Weekday Anime Recommendation: ODD TAXI

Spoilers for ODD TAXI episodes 1 – 3

Hello there, fellow anime enthusiasts, and welcome back to my Weekday/Weekend Anime segments! After checking out a grand total of 22 springtime anime premieres I realized that, wow, there’s a LOT of anime worth watching this season. To save me the daunting task of recapping so many series on a weekly basis, I am, instead, gonna make in-depth recommendations based on the series I’m currently watching.

Weekday Anime Recommendation will be about a series that airs during the week and will be posted at the beginning of the week.

Weekend Anime Recommendation will be about a series that airs during the weekend and will be posted on Fridays to kickstart the weekend.

These recommendations will be based on what’s currently airing, so at the moment, it’ll be one of the MANY series that started this spring. If for some reason I don’t have any from the current season, I’ll recommend a series to check out just cuz it’s great.

All that being said, let’s check out today’s recommendation: ODD TAXI, which airs over on Crunchyroll every Monday.

Synopsis

“So, where to?”

This town should look familiar, but suddenly, it’s not.

The taxi driver Odokawa lives a very mundane life. He has no family, doesn’t really hang out with others, and he’s an oddball who is narrow-minded and doesn’t talk much. The only people he can call his friends are his doctor, Gouriki, and his classmate from high school, Kakibana.

All of his patrons seem to be slightly odd themselves. The college student who wants the world to notice him online, Kabasawa. A nurse with secrets named Shirakawa. A comedy duo that just can’t catch a break named the Homosapiens. A local hoodlum named Dobu. An idol group that’s just starting out named Mystery Kiss. All these mundane conversations somehow eventually lead to a girl who’s gone missing.

Why you should watch

The reason I wanted to start with this series is that, well, I don’t think enough people are watching it. This show is so fascinating to me, not because anything extraordinary happens, in fact, it’s the exact opposite. Despite the ODD in the title this series truly shines with its cast of regular people going about their business – they just so happen to be animals.

While there are, legitimately, some underhanded things going on (the missing girl, stolen medication at the doctor’s office, a corrupt cop, blackmailing, and more) the series portrays it in this quiet, almost nonchalant way. Yes, Odokawa is being held at gunpoint, but he’s actually having a conversation with the gunman and is talking to him like he’s a regular fare.

Just another day in the life of a taxi cab driver, I guess.

Odokawa’s personality is what makes the series. There are entire scenes where it’s just him talking to other characters about the most basic things and his delivery is so satisfyingly casual. I can’t explain why this works so well for me. The way he interacts with the fares he has for the evening is just so damn engaging. I don’t know why, in the first episode, I care about Kabasawa’s attempts at going viral, but the way his dialogue plays off of Odakawa’s monotone reactions is such solid writing.

Will this go viral? 🚕 (via ODDTAXI) pic.twitter.com/7UPWCGEmIO

— Crunchyroll (@Crunchyroll) April 22, 2021

It’s like this with all of the characters. Minutes will go by and you realize that you were 100% into a scene where a walrus and a gorilla sat in a doctor’s office and talked about music icons.

There’s no better example of this than the entirety of the second episode. You expect there to be some big, impactful moments because we just found out (in episode one) that there’s a missing girl, Odokawa’s a suspect in her potential kidnapping, he’s talking to someone in his closet, and the nurse (Shirakawa) might be stealing medication from work. The second episode addresses NONE of this, instead, it introduces us to NEW characters. We spend a significant amount of time with the pop idol group, Mystery Kiss, and its lead performer, Rui Nikaido. We also get to formally meet the comedy duo Odokawa’s been listening to on the radio, The Homosapians.

Normally, I’d be frustrated with an anime deviating from the big plot it just introduced, but the character writing is so entertaining that I’m just as invested in the comedy duo getting their act together as I am with figuring out whether or not Odokawa has a girl in his closet.

Speaking of which, I should have all kinds of red flags with Odokawa, but the series is doing this balancing act where I suspect him, but also, I… like him? I like him a lot. I like how he interacts with people, I like how he approaches things, and I adore his slow-burn romance with Shirakawa.

My heart just melts 🧡 (via ODDTAXI) pic.twitter.com/yLkOnHd92Y

— Crunchyroll (@Crunchyroll) April 16, 2021

Who um … might be stealing medication from work.

Is she a drug dealer?

Is this series secretly making me like a kidnapper and a drug dealer?!

If you’re looking for a series full of interesting characters, their day-to-day interactions, and their goals, ODD TAXI is worth checking out. It manages to be strangely relatable, focusing on a variety of characters who are, honestly, just trying to make it to the next day in their own ODD way.

(image: Crunchyroll)

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