On The Big Reveal In Oddtaxi

If a text is worth paying attention to, I don't think spoilers are a concern. A well crafted story emotionally invests you to the point where you either forget or aren't thinking about a specific event coming in the future. An all-time classic will outright tell and remind you what's coming and you won't even care. I watch pro wrestling. You only need to doubt what you believe for two seconds to viscerally scream when it's delivered anyway.

Take the recent animated TV series Oddtaxi. The last few years have featured numerous successful shows with anthropomorphic animals. Beastars, Brand New Animal and to a certain extent Dorohedoro all do it. There's usually some narrative justification for the furry people populating their settings. Oddtaxi differs by foreshadowing that it's an unnatural or perceptive matter. Take this exchange from the first episode:

    Goriki: "What do I look like to you?"

    Odokawa: "A gorilla."

Even so, the tail end of the show and its final episode spend a hefty chunk of time paying the hints off: protagonist Odokawa has a neurodivergent condition that has both shifted his perception to view humans as animals and given him chronic insomnia.

If you haven't seen the show (and you really should), you might be surprised when I say its genre is a crime thriller with an ensemble cast. The bulk of the show is about a cast of characters whose lives are intertwined in a complicated ball of threads. Everyone has dirt and individiual actions have consequences for others separated by several degrees. The plotline about viewing the world as full of furries is far less important than the yakuza infighting, grimy showbiz and social structures that cause people to fall through cracks and land on roads to self destruction. Indeed, the artistic decision to draw everyone as animals could just be seen as a way to play around and subvert stereotypical behaviour that each character's animal signifies.

If I'm downplaying a reveal that significant time is spent on, is it even worth writing into the script? Yes. Odokawa's a blunt guy who keeps a lot to himself. Part of his backstory involves an abusive household and frequent bullying in school making it near impossible for him to relate to people. His shifted perception provides a level of comfort he previously lacked. Discussing mental health, chronic conditions and neurodivergence involves navigating difficult topics. TV and movies prefer simple solutions and so it is easy to write a dramatic turnaround moment or epiphany that cures them of their illness."Suddenly... he wasn't racist anymore." Or for an anime example: Chihaya's chronic depression from the original Idolm@ster arcade game becoming resolved in a climactic scene. 

Odokawa has a climax after which his condition appears to be cured. What I like about this and the subplot in general is that nothing about him changes. Odokawa's arc isn't one about a broken person who must be fixed; it's a story of someone who in many ways has already healed and is in the process of realising it. Odokawa isn't some weird loner the whole show through. He already has a circle of friends. Customers already enjoyed his company as a taxi driver. He's now just not going to suddenly die of a brain aneurysm.

"The furries were people" is one of those twists like that in the end of The Sixth Sense that encourages a rewatch where you can view the characters and events in a new light, picking up on subtle details you missed the first time. By it being separate from most of the narrative and emotional elements of the show it can serve as seasoning; accentuating the ideas, themes and characterisation of the show as a whole.

Did I mention you should watch this show?