Every Tuesday evening I face a decision – which show do I watch after I finish my Fumetsu no Anata e post? Three on a work night is out of the question, and I generally leave the choice between Mars Red and Odd Taxi up to mood. But this week I was kind of boxed in, really. Odd Taxi had so many dangling threads in the ending that I knew I’d never avoid spoilers on social media. And in any event, it seemed likely that it was going to deliver a balls-out whopper of a finale – good or bad. That kind of curiosity is hard to put on hold for 24 hours.
As many questions as it left unanswered going into this final episode, Odd Taxi did manage to answer pretty much (though not) all of them. The most prominent among them is one of the few complaints I have with an otherwise outstanding series and conclusion. It’s fine that Odokawa has visual agnosia – to wit, an impairment in high-level perception of what we see. It always seemed likely something like that explained the animal thing. But my problem with that is as it ever was – if this was all in Odokawa’s head, why did we see it even when he wasn’t directly involved with the narrative? That’s a conceit, charitably – and there are less flattering words you’d be justified in using, too. Not a deal-breaker, but a defect in a plot that’s remarkably tight as a drum in most ways.
There’s another issue I have, or at least one might call it a double-edged sword. The show had a massive media campaign quietly underpinning the series – Twitter accounts (like Kabasawa’s, tweeting months before the premiere), voice dramas, clues on the website, podcasts, even a gacha game – all of which offered necessary clues as to what was happening. As in, you needed those clues to figure out the mystery. That’s very cool and I appreciate the effort that went into it, but I’ve always felt that the writer has a duty to include truly essential information in the core presentation – as in, the show itself. Honestly, not everyone has the time to wade through all that other stuff. Anything else isn’t playing fair. It’s fun to do that kind of extra stuff for color (the way Dynazenon did, for example) but not to withhold vital information from the parent show.
Be that as it may, there was still a lot of great stuff in the finale. And the way writer Konomoto Kazuya wove everything together (apart from Homosapiens, ROFL) was pretty brilliant. Odokawa’s agnosia was caused by his traumas as a child – abuse at home, an absentee father, bullying – perhaps exacerbated by the physical trauma of the accident. That falls more or less within expected boundaries. As does the fact that the “girl” in Odokawa’s closet was the cat from the OP – most of us were thinking along those lines all along.
As far as the real killer of Mitsuya Yuki, it was in fact Wadagaki Sakura, AKA “Karaage Girl”. And that too falls more or less within expected boundaries – in fact after Episode 11 I noted that she was the only character I could think of that had a motive for the murder. So I suppose the fact that the big mysteries were relatively predictable is evidence that not all the essential clues were withheld from the anime-only audience. Less expected was the final scene of the episode – a classic twist ending for a Hollywood suspense thriller. Everything seemed teed up for a happy ending (apart from for the crims of course) but boy, that final shot certainly threw a spanner in the works.
It would kind if suck of Odokawa getting offed is the true end of Odd Taxi. Not to mention it makes a hell of a statement if Sakura happily gets away with multiple murders. But I don’t think this was a teaser for a sequel or anything like that – just a classic Hollywood shock moment, as I said, leaving things uncertain and unpredictable. That’s very much in character for Odd Taxi, which wasn’t a morality play by any stretch of the imagination. This was all about taking the audience for a ride, with a lot of unexpected twists and turns – and I’d say “pun intended” but really, I don’t think it’s even a pun. It’s just what this series is, and it was true to itself to the end.
Kim
June 29, 2021 at 10:54 pmWhile I didn’t come up with the everyone is an animal only in Odokawa’s head on my own once I read that theory it was the only one that made sense to me. When I was watching the series I found it odd that the character’s animal traits never really were expanded on like they were in other series with animal casts like Shirokuma Cafe & BeastStars. When I was watching it was like what is even the point of making them animals otherwise this just feels like a regular thriller. But when I saw the theory that they were only animals in his head it all clicked for me.
