Arakawa Under the Bridge - Episode 5

Episode five of Arakawa Under the Bridge brings us a new opening theme which takes in the conversational delights of Maria as she expresses her opinions in her own inimitable style, complete with lyrics that interestingly accuse Sister of living a lie, which is surely what everyone under the bridge is doing in some shape or form anyway?

Anyhow, this latest instalment begins where the last one left off, with Sister left incapacitated by Maria's acerbic tongue - At least now we know what the trolley was for. Indeed, things get so bad for Sister in the wake of Maria's teasing that he decides that he'd rather just find a hole to crawl into and die... although of course if there aren't any holes handy, then why not simply use a hand grenade?


From here, Ric meets another new face under the bridge, a girl who grows vegetables for the residents named P-ko who loves her peppers (and her cucumber, which is another story entirely) but turns out to be impossibly clumsy with occasionally hilarious consequences. Once again, we see Ric being rather less than tactful in this encounter (and indeed this episode as a whole) - It seems that he still hasn't quite got to grip with letting people down gently.

Then again, poor old Recruit soon finds himself on the defensive at Stella's welcoming party, as it's pointed out that he doesn't actually have a job under the bridge, making him something of a leech and putting him in the same league as Whitey, who does nothing but follow white lines for his own amusement. Of course, telling Kou that he's reliant on everyone else is probably not exactly what he wants to hear, although this seems to be forgotten rather quickly as his rivalry with Star comes to the fore again as the latter trumpets (do you see what I did there?) his supposed musical talents. It just so happens that Ric has some musical tricks up his sleeve too, which looks set to turn into an outright face off next time around.

While the last couple of episodes of Arakawa Under the Bridge have featured quite a few things to de-construct and consider, this fifth episode of the series seems a lot more simple in many ways, playing out its gags and scenarios for laughs above all else. Thankfully, it does this fantastically well - If Sister's use of a hand grenade was hilarious (and it was, by the way), then P-Ko's banana skin incident literally had me crying with laughter from its absurdity. There were plenty of other great gags squeezed into this most bizarre of sitcoms too to give me plenty of laughs, which is always a welcome visitor in my book. While I still want to know more about the histories of some of the bridge's increasingly oddball characters, I'm more than happy to defer such curiosities in the name of being made to curl up laughing like an idiot at slapstick and absurdist comedy.