|
I call it a noir or neo-noir series. We've got a crime drama with a lot of complicated characters who have a lot of different facets to them. There's plenty of grit and cynicism in the setting and a lot of gray in the cast. We've got the classic thematic staples of noir and neo-noir in the mix of pessimism, nihilism, and isolation we see in the lead and and how it presents the various characters around him. We even have staples of the film genre's presentation in the penned in framing of the show, how many shots have just been Odokawa with someone in the back seat of his cab? Two people stuck together in a cramped metal box hurtling through the night? Which means, of course, there's gonna be some overlap with Tarantino and some of his films. So yeah, I guess you could find a point of comparison there.
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2021 23:55
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 07:15 |
|
|
Sadly, considering the genre? There's a really high chance that this is all going to end with tears and fire.
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2021 18:51
|
|
|
So Kakihana is now, in a weird kind of way, in the same boat as Odokawa's stalker was in that he's throwing good money after bad on a transparently doomed venture. And if you think about it, Shirakawa is in the same boat. And I kind of have the sense that Dobu isn't going to have a happy ending either… Actually considering that let's play a game and turn it around, who in this show isn't transparently doomed? Who has the highest chance of getting out of this relatively unscathed when it all inevitably goes straight to hell?
|
|
#
¿
May 4, 2021 03:37
|
|
|
WrightOfWay posted:I bet the bartender will be fine. She's honestly the only one I'd put money on at this point, just by virtue of being far enough away from the central plot she might escape the fallout. Everyone else though? Given this is noir the entrenched villains have a shot at persisting, but they could just as easily get shot to death out of the blue. Homo Sapiens are also unlikely to die, but given the nature of the show "go out languishing in misery and obscurity" is a likely fate for showbiz people in a show like this, and that's assuming they don't get involved with the criminal plot. But as for the central cast associated with the Yakuza and the missing girl? Dire portents for all of them. I imagine the Mystery Kiss girl who isn't catfishing Kakihana might escape. Similarly, Gouriki might get out, but I could also see him ending up completely alone. He might also end up taking a bullet for someone and giving a final monologue about always wanting to save someone and that's why he's a doctor but could he ever really etc... As for Odokawa, his stalker, Shirakawa, Dobu, Kakihana, and Hippo kid? Snowball's chance in hell. And the missing girl herself? Well if I knew that there wouldn't be a mystery, right? Omnicrom fucked around with this message at 05:37 on May 4, 2021 |
|
#
¿
May 4, 2021 05:35
|
|
|
Oxxidation posted:yuki has gotten herself involved in the whole fiasco by helping tanaka (god only knows why, maybe she's his cousin or something). ironically the only member of mystery kiss who hasn't yet been seen conducting shady business is rui Right, I forgot about that. Cripes, I see why they decided to give a relationship chart, this show is dense. I am definitely looking forward to a rewatch once it's all come out.
|
|
#
¿
May 4, 2021 05:40
|
|
|
cock hero flux posted:i'm pretty sure a preview image showed him playing a slot machine(or pachinko maybe) which is somehow even dumber than not even trying to fix things at all Yep, that appears to be what was happening during the episode, there was a montage of scenes of Kakihana continuing to make astonishingly bad decisions during the [spoiler[(last?)[/spoiler] Homo Sapiens radio show. And that previews… RIP Kakihana. Though I have to say, after the last episode if I was putting money on who would be the first to bite it he was the top the list. Wark Say posted:Fine. But if anybody else comes in with a funnier thread title, bam, that's out. I'm not sure it's funny per se, but it is extremely on point…
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2021 23:09
|
|
|
Kung Food posted:Is he giving her money though? Right now it seems to be mostly expensive dinners. In the most recent episode we did see Kakihana going to a jewelry store, so presumably he is intending to buy her expensive gifts to keep up appearances. And I can believe Oxxidation's take here, I fully believe that if Shiho is catfishing for the yakuza we don't yet have a reason to believe that they're conspiring with the loan sharks, even if they are from the same family. It's an explicit point in the story that Dobu and Yano are from the same family but are in contention with each other. It is possible that Shiho and her possible handlers actually believe the bullshit profile Kakihana put up online. Or, alternately they saw through his transparent lie and don't care and are still taking him for a ride. Quite possibly, Kakihana is being burned from both ends by separate yet similar scams.
