Arakawa Under the Bridge #07 — Common Life Lessons

May 16th, 2010

 

Or the lack thereof.

Impressions:

This took a bit of a stange direction at the end. Not surreal. Surreal is normal for this show. Removing the OP to give P-ko a soapbox to rant for 90 seconds and then having Kou’s old life pop up as he has a crisis of the brain and wonders about commonsense is… well, I’m not really sure what. Something that I would have expected Shaft to toss in during the second to last episode so that Kou can learn a valuable lesson and tell his parents if the babysitter touched him in a bad place. I think that’s the lesson for this show, right? That and "Don’t live in a wild opium field." Given the latent nuclear glow suffusing the rest of the shows this season though, I’m starting to wonder if they’re just downstream from all the plutonium enhanced schoolgirls.

The first half was pretty amusing once it got going. Kou tried to educate the siblings, got accused of being a witch psychic, and then Stella went into full-blown gangster mode because she’s just a lonely little girl at heart. I do wish that there had been something… anything… beyond that very obvious little cliche, but at least it was amusing to watch Stella don shades and menace about the area. Chiefy-boy’s extendable fabulous fabulous hair was the best part of P-ko’s entire segment, which says something frankly rather disturbing about hairy turtles, but I’m not entirely sure that I can put my finger on what.

Posted in Arakawa | 6 Comments »

6 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Nanaya says:
    May 16, 2010 at 5:03 pm

    Wow, the screencaps for this show bother me. It’s like I can hear my circuits blowing trying to decipher the connections between them.

    he has a crisis of the brain and wonders about commonsense

    GOD NO! PLEASE! NO! I just went through an entire freaking semester of anthropological theory covering that. Trust me, you do NOT want that damned topic to start up!

    If I hear the word “theory laden” one more time I may go into cerebral hemorrhaging.

  • Tokki says:
    May 16, 2010 at 11:20 pm

    So is this series advisable to watch or what? Im still iffy about it. But I do know that Hoshi dresses nicely.I imagine him having a really hot face. If only he took off that stupid *** star mask then we will see. ^.^

    • Aroduc says:
      May 16, 2010 at 11:49 pm

      It’s okay. It feels like Shaft’s just phoning it in for the most part though. It’s basically the same kind of humor as SZS, but instead of normal characters in outlandish situations, it’s outlandish characters doing more normalish things. The primary joke is just your typical double take, so… your mileage may vary.

      • lvlln says:
        May 18, 2010 at 12:05 am

        On the contrary, is argue that Shaft is doing some neat things in this show that goes away from their usual path. The humor is completely unlike that of SZS or PPD. Rather, they’re telling a romantic comedy with quite an emphasis on the story and character development. Very few of Shaft’s works have a cohesive story, and none of them are comedies, at least in recent memory.

  • lvlln says:
    May 18, 2010 at 12:00 am

    I loved P-Ko in this episode. She was just too cute in hanging on to Riku as the only person who’ll help her harvest.

    And her point during the ED sequence was white insightful, especially for someone her age. It seems that Riku took something out of it. It’s just another learning experience for him in his transformation in the life under the bridge.

  • Arakaw Under the Bridge 7 – What is Common Sense Anyway? « Borderline Hikikomori says:
    May 18, 2010 at 4:21 am

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