Arakawa Under the Bridge episode 8

Again, we have another week where the open­ing mono­logue isn’t a quot­able life les­son. Rather, we get insight into the tur­bu­lent, love­less child­hood of Recruit before he became Recruit. It’s the first time we’ve seen his dad in a situ­ation that wasn’t even slightly funny. Hav­ing him do the himo~ dance or dressed up as a baby doesn’t give you quite that much time to reflect upon what his rear­ing meth­ods had on poor Recruit.

Epis­ode 62: Lie

What a way to start an epis­ode! Put Sis­ter in a suit. I don’t remem­ber see­ing that in the next epis­ode pre­view. All I remem­ber was a real life kappa chas­ing some kids (no really, that was what the last episode’s pre­view was).  It took me a few seconds to fig­ure out who it was. Mind you, I’m not so sure that’s the best type of suit he could be in. It is a Dol and Gaba suit (you know someone’s loaded when they shorten the name of designer brands. I’m a stu­dent. I don’t even shorten the name of McDonald’s). I just think Sis­ter would look bet­ter in an all black suit with the black bow-tie, James Bond style (well, he is Eng­lish). Altern­at­ively, he could go for one of those all white suits. Still, what he’s wear­ing there suits him well enough.

If I was Recruit, I would have used the fact that there’s some mon­strous fish in that river as what he’s mak­ing this com­pany out of. That way he has proof if either of these two go ask­ing ques­tions. Then again, what’s the bet that Nino has caught all the mon­strous fish by now. Or maybe the fish go by sea­son, when they all go upstream to lay their eggs and stuff.…hey, stop look­ing at this text with that dis­be­liev­ing, con­des­cend­ing gaze. I watched a doc­u­ment­ary on it once. I’m an anime blog­ger, not a mar­ine life blogger.

Epis­ode 63: Employess Under the Bridge

Ah, so Franz is his real name. Were we told that before? Or is that his real name? If it is, then maybe I was wrong about him being Eng­lish and it’s only Stella who’s from the land of tea and crum­pets. Franz is a Ger­man name, which suits the pro­file of Sis­ter quite well. He’s tall, blonde hair, blue eyes and gen­er­ally typ­ical Aryan. Or cent­ral European in gen­eral. Since he speaks 6 lan­guages, that suits cent­ral Europe as well because they’re typ­ic­ally mul­ti­lin­gual, espe­cially com­pared to the Eng­lish who know next to noth­ing bey­ond their nat­ive tongue.

Aha~! I have a vague the­ory. This lady did a little blush when Whitey did his whole ‘polite employee’ routine, hint­ing that she might just have fallen for the guy just a little. After what happened at the end of the epis­ode, she’ll almost cer­tainly come back into the pic­ture, per­haps tak­ing Whitey’s fas­cin­a­tion away from this chicken of his. Or bet­ter yet, she’ll learn to live with his fear of mar­ry­ing a chicken as yet another per­son is drawn to life under the bridge away from Recruits evil daddy.

(Dam­nit, every single time I think of Recruit’s dad I can’t get the image of him doing the himo~ dance out of my head)

Hi every­body. My name is Recruit and I live under a bridge. This is my bliss­ful state of bewil­der­ment face. I use it a lot.

Epis­ode 64: Secratary

Well kids. Would you buy these cucum­bers if this guy was the mas­cot? Wait, wasn’t Recruit selling elec­tri­city? Or at least pre­tend­ing he was. A kappa as a mas­cot for your elec­trical com­pany. Maybe those green and yel­low orderly dots in the back­ground a grid lines show­ing how Recruit will deliver elec­tri­city to the coun­try? Or maybe I’m just look­ing into everything way too much yet again. Yes, I do that a lot.

Oh Nino~<3. You’re so won­der­fully care­free. Well no, she does care about stuff. How would you describe her in one adject­ive? It’s not unaware or bliss­ful. Neither is she naive…well, she is naive but that’s not the word I’m look­ing for. She has few wor­ries to her, but unwor­ried isn’t the word I’m look­ing for either. Besides, she does have wor­ries. Oth­er­wise she wouldn’t use the Venus lines when she feels uncom­fort­able. She’s a spacer I sup­pose, at yet stays alert to cer­tain things. It’s like she has a cer­tain set of things she cares about and bey­ond that doesn’t mat­ter to her.

Because they have, yet again, found someone even weirder than those who do live under the bridge. When you get down to it, how many people out there wouldn’t fit into soci­ety under the bridge in some form or another? Well, prob­ably most people, it’s why they’re con­sidered ‘nor­mal’. How­ever who wants to be nor­mal any­way? The less nor­mal you are, the more inter­est­ing you are. Although you can push it though. Do you really want to be as harsh as Maria just to try be dif­fer­ent from every­one else? I sup­pose some people are into that sort of stuff though. Like Sis­ter, apparently.

Epis­ode 65: A Deep Relationship

Yaoi doujins fukken whar?

(I won­der what yaoi pair­ings they’d make for doujins with Arakawa? I doubt there’s that many artists inter­ested in bald­ing dude X Recruit. Sis­ter X Recruit seems like an obvi­ous one. I doubt there’d be Hoshi X Recruit either, or any­thing to do with the Mayor either. Or maybe there’d just be straight ones with Nino X Recruit. I won­der how many fujioshi actu­ally read the straight doujins? I should try find some of those female-orientated straight doujins some­time. Strictly from an edu­ca­tional per­spect­ive you must understand)

(Yuri doujins are obvi­ous. P-ko X Nino. Cucum­bers any­one? OK, I’ll shut up now…)

First he gave us Stu­dent Fucker. Now he gives us butt bud­dies. What other poetic terms will escape from the mouth of this won­der­ful poet? You can just tell he writes his own music.

