Tsuritama – 10

Tired of fishing, Yuki decides to take up street fighting.

Another week, another episode of gay fishing. Sorry, Miyu’s still not back from Japan yet. Unless she is, and has just set up an elaborate plot to fool us all just for the hell of it. We’ll never know the answer to this potential conspiracy, I’m afraid, so you’ll have to sate yourself on Tsuritama’s Bermuda Syndrome conspiracy. We’re in the final arc now, so welcome to the penultimate episode zone!

Reaction

I found myself a little more involved during the fishing episodes than I am currently for this “save the world” arc. Tsuritama is flip-flopping between trying to be a tear-jerker with serious moments and being dumb as a doorknob, and it’s not pulling off either. The fishing episodes committed to all the boys slowly developing, and overall left a fuzzy feeling once everything was said and done. Now it’s like everything cancels out and the net result is…nothing. It’s probably a bad thing to be more jazzed for regular fishing than catching a world-destroying alien with mind control powers. The fishing became memorable because it was silly, but had some ample emotional weight to it. It built up slowly over time. I don’t HATE what’s going on now, but I don’t care as much for the outcome. Every character has already reached their peak, and that’s really all I wanted to get out of this anime. From the beginning, I was rooting for Yuki to become less asocial and for Natsuki to grow less cold and it’s happened. I never cared about saving the world, because it was never a main part of the story until now.

Yuki casting into a bucket for a first time? GREAT.
Haru saying he has to leave? WHO GIVES A SHIT?
Natsuki running in the rain and smiling like a maniac? PRICELESS.
Haru and Yuki’s heartfelt talk? YOU’RE BOTH DUMB, PLEASE SHUT UP AND FISH.

You get my point, I take it. The lead-up to the finale has been kind of “meh” in Tsuritama terms, so I can only hope the final episode is full of beautiful friendships, teamwork, fluff and all that EPIC GAY FISHING I’ve been pining for. Maybe they saved all the good animation for this too, and that’s why things have been getting increasingly ugly in terms of character animation. Can I think positive and dream of a gorgeous finale? Mmmm, yes. I can almost taste it… I will admit there was some good, unintentional laughs this week though. For example, Natsuki’s DERP DANCE and the way he blushed when Yuki was praising him. Akira’s “yoga attack” was pretty fly too. I don’t get why they’d dull such great comedy by making things so overly dramatic.

Overall, a well-paced continuation of the alien attack…although a bit of a below-average episode in Tsuritama terms.

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Relying on Others

It takes a while to hone teamwork. You have to be able to know what your friends are thinking and be able to act accordingly. Even with tactical planning, working together never works completely without a certain level of trust. Four boys who just met recently trust each other enough to meet up and go after an alien together to save the world. The plan will fall apart if any one of them missteps, but they’re confident they can do it. It’s very refreshing to see anime characters actually ask for help instead of being all macho and saying “NO, I CAN DO IT ALONE, I DON’T NEED YOU!” before inevitably realizing they do. Tsuritama skips that step and goes right to reuniting all the characters together. I was impressed that Akira of all people was the one to cave in so easily and decide that working together was better. If anything, he was the most distant of the group, and he remained resistant to their efforts to befriend him for a long time.

Natsuki has always felt he could rely on Yuki, but it really says a lot that the first thing he does is call Yuki when they ask for a fisherman to save the world. I mean, he fits the prophecy thing as the Goddess’s friend, but I doubt that’s the sole reason he impulsively tried to find the redhead. He also relies on his dad’s girlfriend to protect his little sister. It looks like he has finally made peace with version 2 of his family, and is letting them into his life. Pretty much everyone works together and believes in each other this week, and it’s a beautiful thing! No one questions that what they’re doing is crazy, they just dive right in. Ah yes…THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIIIPPPP!!!!

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Well…Shit

Everything’s gone to hell in a basket. Just like Akira predicted, DUCK has been taken over and now their entire fleet is under control. A fleet with missiles. As harmless as dancing seems, Akira brought up a good point about people being unable to live if people in nuclear power plants start dancing. If the dancing never stops, people will just die from starvation and exhaustion too, which is a rather grim way to die. Death by dancing…Not fun. I wonder if the gang will have to go against the entire DUCK fleet as well as Koko (I miss Koko already…) to catch the “dragon?” Whatever the case, things are looking very, very bad. I’ll be impressed if they offed Captain during the explosion too, although I doubt it. I think he got his boat ready beforehand, and should be able to give them a lift. If not…uh…they have an entire harbour of boats to hi-jack. They didn’t really need HIS boat, right? o_o

Good luck, Yuki. You have your work cut out for you.

Haino, haino, haino…:Show ▼

About Overcooled

A neuroscience graduate, black belt, and all-around nerd. You'll either find me in my lab or curled up in my rilakkuma kigurumi watching anime.