Arakawa Under the Bridge - Episode 3

Now that Arakawa Under the Bridge has introduced us to what appears to be pretty much its full suite of characters, we're already started to see a little friction between Recruit and some of the others on account of his apparently close relationship with Nino.

This becomes even more of an issue due to Nino's habit of sleepwalking into Recruit's room in the night to sleep before leaving in the morning - A scene which leaves Star barking up the wrong tree and getting more than a little upset about it in the process. However, with some intervention from the truth-seer that is Sister it becomes clear that nothing untoward has been going on, which pushes Star's reaction to the other extreme as he berates Recruit for being useless and gay amongst other things.


With this love rivalry ignited, Recruit decides that there's only one thing for it, and that's to take Nino out on a date, complete with flashy cars and expensive dinners. There's only one problem - Nino doesn't even know what a date is, which makes things awkward to say the least. Still, eventually a compromise is reached, and maybe once again Kou has learned a little more about himself in the process.

As per the rest of the series so far, Arakawa Under the Bridge continues to be both amusing and fascinating on both macro and micro levels - On the one hand the bizarre world and characters which the series consists of makes for some obvious and frequently surreal humour on the surface, yet beneath all of the insanity there's actually a lot of really quite subtle material to be sifted through, which again largely revolves around Recruit's materialism and inability to understand those around him and their feelings. This is a disability that does seem to be lessening as each episode progresses however, as here we see him eventually beginning to consider why Nino doesn't want to leave the river and actually letting her make decisions for herself rather than acting like some kind of control freak.

It's this kind of character development that is often a hallmark of a great series, so I can only hope that it continues here without losing the obvious (or perhaps not so obvious, you could say) humour that comes from Kou's circumstances - It's a big ask, but time will tell whether it can deliver.