Yaoi doujins fukk…note to kids: This is not how you kiss someone. If someone I was about to kiss decided to re-arrange their face to look like they wanted me to inspect their mouth for cav­it­ies, I’d prob­ably run away. Actu­ally I wouldn’t, because I’d be too busy being shocked that someone wanted to kiss a big nerd like myself. But I’d still point out any poten­tial cav­it­ies they might have.

Epis­ode 66: My First…

Yes! Yes! Go for it! Push him and see what happens!

(It’s strange how big a deal the kiss scene is. You find your­self gun­ning for the scene to hap­pen, cry­ing for the char­ac­ters to go for it, being con­stantly cockblocked or pussy­foot­ing around. Some­times it’s tossed out like it’s noth­ing. Some­times it’s been built up for ages so that you get an explo­sion of relief when they finally get to it. Some­times it’s shock­ing when it does hap­pen that you’re like ‘woah, they kissed!’. Sex scenes though…well, they don’t hap­pen very much and when they do, it’s almost always been between a mar­ried couple. Anime needs more sex in general)

It’s strange to real­ise that this is the case. No mat­ter how many chocol­ates he got, no mat­ter how much research he did for his and Nino’s date, no mat­ter how many romances he’s seen go past him in his life, if you don’t actu­ally engage in the romance your­self then you’re not going to learn any­thing very fast. So go ahead and kiss her damnit!

Come on Recruit, you have to kiss her! If you don’t, she may never regrow her nose ever again!

Hoshi’s facial expres­sion is so epic in this pic­ture. It’s the face of a troll. He’s definately the type of guy who posts one word com­ments like ‘fag­got’ on You­tube videos then grins as he watches the ensu­ing carnage. Yup, Hoshi is def­in­itely a troll. And just like any troll, he hasn’t got a chance with women, des­pite think­ing he’s cool because he plays the gui­tar badly. Sorry Hoshi, but you stand no chance against the Recruit. Now hurry up and KIIISSSSSS HHHEEEEEERRRRRRRRRR!!!!

YYYEEEEEESSSSSSSS!!!

That’s a proper kiss as well. Mouths prop­erly con­nec­ted, a good old grab of the tie to add that extra bit of feisty­ness. Obvi­ously it doesn’t rank up there with those epic kisses that have been build­ing up for ages, but I’d still give this a solid 7/10. Loses points for Nino not hav­ing a clue what it really meant, but the buildup in this epis­ode to it was great stuff. It made me grin like a maniac anyway.

Hey look, there must have been a cut-scene we missed where Nino styled Recruit’s hair like she did in epis­ode 2 and then pro­ceeded to paint his face with tomato juice.

(I pre­dicted a few epis­odes back that Recruit was about 22 years old. Looks like I was almost right and I’d say Nino is a year or two younger. We’ll have to wait and see for that information)

Epis­ode 67: Alone

I won­der if he still thinks that? Nino in a wed­ding dress. Sis­ter per­form­ing the mar­riage cere­mony. P-ko the brides­maid. Whitey the best man. Hoshi would be play­ing the wed­ding music if he wasn’t too busy float­ing down the river pre­tend­ing he was a star­fish. The Mayor would act like the guy hand­ing over Nino to him in the father’s pos­i­tion. Mar­riage under the Bridge. I won­der how far this sea­son will go with their rela­tion­ship anyway?

This scene was very touch­ing when it was hap­pen­ing but look­ing back it’s kinda weird. Mainly because of that scene later on with him hug­ging a Recruit body pil­low. I’d like to think my dad doesn’t hug a body pil­low of me. I’ve never actu­ally asked him if he does. I don’t think I ever will ask him either because if he does I’d prefer not to know.

Epis­ode 68: Bluebird

You know when I said earlier than anime needed more sex? Yeah…I doubt that’s what happened here. It’s just Recruit being an idiot. A lov­able idiot but an idiot non­ethe­less. Although his reac­tion is bet­ter than Hoshi’s would ever be. If Nino’s mouth touched his, Hoshi would prob­ably explode.

I’m sorely temp­ted to go back to the earlier epis­odes and check if those scenes of Recruit in the house by him­self have Sis­ter lurk­ing omin­ously in the back­ground some­where. If Shaft actu­ally did that, they’d get a brofist of respect from me. In fact, Shaft get a brofist of respect from me for this entire show. If the non­sensical length of these posts weren’t clue enough, I’ve totally fallen in love with Arakawa Under the Bridge.

Why yes Sis­ter, it does. Arakawa Under the Bridge makes me smile so much my face hurts. It’s not so much the laugh out loud moments that make this anime for me, although those are plen­ti­ful and enjoy­able. It’s the con­stant feel-good factor and gen­eral grin­ni­able mood the entire show puts me in. Arakawa is my favour­ite show of the spring sea­son and has taken that spot by quite a con­sid­er­able mar­gin. It’s also given me new-found respect for Shaft that pre­vi­ously only exis­ted after Bake­monogatari, some­thing which was gradu­ally worn away by the ridicoulous delay for those final epis­odes. Of course, the real hero behind this series is the ori­ginal mangaka and I can’t wait to see if he more pop­u­lar Saint Young Men also gets anim­ated, but Shaft deserve some real respect for adapt­ing it this well. Thank you Shaft and thank you Shinbo. You deserve this break you’re tak­ing next season.

But for now, let’s all sit in anti­cip­a­tion and wait for the hil­ar­ity that will be Recruit’s dad under the bridge!

(himo himo himo himo~~~)