“Narrow Road to Oku: The Last Spurt”
What They Say:
“Long time no see, but these weirdos are back!” For the first time in 15 years, Gag Manga Biyori returns to screens with a new anime! A quirky cast of characters, including Shotoku Taishi, Matsuo Basho, and Usami-chan, will be dragged into creator Kousuke Masuda’s unique world of surreal gags. Check out the exciting adventures of these crazy characters in every episode!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
This episode takes us closer to the end of a storyline within this series that’s just not doing much for me, as we get Basho and Sora-kun’s journey moving right along. This one brings in a new character with Hokushi, who joins in after Sora-kun randomly makes him Basho’s disciple. The show plays with this in a fun way, where things just happen as it goes from talking about favorite sumo wrestlers to this. You feel for Basho as he’s just continually abused here and throwing something like this on top of how Sora has been with him is pretty much the last straw. Which at least makes you glad that this is seemingly the climax of this arc? You feel bad for Basho continually with how Sora operates and seeing Hokushi being an even worse version of him is just sad.
In Summary:
Similar to past episodes of this storyline, there are fun moments within it where you can get a chuckle at best, but a lot of just has that odd feeling that doesn’t work for me. Such is the nature of comedy so I’m totally fine with that and we’ve had other episodes where more of what the gags were worked than this one. This one just didn’t fire on any cylinders for me at all, unfortunately.
Grade: C-
Streamed By: Prime Video
