Arakawa Under the Bridge: First post with actual content

If comedy is supposed to be about taking human misery and tragedy and glorifying and healing it by making it a source of relatively guilt-free joy and pleasure, it was only a matter of time until a romantic comedy in which one of the principals is an insane homeless woman who lives under a bridge showed up. Arakawa Under the Bridge, the latest anime from director Shinbou Akiyuki, is that romantic comedy.



Ichinomiya Kou (Kamiya Hiroshi, using his full-on Zetsubou-sensei voice) is the scion of a major Japanese corporate conglomerate who has been raised from the age of three to never rely on anyone for anything, including members of his own family, lest they some day ask him to put himself in a difficult situation in order to pay them back. One day, after being beaten up by delinquents who hang his trousers from a support beam on a bridge over Tokyo's Arakawa River, Kou falls into the water trying to retrieve them and is saved by a girl in a tracksuit who claims to be from Venus (Sakamoto Maaya, using her full-on Shiki voice). In order to pay her back immediately and thus not live in the same of owing someone something, Kou agrees to let her call him his lover and to spend some of his time with her at the river. He then finds out that the girl is homeless as well as insane and lives inside one of the buttresses of the bridge. Before he can think of a way to graciously extricate himself from the situation, the girl summons the Mayor of the River, a man in a kappa suit who claims that he is an actual kappa at heart, who renames Kou 'Recruit' and offers/threatens to sumo with him.

Thus begins Recruit's life by the river. He retains ties to his old family, apparently still attends Tokyo University by day, and remains obscenely rich, but due to his neurosis (which reaches almost the point of psychosis) about not owing anybody anything he ends up in a situation in which he must sleep in a room under the bridge, allow Nino (the girl's name is Nino) to sleepwalk in whenever she gets tired of her own room (Nino sleeps in a large drawer underneath her bed, an opulent velvet chaise longue that she claims a mysterious Greek man dumped by the river one day), fight off the many many people who (and this is a direct quote) 'cherish in their hearts the thought of beating the crap out of Recruit', and go to Mass every Sunday. This doesn't seem so bad until you realise that the Mass is conducted by a mad veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan who acts as an Orthodox nun.

Allowing Shinbou Akiyuki to make a show about homeless people seems on the surface like a very bad idea. His previous works range from the brilliant Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei to the absolutely dire Dance in the Vampire Bund and Maria-Holic (the latter of which fails about as catastrophically at homosexuality as I was afraid this was going to at poverty). And indeed the poverty of the river-folk is not treated anywhere nearly as seriously as it probably should be.

But here's the thing: the homeless characters in the show are treated with more genuine respect than any other homeless people I've ever seen in fiction. They're multifaceted, interesting, real people who just happen to be severely mentally ill and live under a bridge. The exchanges between Recruit (sane rich jackass) and Nino (delusional homeless compassionate human being) are actually really interesting to watch and kind of sweet in a Shibou Akiyuki way. When Recruit plans an elaborate date that involves dining with the Prime Minister and a helicopter ride over Tokyo Bay, Nino doesn't understand, wants to go to Venus, and then when Recruit tells her to 'keep it in the atmosphere' asks to go to the mouth of the Arakawa so that she can see the ocean that the leaf boats that she spends her time making flow to. It reminded me of that old Holling Clancy Holling book Paddle to the Sea, which reminded me of second grade, which I liked, and it was sweet in its own right because it was a nice role-reversal with the landed, moneyed, male force as the delusional, unpleasant, small person.

I don't know what the actual experience of homelessness is like in Japan but my impression is that it's widely variable due to Japan's welfare systems and communitarian weltanschauung, and that rather than being a crass and tasteless exploitation, Arakawa is more like the Hogan's Heroes to The Box Man's Sophie's Choice. One may be more raw and 'real' and in-your-face but I know which one I would rather watch twice. My mother works with insane and/or homeless people and I know whereof I right. As of yet I don't know if I'm supposed to like Arakawa or even if the show WANTS me to 'like' it. I do know that I'll be watching more of it, though, and trying to puzzle out what I think.