Forum - View topicOdd Taxi (TV).
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 11452 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Odd Taxi (TV) Genres: Themes: Plot Summary: Kotogawa is an eccentric, reticent 41-year-old taxi driver who has no relatives and does not have much to do with others. He does have conversations with his customers, including a college student who wants to go viral, a nurse hiding a secret, an unsuccessful comedian, a street rough, and an up-and-coming idol. These conversations lead him to a girl who has disappeared. ---------------------------------- Seems like a quirky premise. I like the outlandish character designs, though. Feels like Taxicab Confessions meets Zootopia. Will give it a shot. |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15580 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 1
General word around is "odd", it is one odd show that mixes these cutesy animal character designs, with an undercurrent that feels much darker. Like after this episode we don't know if the main character might be crazy, and involved in some way with the missing teenager, since he eerely talks to his closet as if there is a person inside as by saying that he is not forcing them to stay or something. A dirty cop seems to suspect it, takes a recording that would show the missing teenager in the cab, and then passes it off to the armed monkey guy. Making theories kind of seems like jumping the gun, after all this is incomplete information, and there does seem to be a good deal of other moving parts like the nurse being implicated in stealing pills. Almost seems easy to forget that the episode start with something being thrown into the ocean, that would be easy to guess could be a missing teenager's body, but what would that mean to our main character presumably talking to someone in his home. Jumping the gun to make a theory, one I can think of was that she was killed by the guy with the gun and Kotogawa is sort of aware having driven her and just kind of crazy, the memory card is to remove evidence. Or maybe she saw the gun guy kill someone, and she is so afraid of him that Kotogawa agreed to harbor her in his house, and getting the memory card was a hope to track her down to remove a witness. Probably both of them are way off, since we are rarely given a lot of information in the first episode. |
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bonbonsrus
 Posts: 1537 Location: Michigan, USA |
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I went into this show blind. Completely didn't read ANYTHING about this show, not even a description. I was wondering at first from the animation if it was geared at kids, but that theory was throw out fairly fast. Honestly, I am glad that this one was the one I went into blind, and I was surprised it held my attention, let alone became something I was following closely trying to piece things together. Even the conversations with the hippo, which seem to have nothing to do with anything, (until you find out later that the picture the hippo took had the gorilla guy in it), was an interesting and odd conversation.
I was actually hoping it was a double episode by the time I got though the first ep. I am looking forward to more! |
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Spastic Minnow
 Bargain HunterExempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4634 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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the very first "odd" thing that stuck in my mind is that during the OP, he tries to pet a stray cat...
An anthropomorphic animal character interacting with a non-anthropomorphic animal. And it's pretty soon in the credits that it's confirmed that there are anthropomorphic cat characters, and the last character seen is one (revealed in the show to be the missing teenager). So, I'm guessing the symbolism of him with the small cat is significant, but you don't know why yet. |
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bonbonsrus
Posts: 1537 Location: Michigan, USA |
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Wait, what?!? If it was, I missed this completely, I guess I need to go back and watch again...or is this a spoiler? Also, this real tweet exists of the driver and hippo from Oct 2020 https://twitter.com/kbsw_t/status/1314943016344453122?s=20 |
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter Exempt from Grammar Rules Posts: 4634 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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I'm pretty sure it was. I didn't watch it extremely closely, but because of the cat in the beginning, I was looking for cat characters. I believe the teenager was shown to be that cat during the longer news broadcast.
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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The girl appears at 12:28 leaving the convenience store, and yes, she is a cat. On the other hand, she's the height of a human girl and wearing a sweater and skirt. The cat in the OP is the size of an actual cat.
