The story of a transfer student who discovers he’s in for far more than he bargained for.
What They Say:
Yuki is the new kid, Haru is an alien, and Natsuki is the fishing prince. Three unlikely characters brought together for a unique experience, which might lead to saving the world.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
An original work out of A-1 Pictures, Tsuritama is one of the series this season thta has gotten little real dialogue or anticipation about it, which in turn opens it up to being one of the potentially best discoveries out there. Case in point is the prologue sequence which just has a great time of things with its animation design and sense of style before it gets into the main animation style itself. With Kenji Nakamura directing, who gave me the wonderful C – Control – The Money and Soul of Possibility series last year, it’s the kind of show where you want to see what sort of offbeat thing will come from him even while it plays in familiar realms such as high school characters and the things they have to face. As is usually said and is true, it’s about the execution.
The show focuses us on Yuki, a new transfer student who has come down to Enoshima which certainly presents its own problems. With his grandmother as his only family at this point, it’s a close bond they share but he’s still just a teen dealing with the world. Thankfully, Yuki’s a pretty likable kid from the start and he adapts well to the seaside town and it’s actually one of the few times that I really wanted to see more of this kind of exploration since it’s not the normal kind of town we see, or with this kind of bright, lush and appealing feeling to it. Where it gets a little odd though is when another student named Haru arrives, with fishbowl on his head, announces he’s an alien to Yuki’s grandmother and decides he’s going to live there with them. Which will certainly surprise Yuki when he gets back home.
Of course, Haru finds him first at school and it just gets weird from there but has a strange sense of fun about that’s really endearing. Adding to the oddness, though not dealt with in too much detail here, is another character to round out the group that’s going to form with Natsuki, who is considered the prince of fishing here as he’s quite well known for his skill. Yuki’s drawn into all of this since Haru has the ability to get people to do what he wants by force of personality which is at times quite hard to believe. But at the same time, it’s so easy to be drawn into his positive attitude and the fun approach that he has to life that you can sort of understand it. Add in the surreal nature of things that Yuki sees things through and you have a show that’s both confusing and thoroughly engaging to watch in a way that’s hugely surprising.
In Summary:
Tsuritama at this point in time is a show that’s keeping ones attention simply because it’s not doing the same thing that everyone else is doing. Not that this season is filled with copycats to begin with, but that makes it all the more impressive. The three young men that come together here are all quite different and you wonder what the truths are behind them. Yuki as the ostensible lead of the series is definitely the cipher that you can do anything with at this point, but he has more than enough personality to carry things off here when teamed up with both Haru and Natsuki. The show has a surreal feeling to it at times and a kind of off nature that lets it be its own thing. Which is reinforced by the great looking set designs and overall approach to the animation that has it filled with rich colors and more. It’s hard to tell where it’s really going to go, but it surprised me the most I think simply because so little had been said about the show prior to its airing. And sometimes that’s a big plus in a shows favor.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
