Tsuritama Eisode 1 – First Impression

I’m not sure that I had any actual expectations for this show, probably because the whole thing just sounded so damn crazy that I couldn’t in good conscience form a preconceived notion for it.  The only information that I ever received about it was that it was a show about an alien, some Indian guy with a goose, and two other boys who go fishing and save the world or something.  There isn’t really any opinion that I can draw from that description.  But still, I think this episode lived up to it’s completely ridiculous description.

The first, most instantly noticeable thing, is the art style.  In my opinion, the overall package is pretty damn impressive, though that may just be because I’m kind of a sucker for overly-vibrant colorful stuff like this.  All of the backgrounds have this odd kind of hyper-realistic art style that reminds me a lot of the “drawing” filter on digital cameras; you know, where you take a picture of something and render’s it to look like a painting or something?  The artwork is also rather colorful and vibrant, similar to things like Penguindrum and Arakawa, but the overall style doesn’t particularly match those.  It looks a hell of a lot like Cencoroll, only with a lot more color added into it.  The character model’s even look like the ones from Cencoroll; very simplistically designed characters that aren’t as exaggerated as some anime characters.

Now, as you’d expect, this episode (and I’m assuming that most of this series will follow suit) was pretty weird and random.  I can extend my disbelief plenty for stuff like this, but when the grandmother let a random boy who walked up to her door, claimed he was an alien, wrote his name on their sign, and stated he was going to live there do so, that’s when I had to check off reality of the possible places this show could actually take place.  Of course the crazy ADHD aquaman “alien” kid who’s fish is his sister or somthing didn’t help matters too much either.  Neither did the turban-wearing goose-owning secret agent spying on said alien.  And for that matter, neither did much of anything else in this show.  Unfortunately, weirdness like this will surely turn people off from the show after only the first episode, even though there could be something actually interesting to this show.

The main thing that I wonder about this show is exactly where it’s going to go.  The whole “saving the world” thing pretty safely excludes the idea that this will be a slice-of-life or something along those lines (or at least I assume it does), but I wonder how serious it will actually get.  I’d like to believe that maybe it could be something like Penquindrum, but that how wasn’t all flowers and sunshine in the first episode like this series was – Himari fucking died in the first episode of Penquindrum.  But surley there’s something more than Yuki overcoming his insanely absurd social awkwardness for this show to accomplish; after all that alien kid who can talk to fish want’s to save the world.  Speaking of that kid, doesn’t it seem odd that he’d want to fish, seeing as how his sister/whatever-that-thing-is is a fish?  I can’t speak from experience, but I’d imagine getting a fishing hook jabbed through your mouth and getting dragged to shore wouldn’t be too fun of an experience, and if his sister is a fish and he can communicate with fish, I would think the would care a little bit more about the safety of fish.

But as much as I don’t really want it to be, I’m pretty sure this show will end up being a lot of Yuki getting friends and not being so batshit insane in the simplest of social circumstances and not too much world saving until the end, though I could always be wrong.  This episode doesn’t even really give anything to go on in terms of future expectations for the show, except for the fact that it’s going to be really weird and artsy, which I don’t particularly mind.  There’s plenty of potential for something interesting, but at the same time, that also means there’s plenty of potential to be wasted.