It's possible that, since it's in the highly-stylized OP, the interaction between the driver and the kitty could be symbolic. He does drive off leaving the neko looking distraught. For genres, how about at least comedy and mystery. |
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter Exempt from Grammar Rules Posts: 4634 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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The runaway cat-girl is at the end of the OP, walking away. IIRC (can't check at this moment) |
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bonbonsrus
Posts: 1537 Location: Michigan, USA |
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I watched again today and see now what you were talking about, at first I thought you were saying she was at the end of the episode somewhere and I'd missed it, not in the opening credits. I feel better now, I was so confused. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15580 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 2
The episode did not really have anything else on the missing girl. In terms of a theme you maybe had something about what appeals to people. The nurse saying that she has interest Kotogawa, and his friend was surprised that setting up a picture of Kotogawa on a dating site automatically got a response from an 18 year old woman. You have the idols, which are the manager thinks is doing well under its centre, while the other two are struggling and think they are either being weakened by the persona forced onto them by their producers or already out of their depth. And then you have the comedy duo that personally among them think the short one is the most commited and has the better understanding of comedy, and yet the tall one got a call to do a TV gig that might push his career forward. Going by the nurse, she said that she regrets taking out a student loan, but has already payed it off, so the implication seems to be that she started stealing medication for her student loan, but despite achieving the financial goal is perhaps too deep now. |
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter Exempt from Grammar Rules Posts: 4634 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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Ep.2 is concerning. TOO MUCH!
Like, are we really supposed to care about a kid trying to get likes on Twitter? I guess that'll probably connect with others when he does something desperate to "go viral" that involves others in the story. But I hope they don't follow every step of his pathetic journey. And that's the case with most of the extended ensemble. Minimally interesting. |
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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She's pretty similar to the one in the convenience store. Probably the same girl. |
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bonbonsrus
Posts: 1537 Location: Michigan, USA |
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I have the feeling that all these seemingly random pieces will come together and I am curious to see how!
I was trying to make sure I paid attention to background details as well and I didn't think it was same cat-girl in convenience store, what's everyone else think? |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24231 |
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Odd Taxi, indeed - but I like it! I like the offbeat humour in the form of dialogue between the characters. For me, this isn't laugh out loud stuff, but I find myself chuckling fairly frequently. I also like that there is some mystery and narrative threads. And as always a show gets a gold star from me just for not being set in a school.
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15580 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 8
A lot of things now seem to have really formed their web of connections, where the parts that might be difficult to see where they fit now are. Such as that the idol agency is connected to yakuza, pull scams involving young women, and are somehow most likely connected to the missing high school girl. Dobu himself seems, against how it looked like he may have dumped the body, but could have aspects like a code that he may not have harmed the girl. And we got more information about Kotogawa himself, where the doctor ponders if he has synaesthesia, where senses interact with each other in strange ways, as an explanation of how he can recognise people really easily. The episode did end on him being able to recall the face of the girl his friend was dating, because he happened to say a similar phrase at the time of showing the picture, so that might go a way to explain how his memory works. We also got information that he was orphaned at a fairly young age, which probably left a scar on him. And people are recognising that he does seem to talk to someone, but there is unlikely to be anyone there, so there might be some aspect of like an imaginary friend. Wait, I think I just cracked a code. Kind of a random tangent, but there was this game theory over the game Animal Cross, which has animal people, that perhaps everyone is not an animal, but the player suffers from some sort of mental disorder that they see people as animals. Trying to look for the word of it now, and I think there is some connection to synaesthesia, maybe called Clinical Lycanthropy. Watching that Game Theory video again, it is getting called Lycanthropic Intermetamorphosis, when the person suffering from clinical lycanthropy sees other people and themselves as animals. It apparently can be triggered by a large life changing event, which could be his parent's death, and can include hearing voices with the example being something like a guardian angel, which could explain the person he talks to in his empty house. So, they are not actually animals, but he sees them all as animals, which is why he can recognise people so well, those who leave an impression on him he can see as an animal that are like that creature. The doctor might have even somewhat been thinking along those lines when showing different pictures he showed just a picture of a normal bird, to gage his reaction. I wonder if the nurse is going to comment on the fact that he called her an alpaca once, for how he was able to recognise her so easily. |
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