Even setting aside the various conspiracy theories about what’s really happening with the plot, I still haven’t quite figured out Odd Taxi.  I don’t know if it’s brilliant or just weird and eccentric, though there’s certainly no reason it couldn’t be both.  I don’t know if it’s accurate to say I like it per se, but I’m fascinated by it.  Simply being unique isn’t enough to keep you engaged indefinitely, but it is undeniably a very good start, and Odd Taxi is certifiably unique.

As to those theories, if you read the comments to last week’s first impressions post you have an idea what I’m talking about.  The whole “Ambien Walrus” angle is certainly intriguing, and the idea that this whole zoo could be a figment of Kotokawa’s sleep-deprived imagination is not that far-fetched.  I do wonder, though, about that being the case when we’ve had many scenes where Kotokawa isn’t involved.  If so I would see that as kind of a narrative cheat to be honest, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The whole intro scene – Kotokawa and Shirakawa in his cab as Homosapiens does their schtick on the radio – is the sort of thing you’ll only get in a really weird show like this.  It’s incredibly awkward, the duo isn’t that funny, but it goes on for so long that it starts to take on a sort of beauty.  What her deal is I don’t know – maybe she really does like Kotokawa-san, but that whole thing about her stealing drugs makes this development highly suspicious.  There are also some interesting tidbits ladled out about Kotokawa’s life – his parents left him “late in elementary school”, some sort of “support group” covered his living expenses, and he was in a serious accident that “should have killed him”.

New to the mix this week is idol Nikaidou Rui, who seems to be mixed up in the missing girl case somehow.  She works with a pair of side girls who she forces to wear masks so they won’t be as popular as she is, and she has a daifan named Taichi who’s living an especially pathetic idol-followers existence.  Also, Kaikihana actually gets a swipe on his Tinder account, an 18 year-old girl who says she wants to meet up (nothing suspicious about that) and Dobo shows up in Kotokawa’s cab and holds a gun to the back of his head (and he may be involved with Rui too in some way).

This is all, well, odd.  But it’s oddly compelling too.  That includes Kotokawa, who whether as a result of the theories or not I’m now seeing not as a walrus but as an overweight 41 year-old who’s basically a decent guy who just doesn’t fit in the human world.  I may not know what’s going on here but I am curious to find out, and that means Odd Taxi is fundamentally doing the job it needs to do.  Maybe it’s profound and this story is going to amazing places, or maybe it will just be weird, but I suspect it will be kind of fascinating either way.