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2021 17:10
|
|
|
Sindai posted:I can see why they waited for so long to actually introduce Yano. He'd have stolen the show. To the first point, Yano has still absolutely stolen the show. The second point, this episode leans really far into making it explicit that Odokawa is disassociating and seeing everyone as animals. Or at least, that his perception isn't the same as everyone else in the world. To the third point, I notice two things: firstly, that body appears to be the same body we saw in the first shot of the series. Secondly, I'd weigh good odds that the body of the river is a misdirect and not the missing girl, but on the other hand it still could be. Considering we are way deep into noir territory it is entirely within the themes and styles of the genre for the missing girl to just be dead and that the hope for her survival was inherently futile, gone before it ever began. And yet, there is still whatever is in that room in Odokawa's house, and moreover the fact remains that Odokawa apparently did drive the missing girl somewhere right before she disappeared. There is the possibility the person in the room is just a cat or something, but that still doesn't explain what happened to the girl. And Odokawa could be talking to himself in those scenes, in the first episode when he talks about being allowed to leave he could be, in a very weird and roundabout way, talking to himself about how he still is a choice and now in this episode when he talks about there being no escape it could be because he's starting to realize he's probably not getting out of this in one piece. Alternately, he could be hallucinating and thinks that the girl is there of her own volition but it actually is just a cat or something and he's still weirdly disassociating. Or maybe it'll take a really bizarre dark twist and it will turn out that the body of the river is the girl and Odokawa killed her and that's why he possibly had a dream about her to start the show. And bring up another point, did Odokawa kill the Daimon dogs' parents? He says they were killed by a taxi driver and that shot of the ambulance when Daimon the younger is explaining this is the same we've seen in Odokawa's flashbacks, right?
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2021 02:44
|
|
|
It's fascinating how compelling all of these characters are. They are, at worst, weirdly sympathetic. Dobu is a bad guy and an unrepentant criminal, but as someone else in the thread pointed out he feels in over his head and I think that's in part because he's a very old-fashioned criminal. His method of crime is old-fashioned yakuza-ing, beating people up, extorting people, bribing officials, etc. The fact that he is intending to almost literally rob a bank reaffirms this. Yano is equally bad and equally unrepentant, but he's also a much more modern version of the yakuza dude, and I don't just mean because he raps. The criminal stuff he's been tied up in so far has all been related to the idol group both as a straightforward moneymaking venture and for cyber crimes and Internet-based extortion scams. The stuff he does is way more ripped from the headlines than the sort of crimes that Dobu is likely to do. The series so far has done nearly nothing to present his viewpoint or make him relatable to our protagonist, but it has still gone out of its way to make him come across as a kind of a doofus between rapping all of his lines and riding around on that scooter and taking time off from his busy extortion schedule the jam out to some music. And Tanaka? We had an entire episode from his perspective showing him self-destructing in real time. The dude is a husk of a dude and a danger to himself and others, but what happened to him also has a very in the moment feel to it. Zeitgeist is the show's watchword, this isn't just a neo-noir series, it is a neo-noir series set in the here and now. The fact that one of the loose cannons in the show is a YouTube influencer feels incredibly on point with what the series is doing. Odd Taxi is here to talk about crime, isolation, and alienation in the information age and it's doing pretty darn well.
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2021 03:53
|
|
|
That was… Yeah, "melancholy" was a good choice for a word in the episode title. That's one of the many emotions coming through the show. I gotta say, I was full on expecting Kakihana to be dead meat from the moment it came out he was taking stupid loans. On the other hand, you might be justified in saying that his "life is over". Him and Kabasawa both. Dobu was really excellent this episode. The talk he has with Kabasawa is really fascinating because that particular streak of dialogue felt really similar to the sort of thing that Odokawa would say. Heck, we were introduced to him and Odokawa with the latter giving the hippo kid addressing down about his desire to become Internet famous. And, Oxxidation is totally spot on, this episode did feel like a side story in a Yakuza game. Honestly, if you sanded off some of Dobu's rougher edges he and Odokawa could totally be major NPC's if not playable characters. But of course, they didn't, and now are left with a compelling anti-villain and I am here for it. It took a little bit, but now I'm actually curious where the Goriki plot line is going to go. We're past the point of "Odokawa is disassociating things weirdly" into asking "what else is he not seeing right?" which was the more interesting idea that was lurking on the periphery. Considering so many other people in the story have been broken by obsession and desire, you have to wonder what makes the dude tick. It's been really interesting seeing Odokawa go from a fairly passive observer to a much more active participant in the crime drama.
