Arakawa Under the Bridge x Bridge: Season 2 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Arakawa Under the Bridge x Bridge: Season 2 Blu-ray Movie Review

Crazy, but endearing.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 13, 2012

The life of a reviewer can be filled with both frustration and wonderment. The frustration comes from seeing too many films or television series that simply retread familiar material, often with little or no ingenuity or panache. The wonderment can occur when something unexpected or new manages to peek its head above the rubble. Anime wasn’t even really on my radar several years ago, though I had been exposed to some of the bigger, more iconic titles in the genre, things like Akira, which I had really loved. But I suddenly started getting a lot of anime titles assigned to me, and I was awash in all sorts of weird and wacky material, and I was soon investigating all sorts of other releases that I didn’t even have to write about. Now truth be told, anime can also be an extremely frustrating genre, as there are a number of subgenres that are endlessly paraded with standard characters, plot devices and even animation styles. The last few years have seen an uptick in some incredibly inventive outings, both from story and character perspectives, as well as animation aesthetics. Arakawa Under the Bridge is sort of borderline with regard to animation style—it isn’t quite at the innovative level of, say, Samurai Champloo—but it makes up for that (if indeed it even has to make up for anything) with a patently odd storyline that is certainly one of the more bizarre in recent memory. The show’s basic premise is minimal, to say the least: Ko (sometimes transliterated Kou) Ichinomiya is the heir to an industrial fortune who has been raised to be almost phobic about ever getting in debt to anyone. The first season of Arakawa Under the Bridge of course finds Ko almost immediately becoming incredibly indebted to a young girl named Nino, who in the first episode of the series manages to save the would be tycoon after he falls off of a bridge while trying to reclaim his pants, which have flown up onto a girder (if you think that’s odd, just keep reading). Nino has a very simple request of Ko in order for him to repay his debt: she wants him to fall in love with her. That leads Ko into a secret society of sorts, where he soon discovers that Nino is part of an (almost literally) underground group of people who have formed a culture that lives under the bridge. Ko is an outsider trying to make his way into a disparate (to say the least) group of oddballs, and his “adventures” (if that’s the right word) with these weirdos make up the bulk of Arakawa Under the Bridge.

As with the first season of Arakawa Under the Bridge, there’s really less to what happens in this series than in how it’s told. The first season often was a langorous, almost somnambulant exercise where little things like how Kou would have his hair cut could take up vast expanses of any given episode. That same tendency continues with the second season, where something as odd and supposedly minor as Kou trying to find a missing baseball takes him on a journey upstream on the Arakawa, where he comes in contact with yet more bizarre denizens of the riverbank, in this case an Amazon Queen who insists she isn’t male, who is surrounded by a bunch of aides (are they men or women?) in tengu masks. There is something akin to an arc in this second season dealing with Nino’s supposed Venusian background, and this element provides some giggles as the entire population of Arakawa decides they want to journey to the far away planet with Nino. (And truth be told, wouldn’t they be less “alien” there than they are here on Earth?)

The planned trip to Venus actually takes up the bulk of the central portion of this season’s thirteen episodes, but even with that through line, there are the expected number of weird little subplots that crop up, some tangentially related to the Venus arc, others completely unrelated. For example, the denizens of Arakawa figure out that their combined weight is too much for their rocket to achieve liftoff, which leads to a mad dash of dieting and exercising. In another example, a sort of tournament to decide who’s the strongest inhabitant of the river will grant the winner one wish, which ends up playing out as the series’ wrap up to this season, with some very sweet, good natured results.