Now it’s true it doesn’t entirely make sense that we see animals even when Odokawa is not there but my argument for that is the audience is also seeing things through his delusion. It still works for me. And quite honestly it really couldn’t work any other way. If we only saw animals part of the time then we would know what is up.
I also really like the ending and hope there is never a reveal of what happens though I like to believe Shirakawa suddenly shows up since she does seem to appear at the right moment to save Odokawa.
My main disappointment is we never got to see what the Calico Cat really looked like. Unless I missed it. Hope there will be some extra content with all main animal and human reveals
MNight
July 4, 2021 at 5:27 pm“My main disappointment is we never got to see what the Calico Cat really looked like. Unless I missed it. Hope there will be some extra content with all main animal and human reveals”
I’m pretty sure she was the brown-haired girl we briefly see at the clinic.
Litho
June 29, 2021 at 11:14 pmEnjoyed this lots. Probably my favourite of the few shows I stuck with this season, the other two being Godzilla SP and Dragon, Ie wo Kau.
My approach to anime (and TV in general) has gotten simpler over the years. I just treat the medium as a beast of burden now. A tool to get the job done, the “job” being having fun. The whole thought-provoking, life-affirming, coming-of-age, [whatever buzzwords critics use to introduce Oscar nominee films featuring adolescents overcoming lisps or geriatrics overcoming limps] schtick doesn’t seem to work on me anymore. I just want to have fun watching it while remaining as aloof as possible.
This series delivered the fun in spades and even managed to make me put down a small emotional investment on (some of) its cast, so it ended up scoring better than I expected. Tight writing helped too, I suppose. A few bumps along the way – janitor monkey guy’s behaviour was pitifully facepalmy at times – but overall, a nice ride.
Haraga
June 29, 2021 at 11:51 pmI remember you saying at some point that Odokawa is way over his head with all the crime schemes. So him getting killed and the murderer getting away with it would be a bummer, sure, but perfectly justifiable. He was too lucky already to survive drowning twice. And I like that the show just doesn’t give us an ending that is way too happy (I’m looking at you, Nomad), but keeps things wide open instead.
DP
June 30, 2021 at 2:54 amMaybe because I watched this following the final episode of MARS RED I kind of felt…disappointed?
Yes, the script for this is 10,000 times better than 99% of the anime out there, but in the final analysis, there just was something antiseptic about how tidy it all wound up. Maybe it says something about me, but I felt that all of the emotion slowly leached out of the series as it went along. In the end, the show had the elegance of a well-constructed mathematical equation, but in so doing, seemed to be missing the poetry and lyricism of the stories we remember years later.
That’s not to say I didn’t really like ODD TAXI, and that I don’t pray for lots more clever anime like this in the seasons to come, but for me it’s missing that ineffable quality of the best and most memorable works.
Guardian Enzo
June 30, 2021 at 6:58 amI get that. In a sense it comes off as obsessed with being clever, sometimes at the expense of being genuine. Gaming the audience is the point.
That said, still really good. And points for being one of the most outspoken anime regarding how vile the idol industry is.
FJ Freeman
July 1, 2021 at 3:38 pmTotally agree with you there on everything! As always you put it so much eloquently than I could ever do. But it was fun seeing a show that uses more western sensibilities in its writing. And as you said: I think it threw us for a loop because they were trying to be more Hollywood in what they did here. And I guess anime isn’t really accustomed to that, or something like that idk…
nadavu
July 25, 2021 at 12:27 amFinally got to catch up!
This was a brilliantly written show, but the ending fell a tiny bit flat to me. I feel you could take out the entire “Odokawa sees people as animals” angle out entirely and nothing would really change. I was also missing more satisfying conclusions for the three misguided youngsters — Imai, Tanaka and Kabasawa. Tanaka, in particular, is someone who I feel Odokawa could have related to, considering their abysmal childhoods, but for some reason it’s Imai Odokawa ends up taking under his wing.
I’m also somewhat upset that I could never get the gacha game to work on my machine, but that’s probably because it’s over a decade old and still running windows 7.
To sum it up, this wasn’t a perfect show, but I feel teacher for having seen it.