Odd taxi takes you on a buzzing mysterious ride.
It is a story of honest taxi driver, who drives taxi for living. A simple man with simple test of life, making his living by helping people to reach their destination everyday.
But what stands out is Odokawa a taxi driver, is walrus. If you haven’t watched Beastars, you definitely came across Zootopia. Animals are shown doing chores instead of humans. Odd taxi is alsoh based on the animal as a leading characters.
Story
The walrus Hiroshi Odokawa lives a relatively normal life. He drives a taxi for a living, and there he meets several unique individuals: the jobless Taichi Kabasawa who is dead-set on going viral, the mysterious nurse Miho Shirakawa, the struggling comedic duo “Homo Sapiens,” and Dobu, a well-known delinquent. But a simple life of Odokawa is about to turn upside down, because of a missing girl, who taken his taxi before she disappear. And that puts odokawa in various situation he never been before.
The best part of the series is dialogue writing. The dialogues will keep you engaged to the last moments of the series. The protagonist Odokawa is very good in handling the troubles coming at him. His straight forward answer and deduction and the ability to remember each individual just from one meeting was just amazing. Dobu the delinquent, and his troubles and great plan to make money are interesting.
The other characters are simple and unidirectional. The duo of comedian wants to become famous, highschool girls with ambition of becoming idols, and their fans, a unemployed friend who want a cute girlfriend, a doctor and thief nurse, a gamer, a cop duo, a young man who wants to be famous, a rapper villain, and last not the least a missing girl.
With so many character with their individual stories, normally it becomes hard to remember. There these animal characters play their roles. Each character is shown with unique link to the animal. Dr. Goriki who is represented as gorilla, Kakihana a friend as a monkey, Dobu a (I think) Mandrill represents certain types of nature we as humans have. And this idea makes it unique to help us remember every character and the entire story even if you watch just one episode for a week. That’s the power of writing , story telling and animation.
With girls missing and pointing out her last seen to Odokawa, meeting with kabasawa and taking a selfie with odokawa and capturing Dobu in picture fuels the beginning of the series. Kabasawa get the opportunity to become famous by capturing Dobu the delinquent in selfie. He post the picture and it went viral, giving the trouble to Odokawa. Dobu then meets odokawa and threatens him to help him in a robbery.
Each and every character is connected in some way to each other. Let’s look into their connections. Odokawa who drives taxi meets lot of people on nightly basis. But with his sharp memory he can remember everyone. The comedian, attention seeker, idols, policemen, a boy, his friend, nurse, and the boss of the story all are connected to the Odokawa in some way.
3 idols competing to be number one and also competing each other. One of them was the daughter of the boss but she died. Her last seen is with Odokawa, while another one is trying to fool the the adults around her to make some quick money with the help of the Mafia and here kakihana comes into. Kabasawa, comedian delinquent 3 idols nurse and doctor aadi regular customer of the Odokawa.
When one murder case is connected to one man and he is connected to the boss of the story, while the co-workers of boss are also want to take out each other are connected to Odokawa directly and indirectly makes thing very interesting. With more people being introduced in every episode sometimes makes it boring and interesting at the same time.
The best part is the climax of the story. Here all the characters are come into play in last 2 episodes showing their relation to each other and making things more complicated at the end. The bank robbery and the kidnapping of Odokawa’s friend play big role. Wilde the mystery of the kidnapped girl is also gets resolved at the end but that is main interesting part of the story. The killer is shown as obsessive person will get what they want. You know only at the last minute of the episode exactly is The killer.
Odokawa’s history something turning point of the story and lot of things changes as his sister coming to how his parents wear how they got into the accident and when we came to know he didn’t remember them actually the way he grown-up and the way he is doing this work to help someone like him. And the disease he has everything different when you get to know that disease. Your perception of looking at the story will change after that. And dad is the biggest twist in the anime.
The best thing about the story is how director and writer use the words and the story telling and connecting them each other is what exactly mekes it more watchable. The quality of the animation and the various camera angle, 2 hours with the knowledge of filmography can understand how much work is put in to that particular scene.
Aur aao it is a one hell of a ride. Anime makes you bit boring at the beginning of the story but as the new people get introduced in the every episode things stars to get little weiry. And keeps you hooked up for the next episode.
If you are looking something different than the usual anime this is the Anime for you. There is no superhero powers, no fantasy, no magical powers, no attitude like never give up, not a single big fighting scene and not big thrilling scenes.
But it is plain, simple, connecting dots with various people, and their characters makes it stand out from other animes. Go and check it out.
Anime FN 