Arakawa Under the Bridge may be absolutely minimalist in story ideas, but it manages to be one of the more charming anime efforts in recent memory, simply by dint of the fact that it has such an odd concatenation of memorable characters. These characters may in fact never do very much, but they’re so unusual and so appealing that it really doesn’t matter. The fact that all of these characters are in their own way outcasts probably helps the series’ appeal immeasurably, especially for those who have ever felt they don’t quite “fit in”. While some of the miscommunication between characters (notably Nino and Kou) can be overdone at times, the show manages to craft a weird sense of community among those with a variety of “hangups,” for want of a better word. While some of these may push the bounds of political correctness—the cross dressing nun springs instantly to mind—it helps give Arakawa Under the Bridge its unique and very peculiar sensibility. The series is also notable for its completely outré filmed closing credits sequence, which sees live actors in completely over the top costumes appearing as various characters within the anime. These utterly bizarre little segments may well be worth the price of admission alone for those with particularly skewed sensibilities.

Arakawa Under the Bridge x Bridge: Season 2 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

My comments with regard to the first season of Arakawa Under the Bridge hold true for this second season, released courtesy of NIS America with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The unusual looking characters and the neatly variegated graphical style of the series all pop really well on this high definition transfer, and this second season has a number of really cool dimensional effects added in as well. Note how in the first episode when Kou is traversing the riverside and gets lost in a huge overgrown field of weeds, it has a virtually three dimensional look, with clearly delineated planes of the various plant life. Colors are bold and even provocative at times, and line detail is extremely sharp and clear looking. In fact about the only complaint some will have about this presentation, and one which also hampered Arakawa Under the Bridge's first season, is the fact that the subtitles are encoded into the image and can't be removed. This becomes especially distracting in some sequences where there is also Japanese text on the image. Other than that anomaly, though, this is a spectacular looking release.

Arakawa Under the Bridge x Bridge: Season 2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with the first season release of Arakawa Under the Bridge, the only audio option here is the original Japanese track presented in an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mix. This is once again a very fun and enjoyable track to listen to, with a huge disparity of voice styles (I especially loved the hilarious Amazon Warrior, who initially speaks in a deep baritone, and then later reveals herself to sound kind of like a Valley Girl). As with the first season, some of the "busier" sonic moments where a bunch of characters are interacting might have benefited from the wider separation a surround mix would have afforded, but otherwise this track sounds great, with excellent fidelity and good dynamic range.

Arakawa Under the Bridge x Bridge: Season 2 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

NIS America continues its "deluxe edition" releases into the anime Blu-ray fray with some beautiful packaging and interesting supplements. The keepcases here are DVD sized, each (of two) volumes holding one BD and one DVD, enclosed in a large and sturdy slipcover which also houses a full sized hardback book with glossy pages full of illustrations and information about the major characters. While this won't fit on traditional shelves, it's a very handsome package that should appeal to collectors. The actual BD extras are:

• Feature Commentaries are provided the first four episodes of the second season, in Japanese with optional English subtitles. The commentaries feature the following particpants:
  Episodes 1 and 2: Hiroshi Kamiya (Recruit), Tomakazu Sigita (Hoshi), Yuichi Nakamura (Last Samurai/Tengu), Hikaru Nakamura (Original Comic Author)
  Episodes 3 and 4: Maaya Sakamoto (Nino), Keiji Fujiwara (Village Chief), Chiaki Omigawa (P-ko), Hikaru Nakamura (Original Comic Author)


• TV Promos: 1 (1080i; 00:30), 2 (1080i; 00:15), 3 (1080i; 00:29), and 4 (1080i; 00:15)


• End Card Gallery (1080i; 2:17)


• Trailers for other NIS America Releases

Arakawa Under the Bridge x Bridge: Season 2 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Arakawa Under the Bridge is one of the quirkiest anime series in recent memory, and I am literally gobsmacked (technical term) that there is evidently a live action version in the offing. Filled to the brim with extremely unusual characters, the series may actually never really go anywhere (least of all to Venus), but it's one of the most oddly charming animes I've personally experienced over the past few years. With an appealing animation style and a very crisp presentation on this Blu-ray, not to mention the very nice deluxe packaging this receives, Arakawa Under the Bridge is Highly Recommended.