Arakawa Under the Bridge

Arakawa Under the Bridge is a 26 episode comedy based on the manga of the same name by Nakamura Hikaru.  The show was split into two 13 episode seasons and aired in Japan in the Spring and Fall of 2010.

    Ichinomiya Ko is the heir to the Ichinomiya conglomerate, a powerful worldwide company.  The family motto is to never be indebted to anyone.  While crossing a bridge over the Arakawa river in Tokyo a group of youth jump him, strip his pants off and tie them a strut.  As he tries to rescue them a foreign girl offers to help while she is fishing.  He utterly refuses her offer and ends up being saved from drowning by her when the strut falls into the river.  Unable to allow himself to be indebted to her, he forces the woman to come up with a way to pay her back.  She decides he can return the favor by dating her, as she’s never dated anyone before.  He agrees but she demands him to stay close by at all times...he would be OK with this if it wasn’t for the fact she lives on the river bank.  Now he too must live under the bridge until he feels he has satisfied the debt.  Living as a vagrant by the river is the least of his concerns as he discovers he is now part of a small community of eccentrics.  His new girl friend claims to be from Venus, the man who runs the community is a Kappa and their spiritual adviser is a cross dressing mercenary.  Before Ko knows what he got into he's been renamed Recruit and ends up spending more time living under the bridge than he ever intended.  Will he be able to satisfy his debt to the odd woman, can he convince the members of the river community to have common sense and will he ever get back to his normal life of privilege and power?

    This was a pretty out there comedy, as is to be expected from the people behind the anime for Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei.  The animation however is not as good as Zetsubo Sensei, but this doesn’t wholly affect the quality anime.  What are great are the live action parts for the next episode preview segments.  While the animation is lacking, the comedy and characters are well done.  The series wanders around introducing all of the weird people who live in their strangely isolated and protected hobo community in the middle of Tokyo.  Even Ko eventually forgets the strange reality of the bridge dwellers existence and the lack of authority intervention and contact with outsiders.  They are a group of eccentrics who had given up on society to live an oddball life.  The comedy is a cross between Zetsubo Sensei and Cromartie High.  Each episode is split between a series of vignettes that are not always related, the way Azumanga Daioh was done.  This works well with the flow of the comedy as opposed to having a 20 minute plot line to stick to

   There are a few problems I had.  The first 13 episodes were pretty funny but the humor started to slip in the second series, with some segments that were drawn out and boring.  At first the tongue and cheek reference to Fist of the North Star was funny but it kept popping up and lost its charm.  The series also just ended, with nothing really getting resolved.  There were two or three major questions that I felt didn't really get answered.  It feels like they planned to do more but nothing ever panned out.  The show started to turn from insane comedy to romantic comedy in the second half which I feel affected the quality of the humor.  I understand the reason that direction was taken but it became too much of a focal point.

    Either way, this is fun series that is less serious than Zetsubo Sensei.  It focuses on analyzing human relations and people’s sense of place in society with a sharp tongue and a crazed wit.  If you liked Zetsubo you will like this series to, it’s filled with crazy. 

    The series is available in North America on DVD and BluRay as well as streaming.  The manga, which is ongoing, is not available however, nor is the live action film.