Odd Taxi Episode 7 – Masks

I took a couple of days off this past week in an attempt to regain some sanity after a particularly stressful month or so at work. I can usually tell when I’m due for a vacation, because I’ll start to get really short with people and have a difficult time dealing with unexpected situations. I’m lucky that my job provides me with quite a bit of flexibility and is generous with PTO. I’ve used the time to catch up on a little bit of anime as well. My Anilist is a wasteland of half-finished anime series at the moment, and any little bit of time I can get to chip away at that is welcome, in my book. Of course, Odd Taxi has turned into an extremely high priority series for me in spite of whatever leftovers I have in the fridge from past seasons, so this time away from work has been a good opportunity to work on catching up with that, too.

As usual, below are the previous entries in this series of posts. Be sure to check them out, too!

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6

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To some extent, all of us hide the true extent of who we are. I think most of this is unconscious; the clerk at the grocery store doesn’t need to know every detail of our lives in order for us to have a pleasant interaction with them, so we don’t tell them about the same things we might tell our therapists. But there are also times where obscuring who we are might be more of a conscious self-defense mechanism, whether we’re simply wary of someone we’ve just met, or whether we actually have something to hide.

This episode of Odd Taxi feels very focused on the idea of people’s hidden activities and the ways in which they project outward certain interpretations of themselves in order to maintain a particular image. It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the Daimon brothers, the crooked cops who’ve hassled Odokawa here and there. After discovering the aftermath of a gunshot in his home, Odokawa brings Little Daimon there to take a report, and uses that opportunity away from Big Daimon’s influence to suss out Little Daimon’s usefulness.

Little Daimon has a very black-and-white view of good and bad, and of what justice looks like. Big Daimon is “good” because he’s a police officer who tries to arrest criminals, like Dobu. Odokawa is “bad” because he associates with Dobu, and still remains a suspect in the disappearance of the missing high school girl. But when Odokawa claims (rightfully) that Big Daimon is working with Dobu, and Odokawa is just pretending to work with Dobu for righteous reasons, suddenly things aren’t quite so cut-and-dry. Although, Little Daimon doesn’t quite believe what he’s being told, especially since he looks up to his brother.

The conflict between expectations and reality can be a difficult hurdle to overcome, especially because living in the society we do instills within us prejudices that we may not even be aware of most of the time. We’re taught that police are the “good guys” and that the badge stands for truth and justice. I was taught from a young age to go find a police officer if I got lost or if something bad happened. Yet the fact is that there are police who lie on the daily (and are legally allowed to do so). There are police who hide or participate in corruption. There are police who directly harm the people who they are called in to help. The problem with having prejudices, even supposedly “positive” ones, is that they obscure reality and attempt to deny the messy complexities of all situations, and in the process can end up causing harm. Believing that any particular sub-set of humans is infallible simply because of a job they choose to perform is folly. Case in point – Big Daimon masks himself behind the badge to accomplish whatever it is he’s trying to accomplish, even hiding the truth from his own brother (who seems to have no interest in hearing anything different). Initially my husband and I made jokes about the “crooked cops” in this series, but now that things are getting more serious I’m starting to believe that it’s no laughing matter.

The title of this post was meant to be a bit of a riff on the fact that this episode takes place on Halloween. Everyone in the city is dressed-up, in many cases their identities obscured behind face masks. But there’s obviously a lot more going on than just some cute holiday attire. Returning to Odokawa, I mentioned that there’s been plenty of internet speculation about what’s going on in his head, and whether the cartoonish furry landscape that we’ve been seeing may be a product of his own brain damage. Dobu comments on Odokawa’s ability to remember faces, comparing it to seeing auras; Odokawa replies that this might not be far off the mark. I think this offhand line of commentary may definitely add fuel to the fire for that theory! Setting that aside, though, what’s a man like Odokawa to do when the imagery of the faces he’s burned into his own memory are suddenly hidden behind similar-looking Halloween masks?

These aren’t the only masks that have appeared in the series thus far, however; the secondary members of Mystery Kiss have been forced to mask-up since some undetermined earlier time and for reasons that are still not yet clear. The assumption has been that it was decided due to some aesthetic purpose, in addition to the fact that Rui Nikaido seems to be the most talented of the three anyway, with the most long-term career potential. Why worry about the other two if it’s not necessary? That said, at least two of these three idols are up to some shady dealings going on behind the sparkling façade of their idol work. Shiho’s been (perhaps somewhat unwillingly) being used as bait to help add money to Mystery Kiss’s coffers through shaking down unsuspecting rubes. Rui seems to be an active participant in managing these schemes as well. We haven’t heard from Yuki, the least experienced member, in a while though…

In any case, I think the lesson to be found in this episode is that there are several characters we’ve met who have hidden agendas or have reasons to hide the people they actually are. Even Kabasawa, who’s gone public online in his quest to hunt down Dobu, in reality seems fearful for his life – a huge contrast from the brave front he’s tried to construct. At this point Odokawa’s inherent lack of trust toward just about everyone else no longer seems quite so extreme.

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After several weeks of hearing his name get thrown around, we finally get the privilege of meeting Yano, Dobu’s rival in the underground world of financial shake-downs. He’s definitely a… prickly (ha!) character who speaks his lines in the form of rhymes and raps (it looks like he’s voiced by an actual rap artist, too). While his interaction with Odokawa is almost comical, there’s no denying that he’s a dangerous guy; unfortunately it’s Kakihana who seems to be bearing the brunt of that at the moment.

There were a few other things I took note of throughout the episode. The first is that Tanaka seems to have inspired several copycat cosplayers; the streets are littered with folks in skull masks, and Dobu even beats up an unfortunate costumer who happens to look especially close to the masked gunman in the cabaret club. It got me thinking about the ways in which people seem to sometimes latch onto memes, for good or ill. I think what I’m trying to say is that I have a difficult time understanding what might inspire someone to watch a video of someone attempting to commit a crime, and then think it would be cool and funny to mimic that for the sake of a costume aside from the fact that the reference would be extremely fresh and people tend to reward that. While I love the internet and spend a good share of my time using it to interact with other people, I think the nature of how quickly information flows online doesn’t always provide enough time for critical thinking. And in that sense, this episode is pretty realistic.

There are also a couple of very tantalizing snippets related to things we haven’t had to think about for a while. The authorities recover a body from the water; one can assume it was the same one being dumped right at the beginning of episode 1. The description of the victim is a young woman, the implication being that this may be the missing student who’s been mentioned several times over many episodes now. We also get another instance of Odokawa talking to his closet, which honestly just made my hair stand on end. He seemed unconcerned when Little Daimon (nearly) looked inside, but I still just don’t have any idea what to think about it. It gets harder and harder for me to stop and wait between episodes, that’s for sure!

Lastly, Shirakawa keeps good on her word and self-reports her medicine theft to Goriki (and we learn that Dobu kept good on his promise to discharge her debt to him). It looks like their next goal might be to deal with what might be the story’s most important issue of all – Odokawa’s mental health. I’m really interested to see just how this all pans out.

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I’m not sure if it’s evident from when these are all being posted (I’m trying to stagger them out so it isn’t just all Odd Taxi, all the time, but I think my writing quality may be faltering a bit because I’m writing several of these back-to-back), but my impatience with myself is beginning to reach a fever pitch and I’ve made it a goal to get these write-ups caught up at least to the point I can watch the last part of the series the day of the episodes’ releases. It’s been a while since I’ve been quite so passionate about an anime, but despite not being especially concerned about spoilers most of the time I’ve felt the desire to discover this series’ secrets organically rather than from some random online discussion. Thanks to all of you who’ve been indulging me thus far!