The rain hasn’t stopped for hours. When I first woke up, the sky seemed clear enough; but of course, I slept through my first alarm, and thus slept through my chance to start the day with some kind of head-clearing walk or jog. That failure heralded a cascade of other minor tragedies, as long-term wellbeing projects were once more shelved for the day, with the hope of “I’ll get to that tomorrow” tempered by the reality of all the tomorrows where I failed to get to them. For now, for today, let’s just focus on the job, and the maintenance required just to keep the lights on.
Welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be returning to ODDTAXI, a show which has so far captured the mundane adult experience with more acuity than virtually any anime I’ve seen. Its characters slump with the fatigue of professional fatalism and personal isolation; bereft of purpose or community, they cling to the hollow affirmation of social media, or simply accept that life will always be like this. These bedraggled misfits are my people – I also feel most alone when scrolling through tweets, yet can’t help crave that dwindling dopamine rush of online validation. It’s not the internet’s fault that we are all fundamentally alone; it has merely underlined the issue, and offered the opportunity to reinvent ourselves as brands rather than individuals. In a world as segmented and dehumanizing as this, perhaps that’s the best we can hope for.
Well, I hope Odokawa makes it out okay. Let’s return to ODDTAXI.
Episode 4
More of the OP dynamics slot into focus with our new information. There’s Dobu chasing Yano, then failing and taking out his anger on a punching bag
We open with a daytime shot down the city streets. Rather than sticking to Odokawa’s usual nighttime schedule, I imagine we’re now picking up immediately after last episode, with Goriki still missing
“Tanaka’s Revolution”
The famous SEGA store is represented as SOGA here. I appreciate that ODDTAXI embraces the specificity of its setting; rather than cast itself in some nebulously defined animal city, it celebrates the unique quirks of Tokyo specifically. Real life captured with thoughtful acuity can be as compelling and transformative as any fantasy invention; that applies to ODDTAXI’s drama as well as its setting
A cat races down the streets in disheveled, dirty clothes. As we zoom in, voiceover announces that our story began four years ago, as the man took a job at a gaming company
“Honestly, I don’t like modern games. Games are supposed to be an escape from reality. Having friends gives you an advantage. Having money and time gives you an advantage. It’s no different from reality.” Ooh, I love this point. Our cat resents how modern games have essentially become their own form of social performance, and also how with modern gacha games, those with the disposable income to whale will always come out on top. His resentment is understandable, but more than that, I actually hadn’t considered how gacha games have become their own form of social media, complete with the same forms of presentation and hierarchies inherent in purely communication-focused platforms
And yes, the idea of a game as a full escape from your larger reality is certainly disappearing. Such games just aren’t as profitable as “games as service,” and if a game company can shame you into spending more by tethering your game performance to your online social interactions, so much the better. Character skins and accessories gain far more value when you’re showing them off; seen in that light, the transition to games as feedback loops centered around publicly showing off your collection seems like an inevitability of capitalism
If it wasn’t clear, I’m also not super thrilled by this transition. I like complete art objects, works that represent a coherent authorial statement. I don’t want to have fifty characters thrown at me and be told “pick your favorite, it’s not like any of this content means anything”
Back in third grade, his teacher was “fussy about the wealth gap,” and thus his classmates collected and compared erasers, rather than anything more pricey. For those without any meaningful personal strengths to distinguish them, collecting erasers was the “only way to reach the top” of the class hierarchy
Tanaka’s a bit like Hachiman, except he also understands the way economic class impacts social interactions
He also keeps revising his story, with his adult self perpetually undercutting the flattering paradigms his child self created
Tanaka loved birds, and had a cockatiel named Maru
“A tiny handful of students fawned over him, and I found it unbearably frustrating.” Adult Tanaka can’t help but underline the fundamental pettiness of child Tanaka’s concerns. But hey, that’s childhood
He steals his father’s credit card to bid on a rare eraser
They’re doing a great job of building a sense of dread and menace in Tanaka’s house, as his desire spirals out of control. This late afternoon shot of the staircase and cracked doorway really amplifies the sense of danger, emphasizing how easy it’d be for him to get caught
Similarly, his brother’s room is stacked with figurines, and thus the camera pulls back into the shelves, positioning them as judgmental onlookers staring down at him
Oh, no no no. He wins the auction, but for his full bid of one hundred thousand yen