|
|
#
¿
May 31, 2021 22:22
|
|
|
I'm really starting to wonder how much Tanaka is actually a red herring. So in the last episode Dobu gets shot and assumes immediately it's the skull mask, but the framing and the fact that they are hiding the identity of the shooter means it almost certainly isn't. Besides, why would Tanaka shoot Dobu? Similarly, Odokawa finds the gunshot in his window and assumes it's Tanaka as well, but is it? If it was Tanaka that would imply he knew where Odokawa lived, and the dude is obsessed and violent, if you were a gacha addicted lunatic who wanted to murder someone I imagine you wouldn't shoot in the window and give him advance warning, you'd hide out at his place and kill him when he came home. So if it wasn't him, who actually fired those shots? It was suggested earlier that maybe the shooter was Shirakawa, and after some thought I'm actually starting to come around on that idea. There is definitely something going on with Shirakawa in this episode, especially with the way that she just appeared out of nowhere to save Odokawa after Yamamoto went out of his way to send the cab out into the middle of nowhere. With Goriki going on a voyage what is she doing? I think it's possible she's also tailing Odokawa to try and cover for him and protect him. And it would make sense both in universe and in genre. Let's take a step back for a moment, what if Shirakawa was more involved in Dobu's enterprises than she's letting on? Goriki pointed out if she seriously wanted to she probably could've gotten out of his employ earlier, and she's weirdly supportive of Dobu despite allegedly being put under duress by him. She has repeatedly gone to bat for him, and Dobu had absolutely no problem forgiving her debts despite being really focused on bringing in money for his boss. Maybe the reason it's no skin off his back is because she's been a willing perpetrator for a while and the "debt" is just a cover story to hide the fact that she's associating with the yakuza. If that's true that would also explain how she would get a gun, she probably has some contacts. Or maybe it was hers to begin with. She might also be a lot more vicious then she appears, maybe she was actually aiming to kill Dobu to guarantee Odokawa is out of trouble and missed. And in genre? If Shirakawa was a criminal it would be a thematic slamdunk. Odokawa is out there trying to rescue an innocent girl trapped in a horrible fate, with the reveal that she is neither innocent nor trapped being an on point plot twist. That kind of cynicism is as noir as it comes. On the other hand, that still doesn't completely explain the GPS tracker. If it was Shirakawa that explains how she got to the wharf and the construction site, but was Tanaka really just that lucky to be driving a van at exactly the right moment to ambush Odokawa? But on the other hand if he did have a GPS tracker in Odokawa's car, why would he randomly chase him down with a van instead of just waiting for him to stop somewhere and killing him then? The van attack seemed like it could've been an attack of opportunity, and in his episode he stated he's basically just been wandering around popular taxi spots for months now. One last other question, has anyone been paying attention to how many shots Tanaka has actually fired? He has a revolver with six shots, has he fired all of them yet? That might actually be another tell, if Tanaka has literally shot all his rounds and then there's a seventh shot at the wharf. So, to consider things from another angle what mysteries do we have yet to resolve? Besides the aforementioned I think the remaining big mysteries are probably, in no particular order: What's going on with Odokawa's history? We pretty much know for almost certain that Odokawa is disassociating people and seeing them as animals, and it probably has to do with whatever accident he was in, but that can't be the only reveal, right? There's also the mystery foundation and Odokawa's line this episode about wanting to pay back the people who helped him which is suggestive. Where is the Homo sapiens storyline going? A show this intricate wouldn't just introduce the giraffe kid for no reason, but I'm really not sure where the storyline is going. They might be going towards a portrait of the show's themes, or they could accidentally end up being a weird spoiler in the final heist. What really happened with the missing girl? It seems pretty clear by now that there was a replacement Yuki at some point judging by that line about dancing and the masks, but what actually happened? Who killed her? Who knew she was killed? When was she killed? Who replaced her? And more importantly, did whatever happened to Yuki actually have anything to do with the missing girl? That possibility suddenly hit me as I was putting together all of my weird thoughts on this episode. The fact that she's from Nerima is mention to make it seem like she's missing girl, but is she? The news didn't say, it identified her as Yuki from Mystery Kiss. Looking back, did the show ever tell us the name of the missing girl? Dobu said that the