Ko Ichinomiya has it all—money, popularity, business success, good looks, more money and a mean independent streak. He’s all too happy to extoll his many virtues as well as declare his strong aversion to being in debt to others. You can see where this is going, right? Yep. Ko is saved from drowning when he falls off the bridge into the Arakawa river by a strange girl named Nino. When he finds out she actually lives under the bridge, he tries to repay is debt with many material offerings. But Nino has zero interest in such things, but, since Ko is so insistent, she offers that he live under the bridge and be her lover and teach her about love.
Despite the premise, Arakawa Under the Bridge actually has little in the way of romance. The Chief of the village of weirdos living under the bridge and along the river renames Ko as “Recruit,” and life goes down a decidedly strange hill from there. Nino believes she’s from Venus, the Chief claims to be a kappa despite obvious costume flaws, the Twins wear iron masks to supposedly keep their psychic powers in check and Sister is quite obviously not a “sister.” And those are just a small sample of the various flavors of crazy living under the Arakawa bridge. Recruit (formerly Ko) has daily fits over their absurdity and their failures to understand common sense.
It’s safe to say that Arakawa has an interesting cast of characters. Their neurotic behaviors are very laid out and each one seems to have his or her own reasons for abandoning the real world; though it’s not always immediately obvious what those reasons are. Even Recruit, who claims to be firmly stuck in his father’s strange mold of irrational independence, seems to realize he’s kind of broken as a person. It’s this weird study in psychological problems presented as a slice-of-life sitcom that make Arakawa so interesting, as well as hilarious. There’s a good deal of belief to be suspended for a lot going on, but for the most part the characters make it all easy to relate to.
As always, NISA has packaged this anime set in one of its trademark oversized hard boxes with an informative fan book to go along with the discs. But bonus points for Arakawa are that it is not just a DVD set, but also comes with Blu-Ray versions. I find this combo packaging to be a boon because I’m still in the dinosaur age of DVDs and don’t fancy buying all my anime all over again on Blu-Ray. One small drawback is that there is no English dub track for the show, only subtitle options. This isn’t terrible, but it may hamper enjoyment for viewers who aren’t much of a fan of subtitles. All that aside, Arakawa has vibrant animation and the opening songs (especially “Venus to Jesus”) are so catchy that they stick in the brain for days.
This is a slice-of-life show about a guy who learns (albeit slowly) that there is more to life than having things, and that he can be more than what he is by becoming less. Deep stuff wrapped up in nonsensical packaging and pretty colors. It’s kind of reminiscent of Welcome to the N.H.K. With the way it meshes a sitcom with surreality so effortlessly. The fact that it’s based on a series of light novels probably lends to its overall cohesiveness. Arakawa is well worth watching and an excellent choice for fans of absurd slice-of-life comedies.