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.