Arakawa Under the Bridge episode 7

Just as I decided to paste the open­ing mes­sage of each epis­ode to start my Arakawa posts it throws up the least inspir­a­tional one thus far (although strangely it comes in the best epis­ode of Arakawa yet). I still quite like the mes­sage of reach­ing farther than you can ever achieve but I don’t really see what it has to do with Arakwa in gen­eral. Plus when the epis­ode starts with Mas­ter Fish­er­wo­men Nino watch­ing a whale…well, how long do you think Nino would have to spend med­it­at­ing under water­falls to catch a whale?

Epis­ode 52: Teacher Under the Bridge

And so starts a long and gruel­ing day as a teacher for poor old Recruit. I love his ‘trial and error’ method of teach­ing he uses later on, but here he starts his jour­ney down the path of los­ing his ori­gin­ally enthu­si­astic audi­ence. Because, as usual, Recruit is still mak­ing mis­takes by try­ing to apply his pre­vi­ous lifes’ logic to the world under the bridge.

Man I wish they taught me this when I was in school. It would have avoided so many embar­rass­ing incidents.

(Nino is the smart kid who always sits at the front of the class, which should the­or­et­ic­ally be social sui­cide in the scary world of classroom polit­ics, and yet is still an influ­en­tial fig­ure in the classroom because of her seem­ingly unend­ing know­ledge of use­ful facts. It’s like the nerdy kid in school who showed the mess­ers (or Jocks, as they call them in Amer­ica) how to use proxy sites to look at naughty stuff on the school com­puters. You know, import­ant inform­a­tion of the likes they don’t teach you in class)

Epis­ode 53: Interest

(or the lack thereof, judging by this picture)

Soooo, that’s Nino’s inter­ested face? Why yes, I can see it now! She looks almost as absorbed in Recruit’s les­sons as she did in his music!

That really looks like Hoshi is school uni­form. Well, not the usual Japan­ese high school uni­form, more the Eng­lish school uni­form (for the unini­ti­ated out there, English/Irish school uni­form looks like those in Harry Pot­ter except without the robes and wands). What this pic­ture sorely needs now is for Hoshi to be run­ning to school with toast in his mouth, although that’s more of a school­girl thing.

(Hey yeah, gender­swap­ping Arakawa! Ima­gine what that would be like. Well, now that I think about it I don’t think it would work that well. Sis­ter becomes Brother, which totally loses the appeal. A female Mayor dressed as a kappa wouldn’t be quite the same either. P-ko wouldn’t work either. Yeah, I think this a case where gender­swap­ping doesn’t throw up amus­ing situations)

Oh come on Mayor, we’ve all heard that one before. That’s right up there with ‘the kappa ate my home­work’. Now if you said some­thing believ­able like ‘Sis­ter blew it up with a hand gren­ade’ then maybe your story would be more believ­able. How­ever the pro­spect of see­ing the Mayor tak­ing on people under the bridge in a sumo is amus­ing. I won­der who out of the men under the bridge would win in a sumo bout (dis­count­ing Sis­ter). Recruit prob­ably stud­ied it as part of his plans for world dom­in­a­tion so my money’s on him.

(Ran­dom thought: One of the things that bothered me about anime in gen­eral was the total lack of sumo wrest­ling. When you con­sider that it’s what many people think of when they’re asked about Japan­ese cul­ture, its absence in anime felt awfully strange to me. After some dig­ging it turns out that sumo wrest­ling is so plagued by match fix­ing that the younger gen­er­a­tions don’t care about it any­more and it’s now con­sidered some­thing only old people watch. Anime is gen­er­ally for people between the ages of 12–25 so it makes sense for it not to be present. The mayor ref­er­en­cing sumo just after he stated he was cen­tur­ies of years old only re-enforces that fact.)

Actu­ally it’s just a cover of a cer­tain Pink Floyd song. Although you can’t fault his taste in music. I found myself hum­ming himo himo himo himo~~~~ the other day.

Teacher/Student for­bid­den romance? As unbe­liev­ably cute as this scene was, this prob­ably isn’t the best reason for Nino to come to school. What Recruit really needs is people inter­ested in learn­ing. Then again, Nino has fre­quently shown that she takes a lot of what Recruit says to heart as life les­sons. Recruit is a foun­tain of fas­cin­at­ing wis­dom and know­ledge to her, which is why she’s so inter­ested in him. How­ever there is still that glim­mer of romantic interest between them. Remem­ber epis­ode 5 and Nino blush­ing? I won­der if they’ll get any fur­ther than first date before the series ends. Recruit needs Hoshi to goad him into mak­ing the next move again.

I have noth­ing to say about this pic­ture. I just hap­pen to like it =)

Epis­ode 54: Start­ing Class

Totally pre­dict­able. Still hil­ari­ous. And doesn’t that mag­net look like a nose?

(This is the only pic­ture I have some­thing to say about in this ‘epis­ode’ of Arakawa. I wrote over 500 words about the last epis­ode. Con­grat­u­la­tions Scamp, you win the blog­gers award for consistency!)

Epis­ode 55: Turf

Ah Nino, we love you no mat­ter how strange you are. No wait, we love you because of how strange you are. As for Recruit, he’s got­ten used to your quirks by now and is cap­able of respond­ing to them in a con­trolled man­ner. There’s still a few things that throw him under the bridge but for the most part he’s learned to adapt. We see him over­re­act to ran­dom shit far less often now, with only the cra­zi­est stuff throw­ing him from now on. A big change from the start when people were say­ing ‘oh, it’s just an anime whose humour is based off ran­dom stuff hap­pen­ing and the main char­ac­ter yelling a reac­tion’. Hah, whose laugh­ing now, bitches!

