Back in 2006, Kenji Nakamura surprised probably everyone with his three episode masterpiece that was Bake Neko, part of the Ayakashi-television series. It was trippy intense and brilliaantly written and built up, Together with Kenichi Kasai’s adaptations, it defined and popularized Noitamina and brought it to a mainstream audience. Ever since, Kenji Nakamura has been releasing a new series every now and then, with 2012’s installment being Tsuritama, at which he completely diverges from the types of shows he normally does.
I loved all of his previous works, but they collectively all had one downside: the characters. Relatively little time was spent on fleshing them out, and most of them were pretty one-sided and didn’t really come to life. Tsuritama is entirely dedicated to attempt to do this correctly, and it works. The plot is simple on purpose exactly to allow the characters to play themselves out naturally. There are relatively few action-packed climaxes in this series, but all of them have clear meaning and kick ass and ultimately make it a really fun show to watch.
And even though this series takes it easy in terms of pacing, it definitely doesn’t take it easy in terms of the ideas it has. This series really thrives on originality: it may have a teenaged cast, but within that it has many fresh ideas, like an alien with a watergun, a duck named Tapioca, or how about an entire series dedicated to fishing? Especially in the second half of the series the scenarios get particularly creative.
A downside is that this series does take a while to get going. The first half of this series contains a lot of build-up and is pretty much fishing 101 as it drills the necessary fishing skills into the main charachter in order for him to function properly in the second half of the series. While this can get a bit boring at times, I can’t deny that this series has a really well written structure: it knows exactly how much story it should have to not get rushed, it knows how much time to spend building up an make its characters feel alive, while stil having enough time to actually deliver on the fun and action-packed bits. Noitamina-series are infamous for their pacing issues, but Tsuritama is a series that gets the balance and format just right.
| Storytelling: | 8.5/10 – Fun to watch and a greatly paced out structure and a creative scenario. |
| Characters: | 8.5/10 – The series is fun because the characters are fleshed out well and get to play themselves out naturally. |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 – Not as trippy as you’d expect from Kenji Nakamura, but still has a unique and colourful look and wild animation where it matters. |
| Setting: | 8.5/10 – Really tries to be original amidst all of the teenaged series that try to see who can rip each other off the most. |
Suggestions:
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Lots of typos in the last paragraph, psgels. And what happened to the suggestions?
what happened was typing up this entry in a hurry: I had an appointment after this. ^^;
Wonderful show. As you said, takes a while to get into it and then it becomes absolutely fantastic.
Which, to me, is a contrast to the other Noitamina show, Sakamichi no Apollon which started very strong but became worse and worse because of its pacing issues, with its finale being the worst episode.
Anime originals like Tsuritama should be done more often. It’s such a treat to watch shows like these.
This series is just crazy. I especially loved the art, how everything was just so gaudy. It fit in perfectly with the rest of the characters and the plot.
I do agree that it starts off slow, the first episode for me was a huge chore to sit through, until that water gun appeared!
The ending was a bit of a let down for me, I thought it lost a lot of its originality in the end and became very predictable which I found disappointing.
Ahhh this was a great ride. Lots of trippy ideas. I loved how absurdist it was in it’s own way. Alien investigators who had ‘duck’ as it’s motif
Fish aliens that can control people with water and makes them do the Enoshima dance?
Fishing to save the world!
A great build up to the climax, and left me with nice warm fuzzy feelings!
Loved it!
yeah!!