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.

Tsuritama Episode 3 – Fishing is Srs Bsns

With each episode of this show, it seems my head cocks itself farther and farther to the side in an effort to see if there’s something that I’m missing in all of this.  Right now, everything just seems a little too odd and a little too quirky to understand where all this is going to end up, and that fact that there’s still no concrete story doesn’t help too much.  But at least we (kind of) have all the characters together, and know a little about each of them.  And someone needs to get Haru a muzzle or something, like, right now.

The whole concept of this episode seemed really weird to me too.  Now, I’ve been fishing several times before, and from all the experience I’ve had, under no circumstances have I ever actually needed to cast the lure in a perfectly specific spot.  Even though Natsuki said that it was important to cast where the fish were, you don’t cast right on top of the place where you thing the fucking fish are; you’re supposed to cast the line beyond that point and reel it through where you expect the fish to be, because you have to have time for the lure to sink and begin look like it’s actually a fish, worm, or whatever your lure looks like.  Not only that, but spinning reels are probably the easiest kind of reels to use for actual fishing, at least in my opinion, and getting it to go in the direction you want is fairly simple.  I can’t even imagine what this show would be like if they were using baitcasting reels or something like that.

At the very least, it seemed that things finally did start to get a little more serious in this episode, though the fact that the words “Enoshima bowl” were said about 5,464,327 times kind of got in the way of that.  Akira is part of some secret Indian duck spy service sent to observe Haru, because Haru’s an alien.  Although, it doesn’t really seems like that fact would really be secretive information, seeing as how the first thing he ever said about himself to Yuki’s grandmother was that he was an alien.  And speaking of her, I can’t help but think that thinks aren’t going to go to well for her.  Assuming we apply the law of movie conservation to anime as well, something as specific as her giving Haru the flowers and telling him to take care of them so they won’t die seems bound to show up again somewhere.

And amazingly, even when Yuki’s grandmother is in the hospital with some nondescript potentially life-threatening illness, Haru still finds a way to be an unbelievably annoying jackass.  Honestly, how could any sane person think that someone could be consoled by saying, “It’s okay, your grandmother, who’s essentially your mother right now, is going to bite the dust eventually”.  I would have kicked the shit out that flamboyant motherfucker if he said something like that me, and I’m surprised that Yuki has the ability to just walk away from that blatant disregard for his grandmother’s life.  And even though Yuki made some comment about how Haru can never understand because he’s an alien, I would assume that the potential death of a family member is almost a universal bad among a civilized family.

But I guess that it’s all good, because Haru saves the day by narrating everything that’s happening and pretty much being a device to shove the idea of the episode straight down the viewer’s wind pipe.  I sure hope that he becomes less annoying as the show goes on, or I at least hope that I can get use to him.  Why can’t he just be like his sister?  She seems pretty chill, and wouldn’t it make sense for the less ridiculous of the two aliens to be fraternizing with the local population?

Tsuritama Episode 2 – Can’t Fish, Must Angst

The first episode of this show established itself as… a rather odd show to say the least.  Similar enough, this episode was pretty weird too, and may have actually made even less sense than the first episode.  But I guess it’s just some inner hipster douchebag inside me who doesn’t really care than none of what has happened is making any sense so far.  Like Penguindrum, I don’t really understand a whole lot of what’s going on, but hopefully that will solve itself later on in the series.  This episode was primarily a second part of something of an introduction to the rest of the show.  A lot has been said about saving the world, and about how the four main characters coming together led to the “town’s biggest adventure”, so let’s hope that this series can actually live up to those premature claims.  Personally, I feel the same way that I did last week: that almost all of the show is going to be about Yuki becoming less of an introvert and actually getting a few friends (maybe a girl) in his life.  That’s all well and good but hopefully, they can at least pull a little meat out of the alien/save the world plot line.

Yuki is definitely a strange specimen.  He apparently doesn’t have too many qualms with the fact that he’s living with an alien who constantly sprays him with liquid rohypnol, forces him to dance in public, and has pretty much demanded to live in his house.  Not to mention his well-endowed sister, who is also in the possession on a date-rape gun, tells him to catch a fish or else.  Somehow, he takes all of this in stride, with very little resistance, yet when it comes to simply talking to Natsuki and asking him how to tie fishing line he freezes up like he’s looking into the bowels of Hades.  Surely this kid has to have some horrendous type of social disorder in order for him to behave in such a way.

Other than Yuki finally being able to say a complete sentence to Natsuki and the turban goose man making his official appearance, there wasn’t too much story in this episode, but like I said, that’s how I imagine most of the show will be.  There was a bit of character development in Haru, if you can actually call him a “character”, as he isn’t anything more than a stereotypical, overly-hyper, happy about everything, androgynous teenager.  Anyway, his “character” development pretty much consisted of him admitting he was gay for Yuki and agreeing to to spray drugs on his face anymore.  I mean, come on, “He makes my heart feel funny” is yaoi dojin rule number one.  But for as much of a flaming homosexual that he is, that idea kind of seems at odds with the rest of the show.  But who knows, maybe I’m just seeing things that aren’t there.  Probably not.

This episode was okay; like last episode,  it had nice animation and it’s same happy and shiny attitude throughout.  I do hope that it can somehow manage to become more serious eventually, but I predict that if that ever happens it’ll probably be much later in the series.  They have a somewhat interesting cast of characters to work with, so there’s plenty that can pull off with the completely ridiculous reality this show occurs in as well as the characters themselves.  But please, if you’re going to have aliens in your show, at least have some cool alien shit to go along with them.

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.