Thursday 7 June 2012

Tsuritama - Episode 9

With a typhoon on the way and the scope of so-called "Bermuda Syndrome" spreading, Enoshima and the world beyond are having to face up to a fate worse than a second season of Nichijou - an entire planet, doing the Enoshima dance, forever.

As the situation becomes increasingly dire, Duck organisation forces are quickly on hand to try and take control of the situation using waterproof chemical suits, a copious amount of hair-driers and a ban on the use of water that English councils could only dream of in their wildest fantasies.  Despite Akira arguing to the contrary, Haru (or JF1) is still one of Duck's top targets of the cause of the problem currently gripping the sea.


For Haru's part, himself and sister Koko (no, not the loco one) set off to try and capture their relative before it's too late, albeit to no avail - with Koko seemingly lost, and "JFX" still very much at large, Haru decides there's nothing for it but to go it alone, using his water pistol and trademark batshit craziness to drive the populace of Enoshima away from the area using whatever means necessary.  Of course, this sudden change in Haru's tone and behaviour confuses Yuki in particular massively, leaving it to his grandmother to patiently put him on the right track again.  With Natsuki and Akira also seemingly determined to do something to save, or at least help, Haru, you can probably see where the series is headed from here...

I think it's common knowledge by this point that I'm simply not invested in Tsuritama, so even upon reaching this crunch point in the series I can't particularly feel for Haru or any of his friends as they go about wringing overly simplistic emotion from the scenario at hand - its wacky surrealism doesn't really sit well against its tale of friendship at the best of time, and the entire affair threatens to become borderline patronising when it comes to explaining what's going on in Haru's head to the clueless Yuki.  Now that we're all set for a sweet "friends unite to save the world by fishing together" ending, I'll just be glad to get this series out of the way and shelved in my decidedly small "noitaminA shows I wished I'd never bothered to watch" pile.

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