Arakawa Under the Bridge x2 - Episode 4

With Arakawa Under the Bridge's penchant for slightly pretentious yet ultimately not particularly meaningful beginnings to its episodes, it seemed safe to assume that their P-ko-starring faux film trailer could be filed similarly as pretty but generaly irrelevant.  Well, think again...

Instead, the first half of this episode reveals that P-ko has written her own movie script - a tale of love and rivalry starring (who would have thought?) P-ko as the star of the piece as various men fight after her affections.  With Ric directing and Takai handling the camera work, it looks all set to be a huge success... except this is Arakawa Under the Bridge we're talking about, so invariably the whole thing takes a turn for the bizarre sooner rather than later.  While Nino impresses in her uniform she fluffs her lines, but at least she's actually read her lines unlike most of the remainder of the cast.  Still, even all of this looks decidedly professional once we get to see exactly where the focus of Takai's camera has inevitably been for the entire duration of filming.

The remainder of the episode sees the residents under the bridge setting up a haunted house - they certainly seem to have plenty of facilities at their disposal to pass the time, don't they?  Of course, the main aim soon becomes to scare Recruit as he makes his way through said haunted house, and just as inevitably Ric ends up getting scared in very, very different ways than those imagined by the others.

It almost goes without saying that Arakawa Under the Bridge x2 is hugely funny by this point, as the series continues on its merry way while barely putting a foot wrong in terms of its content.  This episode's movie filming scenario was always guaranteed to be funny by design and so it proved, while the haunted house segment was perhaps a little less sharp but still had a few laugh out loud moments.  From its opening credits right down to its ending song, this show is proving to be an unqualified success.