And now, at last, we reach the revolution. “In Japan, a group of citizens once staged a revolution due to their discontent over the economic divide.” ODDTAXI’s style of painted textures doesn’t really lend itself to the classic painted manuscripts it’s attempting to evoke here, but it’s still a fine effort
The eraser never arrives. “I realize now that there are many things I could have done, but at the time, I was bound firmly by the words ‘no refunds, no returns.’” An apt insight there. When we’re caught in the pressure of some profound loss or fear, we frequently narrow our perspective, and fail to see any possible exit. Additionally, as a child, the stark finality of legal text, or of actually arguing with an adult, can be paralyzing in its own way. And when people say “why didn’t you do this,” you have no answer – you were mentally bound at the time, and that’s just how it was
“When my father reviewed his credit card statement, he beat me to a pulp.” God, the impact of this awful cut. After the gentle pan over his classmates, accompanied by the idyllic “third graders grow up so fast,” the transition is heralded by the sharp smack of his father’s hand, amplifying the dissonance between their happy childhoods and his own abuse
Oh god, they made an Einstein dog and a fucking Trump dog
“Since then I’ve come to despise anything without a real form, as well as competing with others. Games are meant to be played alone”
He discovers a zoo game, one that compliments his love of collection and animals. “When I acquired a rare animal, my brain tingled dangerously.” We’re all just jonesing for that next brain tingle
As always, ODDTAXI’s meditations on online alienation and commercialization are accompanied by a firm understanding that this is human nature, and that each generation suffers through these conflicts in their own way. Just as he was once given a sense of pride by his rare dodo eraser, so now does he seek the dodo in his zoo game. And the dodo itself is a perfect representation of what all of us are seeking: a sense of pride and belonging that we believe once existed, but now seems more like an exotic and extinct creature. Goddamn is that a hard-working metaphor
“I had collected erasers because of the dodo, and I played Zooden for the dodo. When I made that comparison, I felt it was my destiny to acquire it.” And not, say, a tragic reflection of the cyclical dissatisfaction inherent in defining our worth according to arbitrary standards of capitalist competition? No? Alright, still got some work to do, Tanaka
The first place Zooden player has the same handle as the person who conned Tanaka out of that hundred thousand yen
“If I were to take revenge, it would be on my past self. I added one hundred thousand yen.” TANAKA NO YOU’RE JUST FEEDING THE BEAST
“That was four years ago. I’m still playing Zooden. In total, I’ve spent over five million yen on this game.” Goddamnit. I know they’re now ubiquitous enough that there’s no real value in pointing it out, but goddamn are gacha games evil. Systems specifically designed to exploit latent gambling addictions, and drive people into self-destructive financial cycles… it’s vile stuff, and I hope for all our sakes that gambling regulations eventually kill this market
“The bird that went extinct without ever learning to fly. Perhaps I was projecting myself onto it”
His desk is now a mess, and he doesn’t even respond to his coworkers
He at last gets his dodo, just before Odokawa speeds past him from the last episode, sending his phone into the gutter
He loses the dodo’s data, and when he gets home, Maru has passed as well. His home is a familiar picture of addiction and depression, with empty food containers stacked high, emphasizing someone who’s lost touch with caring about their environment
“I think that’s when the blue flame inside of me finally came to life”
And heading out to bury Maru, he discovers the gun. Welp, pretty sure he now believes God willed him to kill Odokawa
He bumps into the warthog comedian, and is roped into a conversation about the tools needed for success
God, this episode is devastating. No tone-resetting check-ins with the rest of the crew, just one uninterrupted dive into Tanaka’s depression and addiction. It’s great stuff, but damn
“Desperately acquiring that something yields only a moment of pleasure.” Gambling is all about the rush, but it leaves you with nothing, and hungrier than you were before
And Done
Holy shit ODDTAXI! Agghhh, that episode was agonizing, and so bracingly realistic that I felt shivers recognizing aspects of my own experience. Both Tanaka’s initial sense of listless detachment and his descent into fanatical addiction were portrayed with brutal clarity, poignantly illustrating how someone without a clear sense of self or community can be drawn into the exploitative loop of gambling’s dopamine release. These games want us to tie our value to their systems, and ODDTAXI effectively underlined how they simultaneously harness the competitive loop of capitalism itself, forcing us to compare ourselves to the system’s biggest spenders. For someone who simply wants to escape from the world, modern games now offer the allure of a genuine place within it, so long as you keep on rolling those dice. A searing portrait of one of modern media’s most predatory innovations, and an intimate character study of one person doomed to fall prey to these systems.
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