GeekNights Wednesday - Odd Taxi

Tonight on GeekNights, we review the phenomenal Odd Taxi anime. It's a psychological thriller and it's one of the best shows in recent memory. We're talking must-watch anime. in the news, the X-Men are X-Men again, MAPPA shows off the upcoming Chainsaw Man anime, MAPPA pays poverty wages for animation, SGDQ 2021 is underway, Godzilla Singular Point is OK, and The Owl House season 2 keeps on truckin'.

Also Scott offers second dibs on a Dell Ultrasharp U2410.

Things of the Day

Episode Links

Live Stream:

After watching this I am sure that Rym hasnā€™t seen Yano yet, because Rym would be all about Yano.

Also, this show would definitely not work as live action. I will let you discover why for yourself.

Oh man.

I LOVE the Owl House.

Excited to get back on that!

Iā€™ve seen the whole show and see no reason it couldnā€™t be live action.

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING FOR THE UNAWARE

Summary

Throughout the entire show we see the characters an anthropomorphic animals. This is because of how Odokawa perceives them. It is also a major plot point that this perception allows Odokawa to easily identify people and distinguish them from another. In the second half of the final episode, we then get them as regular people, who look similar to their animal counterparts, but also definitely distinct from it. There are also some other ways the show uses to distinguish these different headspaces, e.g. the line work being rather sharp in the second half of the final episode when it was always fuzzy throughout the rest of the show.

Unless you spend a ton of money on CGI animal people (in which case, why have live action at all), or you strike out one of the major plot arcs that has impact on a number of other story points, this show simply cannot be live action. It uses the medium of animation as a mechanical device to facilitate its plot.

Summary

It would work with just some makeup and prosthetics. It doesnā€™t need to be any fancier than a theater production of Cats, and it will work just fine.

Summary

I donā€™t think this would work. The thing about Cats is that you have only animal characters. Stuff like this new animal dating show that was around the internet a week ago just goā€™s straight into uncanny valley.

The thing is that you need both animal characters and human characters to fit into the same artistic style without a major distinction between the two. The material should still be identifiable as belonging to the same show, regardless of what type of character you have.

Summary

Imagine that youā€™re at a Broadway theater watching Cats. And then in the final act, the actors take off their prosthetics, wash off the makeup, and switch to human clothes reminiscent of their costumes. Itā€™s the same people. You will absolutely be able to recognize which person was which animal. This isnā€™t hard.

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The monitor has been SOLD.

Halfway through episode 7: ā€œoh man, rap battling hedgehog is my favorite.ā€
End of episode 7: ohhhhh

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Rapping Porcupine is very good. Character, not a person.

Capoeira alpaca!

The resolution of the show wasā€¦ satisfying enough. Normally [the thing that ended up happening] is such a groaner, but I feel like it worked alright in this case.

The character is voiced by Japanese rapper who calls himself METEOR. The artwork for his album ā€œDiamondā€ also shows up a couple of times in the show and related items, such as one of the commercial eyecatches.

Hereā€™s one of the songs from that album.

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So we just watched this and goddamn. Goddamn.

I found the storytelling structure to be particularly novel, and the way they did it really drove home the sort of isolated, monotonous life the protagonist lead. Each passenger is kind of their own vignette, and then each episode also builds the connections between these stories. There is a whole world turning around the main character, and he is unaware of it for a good while because he just gets one piece at a time.

Itā€™s such a brilliant vehicle (literally) for unfolding this type of story. This is honestly some of the best storytelling Iā€™ve seen in a long long time, in any medium.

Nuri called the big twist in episode 2. I was a little skeptical then, but they definitely hint at it early on and then make it much more obvious as it progresses.

When I talked about Great Pretender, I talked about how it showed flawed characters rooted in ugly realities whose damage would bubble up in moments of raw humanity, and this show did that with even more direct impact. The characters have deep, deep emotional pain, a sort of brutal truth of getting older than I have rarely seen in anything. So often weā€™re quick to talk about the physical pain of getting to middle age, but this show really hits on the collection of emotional wounds that you become as you age. Thatā€™s a substantially more uncomfortable topic, and I think the show navigates that expertly.

It occurs to me that a lot of anime is more or less YA, and this is one of a handful of anime that I would call truly adult. Not seinen tits-and-violence ā€œadult,ā€ but the real stuff, the hard stuff that we deal with and endure.

Easily one of the best shows Iā€™ve seen in a long time.

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If you still have not watched Odd Taxi, I highly recommend it.
It seems like the TV series will be released on YouTube for a week, from January 2nd until January 9th. I am not sure what the subtitle situation will be there though.

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Odd Taxi is so good. I should watch it again.