Tsuritama Episode 4 – (Insert Fish Joke Here)

I’m finished with putting things about fishing in the titles of these posts, but the show isn’t really giving me anything else to work with here.  Already four episodes in, and still almost nothing that I would consider a major event in the story has happened yet.  Even now, I still can’t really tell if the show is building up to anything bigger (i.e. saving the world) or if it’ll just stay in the quirky slice-of-life state that it’s in now.  I can’t help but to hold out in hope of the show taking a more serious turn, but I think at this point it’s pretty obvious (at least to me) that the show probably won’t change that much, and if it does get more serious it probably won’t be that big of a deal.  But hey, Evangelion didn’t get really serious until episode 20 or something like that, so maybe we still have some hope left.

Like the last few episodes, this one moved fairly slowly and didn’t have much going on for the first half of it.  The show seems kind of like it’s shaping up to be a twenty-something episode series instead of the standard eleven or twelve episode that would normally be associated with a show in this time slot, although Wikipedia claims the series has eleven episodes.  For some reason though, MAL doesn’t have the episode count listed, so maybe, just maybe, that means a second series/season could come out.  However, if that isn’t the case, and this is indeed an eleven episode series, then they need to pick up the pace a bit.  Hell, the Indian dude hasn’t even really been introduced to the group yet.  All we’ve gotten so far is Yuki slowly starting to form real relationships with people for the first time in his life.

This episode was mainly about Yuki still trying to adjust to Haru and the way he acts around everyone.  Again, it seems odd that his sister would be able to easily converse and socialize with humans in a much, much more normal way than he does.  At least she doesn’t run around acting like she just smoked a truckload of weed the whole time.  Anyway, Yuki finally comes to the realization that he does care about Haru, though it seems it’s because he doesn’t really have anyone else he could actually call his “friend”.  And as impossible to put with as he may be, Haru does seem to be the one person who doesn’t really catch on to Yuki’s epic social awkwardness, which is perhaps what allows him to act so friendly around him.  One thing’s for sure, the planet that Haru’s from has got to be the most badass place ever.  To create a person that happy and carefree, the place has got to be pretty amazing.

The whole “Duck Organization” thing still kind of confuses me, because it doesn’t really seem like they’re doing anything, but then again, it’s not like we know what the hell Haru and his still unnamed sister are trying to do.  I mean, Yuki caught a fish, wasn’t something supposed to happen after that?  Don’t Haru and Flower-Hair need fish in order to fuel their fish-powered space-mushroom back home or something?  What’s the point to all of this, and are they even trying to leave in the first place.  Unfortunately, I think the answers to those questions will come much later than I would hope, since this show doesn’t seem to be moving anywhere fast at all.  For a unique kind of slice-of-life thing it’s still doing very good, but I still want thinks to have a little more direction to them, considering that so much stuff has been set up for the show to actually take advantage of and use.