Friday 13 April 2012

Tsuritama - Episode 1

Tsuritama is the tale of two oddballs - albeit one decidedly more odd than the other.

On the one hand, we have Yuki Sanada, a relatively ordinary kid whose life is disrupted by his constantly travelling grandmother which in turn sees him transferring schools more often than most people have hot dinners.  This is particularly problematic given that Yuki tends to have rather unique panic attacks when he feels pressured or the centre of attention, leading to him pulling a seriously disturbing face while he imagines himself drowning.  On the flipside of this we have Haru, a seriously strange kid who carries a fish in a goldfish bowl around and declares himself an alien to anyone who will listen.


Somehow, these disparate characters come together as Yuki is forced to move again, this time to the quiet seaside town of Enoshima.  Of course, a new home means a new school, and poor Yuki has to go through the motions and stresses of introducing himself to new people - a stress which looks like it could be alleviated as attention is snatched away from him by the appearance of Haru as another transfer student, only to be piled back on to him as both Yuki and Haru are labelled as fish from the same shoal.  Still, it's good to have a friend even if he bonkers, right?  Right?!

It's difficult to know what to say about this opening episode of Tsuritama - it made me laugh a few times so it's certainly achieved that goal, but at this juncture there isn't actually a lot I can find to say in either criticism or praise of it.  My biggest concern is that the series is going try a little too hard to be wacky without any real purpose, which will only take you so far, but for now I'm going to reserve any judgement until I can get a bit more of a feeling for what Tsuritama's grand plan is.  Until then, it's a pleasant little distraction that hasn't set my world alight - let's just hope it doesn't extinguish the remaining flames of passion altogether.

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