So awe­some~! I wasn’t that fond of Stella before this epis­ode (badass loli’s have been done before) but dressed up like that makes the whole thing so much bet­ter. The sunglasses, the trench coat, the teeth clench, the popped col­lar. Stella doesn’t just go to the school of the badass loli’s, she got expelled for bul­ly­ing the other badass lolis!

Epis­ode 56: Not quite forthright

You know, when I was talk­ing about Stella going to the school for badass lolis, I’d totally for­got­ten that she actu­ally did. And yes, she did get kicked out of the school for badass lolis. Sis­ter must have decided she was too dan­ger­ous for the poor little kids back in West­ern Europe so depor­ted her to Japan, keep­ing a close eye on her at all times. Put­ting her in the care of the Iron Head Broth­ers is prob­ably a good thing because all they have to do is take off their hel­mets to keep her under control.

(Vil­lain­ous orphan­age in West­ern Europe? I could make a Kinder­heim 511 from Mon­ster ref­er­ence right about now but for some reason I feel that mak­ing jokes about that place just isn’t kosher)

If you could just divert your atten­tion away from Nino’s epic wind­mill hair for just a second, this is what I was talk­ing about earlier. Recruit’s method of teach­ing is a trial and error method. Change if the kids are get­ting bored but if they seem inter­ested in some­thing then just let them do it. If it aint broke, don’t fix it.

Epis­ode 57: A com­pletely dif­fer­ent per­son to every­one else

Hoooh, I have a devi­ous plan involving phot­shop with this pic­ture. I’m com­pet­ing against Sea Slugs in the next round of the anib­log tour­ney where I’ll likely get my ass handed to me. How­ever appar­ently you’re meant to draw fan­art of their mas­cot when you lose. My artist skillz are around the same level as Stella’s so I think I should be able to rustle some­thing up of sim­ilar levels of artistic brilliance.

There are many reas­ons why Sis­ter is my favour­ite char­ac­ter under the bridge. One of the big draw­ing factors is how he was the first per­son, apart from Nino, for Recruit to warm up to. Now he’s the only per­son he can have a reas­on­able argu­ment with without being frightened for his life, which is strange con­sid­er­ing Sister’s habit of with­draw­ing weapons of minor destruc­tion out from under his robes at reg­u­lar intervals.

Ah love things like this! No, not the sparkly bubbles that floated in from the nearest shojo series. The idea that this pic­ture makes per­fect sense in con­text but looks so totally bizarre to any­one who has never seen the anime before. It’s a sim­ilar appeal to those Hetalia dis­cus­sions talk­ing about how France would react if Eng­land tried to cut his hair. It makes per­fect sense in the con­text of Hetalia but baffles those outside.

Epis­ode 58: When winter comes

Hey guiz, I think we need more reas­ons why Sis­ter is the best char­ac­ter in Arakawa Under the Bridge. How about the effi­ciency at which he dis­patched veget­able and the occa­sional rouge trowel? Yup, I think we can all agree on the awe­some­ness of Sis­ter right about now.

Epis­ode 59: Transformation

At first I was all like ‘P-ko on a motor­bike? Yargh, dis­aster in the mak­ing!’. But then it dawned on me. P-ko is a moe of the dojiko vari­ety, right? There’s another char­ac­ter in a cur­rent air­ing anime who has also been described in series as a dojiko who also rides a motor­bike (which has also been com­pared to an animal. In that case a horse, in Arakawa’s case, an iron boar. Thank you Mayor for that image). Haven’t you all real­ised it by now? Motor­bikes were con­sidered the ulti­mate in rebelling from soci­ety after Akira. Now, thanks to Dur­arara, they are con­sidered moe!

It’s hard to pick a stranger couple between P-ko X Kappa and Sis­ter X Maria. Com­pared to those two pair­ings, Nino and Recruit look like a pos­it­ively nor­mal couple with a house,  a dog and 2.4 kids (the iron broth­ers super powers count for 0.2 each). I’m try­ing to ima­gine what it would be like if P-ko con­fessed to the Mayor. How phys­ical would their rela­tion­ship be able to be. Although I can pre­dict the Mayor’s first reac­tion. “But I’m a yokai. I’ll stay alive long after you die”. So heart­break­ing~! Oh that reminds me. When’s that third sea­son of Spice and Wolf com­ing Brains Base?

Epis­ode 60: What’s com­mon sense?

When I was a bit younger I was a huge fan of Top Trumps cards. These were cards each with 5–6 dif­fer­ent stats. Each per­son draws a card and takes it in turn to pick a stat and who­ever has the highest gets both cards. I was such a nerd in my younger days that I made top trumps out of anime char­ac­ters. They’re still lying around on the com­puter at home some­where. One of the stats eval­u­ated the attract­ive­ness of the char­ac­ters. Of course as we all know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. While I might have rated the Mayor’s looks at around a 2, P-ko would argue that they should be over 9000!

(yep, that entire para­graph was just lead­ing up to an over 9000 joke. Hur­rah Scamp, you get the blog­gers award for originality)

What’s a lack of com­mon sense any­way? Being dif­fer­ent from other people? I guess he really doesn’t have any then.…

But even if he has no com­mon sense, he lives an unwaver­ing life. After all, that’s his real way of liv­ing. Finally com­ing to under­stand your true self. Pretty cool isn’t it?

You know what else is a lack of com­mon sense? Spend­ing over 4 hours on an epis­odic blog post. Or is it..what’s com­mon sense anyway?