Recruits whole scene was it wasn’t the per­fect response, it just showed his intent to do his best for Nino. We, the judges of Recruits actions, don’t neces­sar­ily love a man who’s per­fect. In fact, it makes us feel inad­equate. What we want is a man who gives noth­ing more than his best hon­est effort. You know why, don’t you? We can’t emu­late a per­fect man because we aren’t per­fect. We can, how­ever, give our best hon­est effort. The cynic inside me says that it’s because we want to believe that just by giv­ing our hon­est best effort, we will get the girl. It’s not strictly true, the harsh real­ity is that women want the bad boy who ignores the most of the time, but it makes for a romantic pic­ture that’s great to watch. It made Nino blush and that’s enough to make me smile widely.

Epis­ode 27: Stella

This is such a great pic­ture. All it needs now is a very simple white back­ground with the four char­ac­ters just being black sil­hou­ettes. The char­ac­ters of Arakawa are such an oddly dressed bunch that any lineup of them would look great. There’s many par­od­ies I’m wait­ing to see with the Arakawa cast. One would be a Dur­arara end­ing par­ody (the first one, not this crappy second one). Another would be the Ghost in the Shell 2^nd open­ing par­ody where they all stand in the trench coats. Or the Yot­suba& trio pic­ture with Sis­ter, Recruit and Stella. Where are you anime artists?

Pos­sibly even bet­ter than the last pic­ture. The white line off into the sun­set just makes the whole thing price­less. Ah Arakawa~, the nut­ter cast and cos­tumes makes any lineup hil­ari­ous. I repeat, where are you anime fan­artists? Stop draw­ing Vocaloid and Touhou!

Epis­ode 28: Let’s Play Together

Wait what? Recruit doesn’t have a mum? How did I miss that until now! It explains a hell of a lot about Recruit if the only per­son rais­ing him was his dad. I’ve said this before, but I can’t wait for daddy Recruit to come back into the story. I’d love to see his reac­tion to the likes of Nino and Sister.

(you know, I prob­ably take Arakawa too ser­i­ously in these posts. But hey, that’s my job as a blog­ger! I’ve got to over-analyse everything, it’s how I earn my liv­ing. Well, when I say earn my liv­ing, I’ve earned less than 3 euro from blog­ging in my life. You guys need to be more help­ful and click on these google ads!)

Epis­ode 29: Qual­i­fic­a­tions for a Big Brother

Actu­ally I didn’t, I just got my ass handed to m-, I mean, yes, I did lose on purpose…sorta.

Any­one here watch­ing Rain­bow? Ima­gine a fight between An-chan and Stella, the two big broth­ers duk­ing it out. An-chan could prob­ably take a lot of pun­ish­ment before deliv­er­ing the final blow. On the other hand, if Stella was lim­ited to three combo strikes, it makes you won­der how far she can go. And these are proper combo attacks. None of your too-fast-for-the-eye Clan­nad kick com­bos, these were all shown is full detail, slow-motion. An-chan is pretty freak­ing manly though, I’d say the fight would be pretty even.

Epis­ode 30: Maria

Mina Tepes pose? Shaft, do you really want to draw more atten­tion to that series. It’s not quite as bad as Brains Base mak­ing an Akikan ref­er­ence in Denpa, but at least they’ve yet to make a ref­er­ence to it in Dur­arara. Argh, get­ting side­tracked yet again. It’s not like any of my read­ers care whether they ref­er­enced Akikan in Denpa!

Makes sense I sup­pose. I won­der if the group under the bridge work the same way as an Israeli kib­butz. They are gen­er­ally self-sufficient but also have to sell stuff to the out­side world in order to buy things that they couldn’t oth­er­wise make them­selves. Maybe that’s what Star-heads job is. He’s actu­ally a fam­ous indi singer and his sales on itunes is what helps them buy things they can’t make themselves.

Epis­ode 23: Would any­one notice if I named the epis­ode incorrectly

That does it, Sis­ter is now my favour­ite char­ac­ter without doubt. While Stella is the abus­ive Big Brother, Sis­ter is a true Aniki. He stands up for Recruit and yet teaches him lifes harsh les­sons. He is, in a strange way, one of the most sane people who live under the bridge. Well, most mature and respons­ible any­way. I can see why people go to him for con­fes­sion, he does have this aura about him that you could trust him with any­thing. Definately the An-chan under the bridge.