Arakawa Under the Bridge x Bridge – 02

Ah finally!  I was kind of hoping this episode would have been subbed a bit earlier in the week to spread out the pain of writing a bit, but it can’t be helped; I’m just glad the episode got subbed!

Arakawa is pretty much picking up as if it never had a break between seasons.  This week the episode is roughly split in two, with the first half running on from last episode with Ric meeting the Amazoness and the second half introducing yet another new character – the self-styled Captain of the Earth Defence Forces.

Much as I’m loving Yuu Kobayashi’s performance as the Amazoness, I’m not actually all that fussed on the character – much of the humour in this segment fell flat for me and I wasn’t entirely sure what the whole point was (wonder if it was all lost in translation).  Ric goes back to his old self as well here, over-reacting to the weirdness and having his logical hat on – I thought he was past this stage already; we already know that the people living on the riverbank are fecking weird!

I do wonder just what the Amazoness and her cramp trio of Tengu-hen lacky’s live though.  Ric finds them hanging out down by Saitama, but later that evening they’re shown on a boat on the river with the Amazoness taking a phone call from someone, so they clearly have connections away from the riverside.  I’m fairly sure we haven’t seen the last of this weird quartet, but they need to be worked into the story a bit more.  When Ric attempts to recount his encounter with the Amazoness, the other residents don’t seem to have a clue what he’s talking about – has no one else in the Under Bridge community bumped into her before? (it would be kind of hard to forget a run-in with that woman!).

The second half of the episode was much more fun.  Captain fits so well with the other residents that its hard to believe he isn’t actually a longterm resident of the mental home Under the Bridge (yet).  I really like his character (brilliantly voiced by Tomokazu Seki); just like most of the other residents, Captain fully believes that he is the captain of the Earth Defense Force and that its his mission in life to protect the planet from the imminent Venusian invasion (led by the Venusian Queen Nino).

Ric was much better in this segment too.  He finds Captain on top of the bridge (where he had been abandoned by those kids that seem to target all the mental cases that pass by) and immediately takes him to Sister’s chapel to recover (love the pink curtains BTW!)  Ric takes Captain’s crazy rantings about Nino’s epic sleep walking jumping/fishing activities in his stride and immediately starts looking for ways to scare the fella away lest the Under Bridge community is joined by another basket case.  Unfortunately Ric’s scaremongering about he and Nino being Venusians hellbent on world domination, only makes Captain’s desire to protect the planet stronger (and also has the side effect of driving Sister, the Mayor and Hoshi into joining his cause!).

Nino completely stole the show though (even if most of her screentime was in the form of Captain’s warped imagination).  I love the weird idea that she’s being controlled by alien’s via her ahoge and that Ric’s true form is a snot bubble.  Nino’s nocturnal activities are pretty amazing though – who knew levitating and transforming fish into armour came under the umbrella of ‘fishing’?  The scenes were a giant Nino transforms the Arakawa bridge into a giant horse and rampages through the city blasting laser-beams out of her mouth had me lol-ing hard – what warped mind conjured up that epic image!?

The best thing was that everyone in the room kind of just accepted Captain’s mad thoughts about Nino and ran with them, but as soon as Nino herself makes an appearance Captain has a minor meltdown and Sister dives out the window in an act of self-preservation, but Hoshi & the Mayor abandon all thoughts of her being an invading alien queen to bask in her awesomeness and comment that Captain seems to be quite interested in her fishing skills!  Nino looked so pleased to talk about her field of expertise, but of course her favoured method of communication is to pull  live fish out of her bra and shove them down the poor Captain’s throat.  Ah Nino, you are adorable.  Its testament to how far Ric has come that during all this he’s standing off to the side looking bemused but ultimately accepting that this is pretty standard behaviour for this group.  Captain runs off like a terrified puppy at this stage, but I doubt that’s the last we’ve seen of him – looking forward to further insanity.

This week had the new ED, and I was a bit disappointed.  The song is nice enough if a bit boring, but the live action images of the Mayor and Hoshi are all kinds of fecking creepy!!  I never liked the live action Mayor in S1, but his creepiness is nothing compared to live action Hoshi – seriously, that’s the stuff of nightmare’s right there (although I kind of want one of those ‘Ore no T-shirt’ t-shirts XD).  However this weeks pretty Nino eyecatch kind of made up for the disturbing ED.

All in all a solid episode of Arakawa.  I have high hopes that the new characters will provide some fresh humour in the show, but I also want to see some more development for the existing characters.  Looking forward to next week!