missing girl wasn't on Odokawa's dash cam, but the show seems pretty certain she was in his car, did he delete it or something? And Odokawa identified the closest match as the Mystery Kiss girl, but he doesn't mention her name we don't see her in that scene, and wouldn't Dobu know for sure what she looks like? And then there's the vague possibility that Odokawa was shielding her and lied, we never saw the photo… There's also the "it's not her" line at the end which could mean a lot of different things including "it's not the girl I gave a ride to". This whole situation is a Gordian knot. What's going on with the Daimon brothers? It's safe to assume they're going to be wildcards in operation ODDTAXI, but it feels like there's one more reveal waiting to go. That line about losing their parents to a taxi driver and the reverse shot of the accident suggests there's a little bit more to them. What actually is in Odokawa's room? This could just be another red herring, but the show has been repeatedly teasing something is in there. It could be nothing, but is it? gently caress me, this show is a trip. Ignis posted:The show had already confirmed there were different people from the very beginning, one of the trailers named the current Mystery Kiss member The thing you're pointing out is that she is listed as "Maya Yuki", right? I think that's just a translation hiccup, the spelling in kanji for her surname reads "Mitsuya" just like it is in the show and if you compare the kanji to the ones that appear on screen in the news report they also match exactly.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2021 06:32
|
|
|
Talorat posted:Have we met Donraku yet? I only remember his name from being on the flowchart in the OP. Not in person. He is mentioned in the first episode in passing in terms of having put out some kind of Sutra chant for relaxation, and he was a model for the eraser that Tanaka tried to buy from, someone. Someone pointed out that the missing high school girl could have been his daughter because the tapir mafioso referred to her father as "Don-chan" and someone made the call that considering how interconnected everything in the show is he was probably Donraku. As for who killed Yuki, it remains possible that Yamamoto was on the scene so quickly because it was an attempted frame job on Rui, though who set it up remains unclear. I'm actually not totally sure how plausible Yamamoto is as a suspect, the dude seemed pretty dead set on trying to protect Mystery Kiss, the point of apparently being willing to take the fall for them and go to jail. On the other hand, by the time Odokawa tried to recruit him the body of real Yuki had been dredged out the water so he had to know the group's time was nearly up. On the other other hand, could he have really timed it so perfectly that he had an excuse to sit out operation OddTaxi? But back on the first hand he really did seem primarily concerned with protecting the idol group and directing attention away from them. But he'd probably still do that if he was the guilty party. And if it wasn't him then who? New Yuki as possible, but so is Ichimura. The reveal in the episode was that Rui apparently intended to kill Yuki when she found her dead, and this is a show that is very much about obsession, ambition, and desire in their most destructive and deluded forms. Who knows what's really going on under any of these characters before they tell us or show us. Hell, maybe Yuki was killed because of who her father was and who his friends are and doodles is correct and it does have something to do with Odokawa's family. As for Daimon the younger, what's the over/under on him being dead? The fact he is apparently incommunicado entirely is worrying for a dude as naďve as him. You know, they still haven't explained how Shirakawa ended up with his eraser in the first place, unless ditch actually is Dobu like someone suggested.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 15, 2021 05:12
|
|
|
I suspect there probably is one or two extra details related to the dashcam we aren't yet privy to, but I think the show made it clear why everyone wants the dashcam footage by now. It was suggested that the reason team Yano wants the dashcam footage so badly is essentially to tie up loose ends, and that's completely believable. If nobody knows that real Yuki was at the station that night that means it's less likely the finger will be pointed at Mystery Kiss or the people around it which is good for Yamamoto as it protects the group he cares about and good for Yano because he's getting a massive cut of their profits. Furthermore, if that was the fake Yuki that's also very valuable to know because it casts suspicion on her which both yakuza teams either want or should want. Remember that Donraku is old friends with the boss, and it would be a feather in the cap for whoever figures out who murdered his daughter. Dobu was specifically called on to find out what happened to her but didn't know she had been murdered at the time and therefore probably doesn't realize how valuable the camera footage actually