Sorry, did I say I hoped Odd Taxi would “stick the landing”? I didn’t expect them to REVERSE GRAVITY’S POLARITY WITH THE MASS OF THEIR – *cough* excuse me, I got carried away. As I was saying, this is clearly the anime of the season – probably the year.
If you’ve been reading my coverage, you’ve probably grown accustomed to two of my complaints: the comedy duo’s prominence and my complete disinterest in Odokawa’s medical condition. I’m still a bit miffed on the prior, but this finale made the latter – which I’ve complained about incessantly – integral to the story. That’s no small feat. The backstory was SUPERB. The child’s silhouette, the unreliable narrator, all coming together for a horrific murder-suicide – I had chills. I have chills writing about it.
The paradigm shift – where Odokawa wakes up in the ambulance. What I just wrote was not a sentence, because that scene speaks for itself – I have nothing to add. My goodness. I think everyone vaguely expected it to happen, but seeing it was such a visual slap in the face (in a good way), that I audibly gasped as I watched.
So for the mysteries – I’m a little mixed on the reveals. First, what’s in the closet?! Well – I guess we could have seen that coming from the OP (I had predicted a bird). Still, the tangible relief when Odokawa saw it wasn’t a human – that was well played. The second (whodunnit), I’m a bit more mixed on. I guess it was heavily implied (and someone in chat had predicted it), but I just didn’t feel the malice from the cute chicken-crunching killer, so the reveal is as much of a shock as it was supposed to be – borderline unbelievable. But – the cliffhanger ending more than makes up for any cliche aspects. Oh yeah, and whoever said it was the younger brother who shot Dobu – full marks.
I’m going to touch on the largest plot hole of the series here – Shirakawa. I think her breaking of the underwater window was Odd Taxi’s way of saying “yeah she’s a walking plot device, but she’s funny and we only had 12 episodes, so deal with it.” I’m not 100% sure what her true role is (love interest, mother figure, guardian angel, comedic relief?) but maybe that’s the point here – that people (or their animal caricatures) don’t fit nicely into boxes. Like the Tapir, well, mafia boss. As someone else correctly theorized, his rule was “don’t kill.” And Odokawa does right – he acknowledges the flaws, but thanks him for the good he’s done. And gives him 100 million yen (roughly 900k USD). Which is funny, because of all the mafiosos in competition, Odokawa wins.
I could go on (and I will in the series recap, coming soon ™) but suffice it to say – Odd Taxi delivered in spades. With remarkable self awareness, this show turned even its flaws into strengths. I still have no idea what the importance of comedy duo was, but I cheered for them nonetheless (my latest theory is that as they’re an actual comedy duo, their contract must have stipulated a certain number of appearances). Odd Taxi’s finale is one of the best I’ve ever seen (unfair that Fruits Basket ended too *sniff* *sniff*) and I expect its rating to be one of the highest I’ve given out. Absolute bravo!
End Homosapiens hate!
It was a really good finale but I have to say, I still dont really care about the medical condition. The whole “They weren’t actually animals” thing is just… It was never important to me.
Outside of that I really enjoyed it.
While I am not someone who would shower it with similar praise as you have Amun, I do believe Odd Taxi is a really good series and one whose kind we can surely use more of in the medium.
After all, one can never have enough capoeira!