Tsuritama: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Tsuritama: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Fishing for compl(e)ments.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 6, 2013

If an anime like Shining Hearts can build the bulk of its story around something as patently odd as baking bread, should it come as any great surprise that Tsuritama does much the same thing with regard to the activity of fishing? Tsuritama is one of those outings that might initially strike some as “just another” shōnen or slice of life entry in the seemingly unstoppable glut of such fare, but as with Shining Hearts itself, Tsuritama at least tries to inject something a bit unusual into the mix. In some ways Tsuritama might be more appropriately compared to anime like Arakawa Under the Bridge, at least insofar as both pieces proffer a kind of misfit young male who ends up having to deal with a supposed alien. As with Arawaka Under the Bridge, this particular anime is often quiet, deliberate and almost subliminal in how it treats some of its major themes, and if in some ways anime fans will have seen this story many times before, it turns out to be rather surprisingly well done and at least passably fresh most of the time in this iteration. The hero of Tsuritama—if indeed he can even be thought of as a traditional hero—is sad sack high schooler Yuki Sanada, a young male who has had to live with his kind of goofy and youthful looking grandmother since becoming an orphan. Unfortunately his grandmother’s peripatetic tendencies mean that Yuki never gets to settle down anywhere for very long and he has built up an almost pathological fear of making new friends and blending in to whatever new environment into which he’s been thrust. Yuki has a neurotic reaction to being forced to interact with new people, one where he hallucinates that he’s drowning. Accompanying that horrifying issue is Yuki’s unfortunate proclivity for sweating profusely (even more than famed newscaster Aaron Altman in Broadcast News) as well as for grimacing in such an exaggerated manner that his classmates usually think he’s an alien. Unlike Arakawa Under the Bridge, Yuki in fact doesn’t end up in a “secret society”, ultimately discovering he’s dealing with an ostensible alien. In this case, the alien, Haru, ends up with Yuki, simply arriving at the grandmother’s new home one day and announcing that he, too, is going to be living there. Grandma doesn’t seem to mind, and in fact may be aware that a “special friend”, alien or otherwise, is exactly what Yuki needs. Yuki, of course, is horrified, something that turns into downright shock when Haru approaches another seeming misfit, Natsuki Usami, teach them both how to fish, the one activity that Natsuki seems to excel at.

Tsuritama is another in what has been a pretty long line of Blu-ray releases of so-called “noitaminA” fare from Fuji TV, short form anime that are broadcast somewhat like western miniseries. This group includes such disparate fare as Eden of the East, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0: Complete Collection, Princess Jellyfish, Fractale, C Control The Money and Soul of Possibility , AnoHana: The Flower We Saw That Day, Bunny Drop, Guilty Crown , and Katanagatari. As might be expected from a list that diverse, there has been a rather large variance in storylines, design aesthetics and overall quality, but Tsuritama rises toward the top of the list by sheer force of charm, if nothing else. While elements of this series are unabashedly derivative, something that continues to haunt way too much anime, the overall emotional content of the series is quite genuine feeling and helps to elevate it above many other shows offering similar ideas and approaches.

Part of the whimsy of Tsuritama is evident from virtually the first moment of the anime, when we get our first glimpse of Haru, without really knowing who he is or what’s going on. Haru is seen walking backward through several environments—with a fishbowl on his head. And without spoiling anything or giving away too many secrets, it’s at least hinted that he may be talking to the fish inside the bowl. When Haru basically marauds his way into both Grandmother’s house and, a bit later, Yuki’s classroom, he becomes an unforgettable and wonderfully comic character. While the series is not especially subtle in its contrasting of shy and socially awkward Yuki and the just plain out there Haru, who manages to steamroll over everyone through sheer force of personality, this “odd couple” makes for a really fun and often funny focal duo.

If Tsuritama excels at portraying the interrelationships between Yuki, Haru, and then Natuski and a bit after that yet another outcast named Akira (no, not that one), some may feel that the series falters, if only a bit, in its attempt to weave in a science fiction element which tends to slowly ingratiate itself into the goings on as the series progresses. While there’s obviously a science fiction angle from the get go with Haru, it’s actually not emphasized to the extent one might expect, so that when this side actually does start to blossom, it’s just slightly disconcerting at times. That said, the strength of Tsuritama is in its quietly unfolding arc for Yuki. There have been a lot of anime dealing with gaggles of misfits who find their own social circle and start to find themselves as a result, but few have celebrated the quirkiness of individual differences as effervescently as this surprisingly effective series.

Tsuritama: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Tsuritama is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a nicely inventive looking series that has some occasional cool graphical elements, especially with regard to some of the fishing elements, but an overall more traditional style that boasts excellently sharp line detail and bold, nicely saturated colors. Yuki's bright orange hair is a real standout and pops very well, and the character designs—including Yuki's tendency to "transform" into a near ogre when he's nervous—are handled very well. Backgrounds aren't simply dashed off as they so often seem to be in more contemporary anime, and there's some real attention to detail, with a fairly realistic ambience being imparted with clarity and distinct depictions of both buildings and natural environments.

Tsuritama: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Tsuritama offers two DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 options, one in the original Japanese and the other a very good English dub. There's no appreciable difference between these mixes other than the languages. This series actually probably wouldn't have gained all that much from a more robust surround mix, save perhaps in some of the fishing moments and towards the end of the series when things become considerably less laid back. What's provided here suffices perfectly well for the dialogue (some of which is delivered via narration anyway) and the effective but never overpowering sound effects. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is reasonably wide, though again this is not a series with an overabundance of sonic "wow" moments.

Tsuritama: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Clean Opening Animation (1080p; 1:32)


• Clean Closing Animation (1080p; 1:32)

Tsuritama: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I frankly tend to want to scream sometimes when I'm confronted with yet one more anime that just seems to be rehashing tired old plotlines and character arcs, and so I had a not inconsiderable resistance to Tsuritama just from reading the plot summary on the back cover. I needn't have worried. This is a really sweet, often unexpectedly ebullient, piece that is charming, if awfully low key some of the time. The characters here are inventive and often quite amusing (some might even find them laugh out loud funny), and if the science fiction aspect might strike some as more of a distraction than an actual plot device, that's a small price to pay for such an otherwise winning effort. Though the supplemental features here are pretty slim, the video and audio quality is excellent and Tsuritama comes Recommended.