Arakawa Under the Bridge x Bridge – 02

As if we needed any more lunatics in this place.

Kyokai: The subs were sure late! T__T Overcooled and I would have loved to do another convo-collab but blame it on different time zones and our overall busyness. Not to mention, I’ve been monumentally tied up this whole week because of some project closing and new prospects on the horizon. So that is the reason for no reviews from me this week. Hopefully I’ll catch up on the weekend. Now to Arakawa~ my laughter dose of the week.

Overcooled: You’ve got to admit that Arakawa always starts with style. Today’s philosophical tidbit is in the form of Ric wandering through a maze while the other Arakawa characters pass him by. He contemplates always moving forward, despite not knowing what your future might hold.

Remember last episode when Ric had to go fetch that ball and ended up meeting the Amazoness? Well, apparently he wasn’t let off nicely. Kyokai and I figured something was odd with how the scene suddenly ended. The confrontation starts off mostly with just brute intimidation, but we slowly get to see more of the whacky side of this muscle-woman. For example, her 3-man group of “women tengu.”

Except they are neither women nor tengu

Ric is quick to shut her down and go back to finding that ball, until she shows him a golden treasure chest. Um, what? Oh wait, no, it’s just filled with ice cream.

…Wait so was that, like, hidden under your skirt all this time or what?

The conversation is just a series of odd derailments that goes on and on. We have the tengu surrounding Ric about to pounce…and then asking  for ID to make sure he’s an Arakawa bridge resident. Instead of just letting them leave, Ric scolds them for being weird AGAIN. The Amazoness mocks him in some annoying “schoolgirl” voice, which is the epitome of grating, and then shoots him with a dartgun (Except it’s, like, a cheeto) when he eats their ice cream God. I know this is Arakawa but…whaaa?

When Ric regains consciousness, everyone from the bridge is there wondering why he fell asleep. Ric tries to explain his encounter but not even the Arakawians (…I promise not to use that again) can believe him. Then, something amazing happens.

In the second half we meet a NEW CHARACTER! Said new character’s dramatic entrance is hanging from the top of the bridge in a near-death state but hey…Ric didn’t have pants in episode one. The poor guy is taken to Sister’s where he almost fools Ric that he’s normal for a moment. Almost. He claims to be a Defender of Earth and is here to stop Nino.

So how DID Ric get him down?

After accusing everyone of being a Venusian (and somehow still getting along with Hoshi and Mayor in the process) Ric just blurts out that he’s a Venusian. The way he strings this guy along in order to scare him off is pure genius. Speaking of pure genius, WHY ARE THESE SCENES OF NINO SO AMAZING?

More Nino spam later. I promise.

Just when our “hero” is about to give up, Sister, Mayor and Hoshi all decide to fight alongside him. WHAT A TWIST! NOT EVEN M NIGHT SHYAMALAN COULD PREDICT THIS! They power up with the power of FRIENDSHIP, until Nino enters and ruins everything…She scares the guy off just by feeding him fish.

You have no idea how hard it is for me to pick from all these epic screencaps

Not only do we have an ED sequence now (and an awesome one at that), but the gag sequences are back! Billy performs his joke, or maybe Ric does? I don’t know, but I got to see a parakeet gangster whip out a set of guns against a samurai. I’m set for life.

Anyone reminded of Oofuri? Or is it just me?

Nino spam:

If I ever wake up wet and smelling like fish…I will know what happened now

IM FIRIN MAH LASER

Live action movie of this would be…wow.

End Thoughts:

Kyokai: HHHHHNNNNGGGG. A thousand props to Arakawa for making me laugh with so much silliness! There is a reason that I fangirl squee over Hiroshi Kamiyannn~ because he is THAT GOOD. I mean, who can make such exasperated sounds and aghast screams so funnily? SOU JA NAIIII~ He makes Kou seem alive and I loved him as usual. Also, his rendition of I AM A VENUSIAN was classic. He sure has learned a lot since he joined the freaks of Arakawa. He can now actually devise a plan under hostile conditions.

We finally see a lot of the Amazonian and though I was banking on some secret revelation regarding Nino; it’s as dubious as before. You gotta love Yuu Kobayashi voicing her, doing two voices. I mean who would believe that “Amazoness te dare~?”! I seriously went pffffffftttt over it. Not to forget the bikini t-shirt trio. I could swear, one of them was Kou’s doppelganger but I would be wrong.

Captain is another new appearance, whose intentions are not clear yet but as he has been staking out the bridge for some time, his reason for invading must be some internal misconstrued goal. I’m not sure if Amazonian is really his puppet but time would tell. Also, who else thought that he had more than a resemblance to our Ric?

The jumping, dancing and fish transformation of Nino made me laugh so hard that I can’t explain in words. It didn’t help that I skipped through the second episode of Star Driver just before that. This transformation and that snot-bubble and Antenna convo is what you call FABULOUS~! XD

I loved the ED “Akai Court” featuring Hoshi and sung by Suneohair. I can bet the decision makers at SHAFT thought, why waste production money on animation? Let’s do another live action! Still, their performance this season has been brilliant, with Arakawa already a winner, Soredemo seems like another WIN comedy. Shinbou, here’s a satisfied fangirl’s kyaaaaaa~ just for you! ^^

Overcooled: The first part with the Amazoness wasn’t quite up to par with the usual Arakawa golden standard. While she’s a wacky character, she’s not hilarious enough to have one on one interactions with Ric and be funny yet. Maybe in a group she’d be okay, doing something odd in the background…I guess it’s partially because her deep voice AND her helium voice is annoying. It makes me cringe. I like Billy even more than her, sheesh. Don’t get me wrong, even in comedic lulls Arakawa does better than a LOT of comedy shows.

The second half turned things around with Nino’s transformation sequences. We got THREE different variations of super powerful venusian Nino – mecha version, snot bubble version and shoop da woop version. All three were hilarious. The new character seems to be the “villain” thus far, or at least someone to cause trouble. I’m not sure he’ll be as much as a hindrance as Ric’s father was, but we need some sort of dilemma to overcome in a story, right? We certainly have a lot of “what if’s” here with the Amazoness calling her ‘boss’  and the Earth Defender guy. Things are getting even harder to predict than the next episode of Shiki, my goodness.

On a more analytical note, Ric seems like he’s regressed again. Well, maybe not regressed, but he’s acting more like he did when he first came to live under the bridge. He’s gotten to the point where he admits the bridge is his de facto home, but he tries to differentiate himself as the “sane” one as much as he possibly can. Usually he just goes with the flow and keeps it to himself like “yeah, yeah, Venusians, okay sure…” but he was pretty confrontational in telling the Amazoness that she’s in Saitama, those are ice cream bars, and her tengu army are 3 men who aren’t tengu. You think he’d be used to insanity when Mr. Earth Defence came around too, but he was sickened at the thought of him staying. Of course, these are all NEW characters, so Ric might just have gotten used to the quirks of everyone else, and just isn’t good with MORE crazy people. Maybe it just seems that way to me because he mentioned his company again, as if it were still a big part of his life. XD

As per usual, another rad episode of BRIDGEXBRIDGE and we’re already psyched for the next episode. Until then~