Nothing that happens here is a coincidence.  Have I mentioned that?  For the record, I definitely don’t believe it’s impossible for a plot to be too intricate.  And I think Odd Taxi is flirting with that to be honest, though so far it’s just managing to stay on the right side of the line.  The truth is that in the real world there is such a thing as coincidence – our lives are cluttered with thousands of them we never notice happening.  When you write a story where everything and everyone is connected, you have a pretty high bar to clear in terms of structure to keep it believable.

We certainly don’t know all the whys, though we’re getting pretty caught up on the whats.  Why, for example, is Yano (METEOR, a Japanese hip-hop artist – yet another unconventional seiyuu choice) interested enough in Kakihana to have him set up, lured to a warehouse at the docks, and knocked out?  It’s not enough money to be of much interest to someone like him.  In fact it seems much more likely that the whole Rui badger game was specifically designed to draw Kakihana into trouble – which once more begs the question of “why?”.  The good thing is Odd Taxi is generally good about giving you explanations for stuff, as long as you’re a little patient.

For example, we now know why the Daimon brothers hate taxi drivers so much – one of them killed their parents in a hit-and-run accident when they were puppies.  We know because Odokawa took the younger brother into his confidence after Tanaka shot up his apartment (Odakawa has balls, that’s for sure).  The scene in Odokawa’s house is a classic – Daimon Minor believes Odokawa has had the missing girl locked up all along (I’m sure it’s the damn cat).  He’s not a bright guy but at least he’s not a rogue cop like his brother.  As Odokawa is scribbling out an org chart to try and explain all this in Daimon’s terms, he writes Shirakawa’s name on there – before scratching it out.

The biggest in both the “what” and “why” category is the elephant – and hippo, and gorilla, and rat, et al – in the room.  After Goriki’s chat with Shirakawa and Odokawa’s explanation to Dobu, I don’t think there can be any question these animals are delusions he sees – but the why still eludes us (it’s interesting that Goriki’s chart lists Odokawa’s birth year as “555” – if there really are no coincidences, maybe that means something).  It also remains to be seem whether we’ll get any explanation for why we see these characters as animals even when Odokawa isn’t the point of view character – maybe it’s just a narrative choice, but that would be a bit dodgy for me.

Speaking of Yano, he finally makes his first appearance in person (or what- porcupine?) this week.  METEOR raps his way through Yano’s dialogue with aplomb, starting with what appears to be a genuinely random run-in with Odokawa in Shibuya. on Halloween night.  He’s got his hands in a lot of pots, Yano does – he’s driving what Dobu does, he’s harassing Kakihana for some reason, he’s at the apex of the idol trade we see playing out.  Is he the big bad of Odd Taxi though?  I’m not prepared to commit to that yet.