Arakawa Under the Bridge episode 6

First, we are born in the same galaxy. Born of the same spe­cies. Our life­times over­lap. The meet­ings between humans are so unlikely as to be mira­cu­lous. To laugh, to cy, and to fall in love. Every­one is made up of a col­lec­tion of 1% chances. Thus, I am dazzled by the fact that there are so many mir­acles in this world.

I really should have star­ted tak­ing down these open­ing lines since they star­ted. They, in a strange way, are the per­fect sign to someone that this anime is far more than just bizar­re­ness for the sake of it. This anime has a heart. I actu­ally got shivers writ­ing that quoted line, although that may have been because it’s bloody cold in my room. brb, shut­ting the window.

Epis­ode 43: Ah, what won­der­ful music

The gui­tar vs the violin. Which would you go for guys and girls? Let me give you a hint: it’s like Nodame Can­tabile vs K-ON. Yeah, no con­test there folks. Well actu­ally, since Hoshi isn’t play­ing a bass gui­tar, then I guess it’s more like Nodame vs Beck, which I’d still give to Nodame eas­ily but it’s more of a respect­able defeat for the gui­tar. I didn’t think Recruit was actu­ally that good at the violin myself, mainly because it was hard to hear the beau­ti­ful music over the sound of his evil cackles and the cries of des­pair from the fallen star.

I’ve tried to use that excuse for blog­ging as well. ‘Hey look Scamp, that guy fell asleep while read­ing your latest Dur­arara post.’ ‘No, he’s just clos­ing his eyes to focus on my won­der­ful writing…or something…’

Epis­ode 44: Last Song

Himo himo himo himo~~~~

Himo himo himo himo~~~~

Himo himo himo himo~~~~

*chorus*

Himo himo himo himo~~~~

Himo himo himo himo~~~~

Himo himo himo himo~~~~

*second verse to be decided later*

(Whenever any­one sings that song I always get the pic­ture of Recruits dad boogy­ing away, since he was the first guy to sing this song. OK, it was in Recruit’s dream but still.)

Epis­ode 45: You splash my back, I’ll splash yours

Oh you lot may laugh at Recruit now. I, how­ever, sym­path­ise with the poor guy. I remem­ber mak­ing a sim­ilar expres­sion while I was job hunt­ing. At least Recruit had a laptop at the time from which to search for jobs. I had to use the fam­ily com­puter which would over­heat if you tried to open more than one page at once. Or, altern­at­ively, when the epis­ode of anime you were watch­ing had reached its most cli­mactic point. Like in Code Geass epis­ode 23 where it would shut down just as Lel­ouch was say­ing ‘I could tell you to kill all the  *bwwrrrrrr…*’.

Would that fam­ous scene from James bond have worked bet­ter if the girl was wear­ing a Japan­ese school-girl swim­suit? Prob­ably not, I’d have pre­ferred Nino in a bikini myself. But eh, Shaft are unusu­ally (for them) light on the fanser­vice in Arakawa. Some may call it a good thing while oth­ers are des­per­ate for some ser­vice. I’m pretty indif­fer­ent to be hon­est. Arakawa is too intel­li­gent to res­ult to dumb fan pan­der­ing. How­ever there is such a thing as clever use of fan ser­vice, it’s just really rare to find.

Epis­ode 46: Ric’s Teachings

They look just like a mar­ried couple there, teach­ing their kids how to swim. Like nearly everything else in this show, there’s an odd charm to watch­ing the two of them teach­ing the iron-head broth­ers to swim. See­ing Recruit being so up front and harsh of Nino’s teach­ing meth­ods was a bit sur­pris­ing to see see­ing as he’s been increas­ingly leni­ent with her weird­ness in recent epis­odes, sav­ing his freak outs for the many other oddit­ies that reside under the bridge, although I sup­pose it was for the best that he did.

There’s one shot every epis­ode that cracks me up. This was it in epis­ode 6. So pre­dict­able and yet so hil­ari­ous. They were going to have to men­tion those iron heads at some point, same way they’ll have to men­tion Hoshi hav­ing a star as a head at some point too. Or the guy with a chicken for a head and his bumble­bee girl­friend. I won­der if they’ll ever have their own episode.

Epis­ode 47: Chance

Lol yeah right, and the may­ors a real life kappa. There’s noth­ing super­nat­ural about any­one under the bridge. I bet these kids are the same as Nino and the Mayor. They know full well that they can’t tran­scend time and space, the same way Nino knows she isn’t actu­ally from Venus. They just use it as an excuse to cover up whatever it is they want to hide. Which gets me back to won­der­ing what Nino’s past actu­ally is and why she wants to hide it behind Venus. I have my doubts that we’ll ever get an answer. It just wouldn’t suit the mood of the series, although we are only halfway through. Wait, already halfway through? Argh!

Oh what Hoshi would pay to get Nino to look at him like that. Recruit is, slowly but surely, work­ing his way up in Nino’s estim­a­tion and every­one under the bridge’s estim­a­tion as well. OK, maybe Hoshi is too busy singing himo himo himo himo~~~ but every­one else is slowly being won over. P-ko trus­ted him enough to give him those Styro­foam boxes (you know you’re in there when a women gives you her styro­foam) and Sis­ter has been on his side since the very begin­ning when Recruit expressed his desire to be the best lover he could be. Besides, Recruit is one up on Sis­ter any­way in that he’s actu­ally quite close to his crush. Sis­ter is too busy blow­ing holes for him­self to crawl into.

Epis­ode 48: Polypropylene

One day you decide to stretch your legs and head out on a brisk stroll. It’s a nice day so you decide to walk along the river. You glance into a nearby oil can only to see…that!

(I’ve said it before, but the kappa sucks at being a mayor. People are much more likely to go to Sis­ter or Nino for advice. I sup­pose if you’re going to keep the kappa out of the way of every­one you might as well make him the mayor. There’s not a whole lot for him to rule over. You wouldn’t trust the mayor with the import­ant jobs, like pro­du­cing veget­able or fish or eggs or cookies.

Epis­ode 49: Hint

This is so like Recruit. Tak­ing care of your­self so you’re always in top con­di­tion if you ever need to pay someone back. You don’t want to have someone take care of you when you’re ill because then he’d have intense asthma attacks until the other per­son was ill. He’d be bet­ter off break­ing the guys leg and then tak­ing care of him then just wait­ing for him to catch a cold. Hey, I won­der what hap­pens to Recruit if he does injure someone? Does that fall under his debt repay­ment policy? I don’t think it does myself, which explains why he’s free to be a big a dick to any­one as he can. It’s just other people being nice to him that he can’t take.

Epis­ode 50: Work Selection

Oh Recruit~ Aren’t you for­get­ting a little some­thing? Oh well, I guess I’ll leave that to the little kid with her mum on the bridge to point that out to you. Best of all was that he still never noticed the irony of the whole situ­ation. As it’s been said before, Recruit fits in amongst these people all too well. Even bet­ter now that he’s decided to get him­self a job.

A close second for the most lol-worthy image of the epis­ode. Strangley, dressed as a priest doesn’t make him look any less badass than he did as a nun. Instead of look­ing like someone from the Church of Viol­ence from Black Lagoon, he looks like a ran­dom Hell­sing char­ac­ter. I’d like to think that his ref­er­ence to fight­ing Drac­ula is a Hell­sing ref­er­ence but it prob­ably isn’t. Speak­ing of ref­er­ences, don’t you just know that now Recruit has become a teacher he’s going to throw out a ‘Zetsub­oshita’. Speak­ing of even bet­ter references…

Keikak­u­doori~