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Odd Taxi Review

Odd Taxi is a 2021 anime crime mystery series written by Kazuya Konomoto. It is one of the best anime series that I’ve seen and the best new show of the year.

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“But I’d rather die than get involved

in what sounds like a pain in the ass“

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Set in a world of anthropomorphic animals, Odd Taxi follows the story of Odokawa, a 41-year old walrus taxi driver whose parents abandoned him in elementary school, leaving him generally asocial. However, he usually has conversations with other animal inhabitants who ride in his taxi on their respective journeys around Tokyo. Odokawa’s conversations with these people unravel into a series of mysteries and acts of violence, including that of a missing high school girl.

First and foremost, I will spoil the show and talk about some of its revelations along with a couple of major plot points. Let’s just say that the final revelation not only caught me by surprise, but it genuinely shocked me. I was blown away that I literally gasped while watching it. That almost never happens for me as a huge movie and TV viewer, so the fact that this series could surprise me like that just pinpoints its utter brilliance.

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So, it turns out that all of the anthropomorphism on the show stemmed from the protagonist’s head all along. They are actually all humans, but he had some cognitive problem, so he imagined them and genuinely saw them as animals. This twist worked on multiple levels. It further rooted the show in reality, it made it more sophisticated and it made sense on storytelling grounds as it fits the character of Odokawa and his introverted personality. It was just one of the best twists that I have ever seen because it also flawlessly made use of the animated format and the eternal anthropomorphic animal trope.

Odd Taxi is a strange beast. It is a crime mystery at its core, reminiscent in dialogue to Tarantino movies as it’s so amusing and so sophisticated simultaneously. But it’s also a comedy as its humor is fantastic and very observational and wry in quality. The show made me laugh multiple times. Most importantly, the series is also a social drama as it examines some very serious problems in Japanese society, in particular focusing on crime and fame.

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There is this other amazing episode that is actually my favorite of the bunch. It featured the story of a teenager who lost a bunch of money on a game that utilized microtransactions. These types of mobile games basically constitute gambling and it was very important and wonderful of the show to acknowledge this modern plague. The fact that this episode focuses only on this issue and it was still breathtaking throughout just goes to show how perfectly written and crafted this entire series is.

I loved those singular character arc episodes, but overall the show isn’t an anthology, but rather an epic story with interwoven characters and multiple arcs that are all ultimately perfectly connected into a coherent whole. The Odokawa character is incredible and an instantly iconic, relatable and powerful protagonist. Shirakawa as the love interest was wonderful and their relationship was quite sweet.

The singer characters worked for me. Even more could have been done with this plot, but still it was quite suspenseful and very modern in its harsh, but important look at girl groups in Japan. As for the Daimon twins, they were a bit silly as these policemen – one good, the other bad – but their dynamic was so much fun and they were among the best comic reliefs on the show. The hippo social media guy was also fantastic and relevant for today’s time. Dobu was a terrific villain that was very memorable and cool.

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Odd Taxi tackles so many subplots and characters that some were inferior to others, but for the most part I enjoyed all of these arcs and personalities and I found the show to be brimming with life and personality. The writing is amazing, the dialogue is clever and its thematic resonance is quite rich and varied. The animation is also stupendous and very classical in its feel. The score is quite good as well while the voice acting is top-notch.