is. Remember, the official story was just that she went missing. Aside from the four we knew were at the studio tonight, nobody else knew she was dead until they found her body. And while the show is being a little bit coy, on reflection it's pretty likely at this point that the girl he drove was the fake Yuki. Dobu says flat out that the girl Odokawa drove was NOT Yuki, just someone who looks like her. Meanwhile, Odokawa identifies her as the girl from Mystery Kiss, which makes sense since when he was later introduced to her it was as "Mitsuya Yuki", a member of Mystery Kiss. Likely his confusion when he saw Yuki on the news was because he genuinely thought Wadagaki was actually Yuki. And if that's the case, there probably aren't any good reasons why she would take a taxi presumably to the studio… The irony is that Dobu has something incredibly valuable and he doesn't even realize it, he is almost certainly sitting on decisive evidence of who killed Yuki which is evidence that his boss would love to have that might also lead to Yano getting caught up in something and humiliated. He already has just about everything he could ask for, he just doesn't realize it because it obsessed with going after more and more. And if that isn't just the show in a nutshell I don't know what is.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 15, 2021 22:00
|
|
|
Yawgmoft posted:No reason to believe it wasn't a sting. She even comments that she ran into him without even trying. I tend to lean on the overall tone of the show to believe Odokawa will end up okay, what with the series being surprisingly more optimistic than it seemed like it was going to be when it started to pick up about a third of the way in. Like, if Kakihana mostly got out of his intensely stupid self-destructive situation, and Dobu didn't end up bleeding out on the pavement, and Imai actually got away with most of his money, and the Daimon brothers reconciled and the elder got tagged with his dirty dealings, and loving TANAKA of all the people had a final shot suggesting he got some sense of closure and healing, then after all that I can't really imagine Sakura will actually manage to kill our protagonist. Especially after showing Odokawa as being surprisingly canny as he's been for the last 13 episodes, I genuinely don't believe he didn't tell someone (probably one of the Daimons) he carried her to the site of a murder. On the other hand, you never know, and that's why it hit so hard. I think he'll end up fine, but man was that a hell of a way to end the show…
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 03:00
|
|
|
chiasaur11 posted:It's intentionally ambiguous, but Odokawa's been in spots at least as tight as this before. And if we think of this in terms of debts... well. Odakawa's paid his. And Sakura's just been racking them up like crazy. There is also the show's major theme of obsession and the way it destroys people. Every single other person in the show who was deeply and intensely driven was brought low and humbled by that same obsession. Tanaka loses his poo poo, Kabasawa ends up screwed by his own desire for stardom, Rui and Yamamoto are under suspicion for murder because they were all chasing their careers, Dobu and Yano self-destruct, Kakihana is, I mean yeah, Homo sapiens are collectively really unhappy, even Imai gets himself kidnapped by the yakuza because he couldn't help himself and just had to cheer THAT LOUDLY for his idol group. Moreover, they seem to get messed up in proportion to how far they went in pursuit of their obsessions, Imai got off relatively light compared to Dobu who's literally going to jail. Considering that now we have Sakura who is so driven to succeed in show business she will LITERALLY kill for it. In the end, everyone else didn't get what they wanted in a bad way, and only found some measure of peace once they let go. Considering that in the overall surprisingly upbeat tone of the show I think Sakura goes down in flames. There's some idea in the show that what makes Odokawa the protagonist is that he's detached from those things and lacks a driving obsession of his own. He's somber and disaffected and has insomnia and plenty of baggage all on his own, he's not exactly living the high life, but the reveal of the diary the end suggests that the job he's doing is one he wanted to do and the life he's living as a cabdriver is one he's actually happy with. He's not interested in the money Dobu offers, he has a clear sense of justice, he's a little bit of romantic in the way he tries to keep people safe, and his primary overriding desire is merely to pay back what he's been given if he has the opportunity.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2021 02:44
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 07:15 |
|
|
Julias posted:Well it's called "in the woods" and there were no woods in the show, so at the very least there's going to be some new content. I'm less sure, considering that there's a common enough metaphor of the "concrete jungle".
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2021 01:56
|
|