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EP. REVIEW: Odd Taxi


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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 3804
PostPosted: Fri Apr 23, 2021 9:57 am Reply with quote
MPAndonee wrote:
I have never seen a foreign show (in this case a Japanese Anime!) with so much talking.

I think "manzai" comedy underpins this show. The two guys on the radio are manzai performers, and the quipping conversation between Odakawa and Shirakawa in the park has that same quality.

Tied with Mashiro no Oto for my favorite show of the spring season.

I noticed the reviewer mentioned how the characters sometimes talk over each other. I don't know how Odd Taxi was produced, but when Matsuo Kou made Kurenai, he recorded the actors first and had the studio draw the animations to fit their performances. This is a more expensive, but more realistic method of direction. Most anime consists of serial line-reading by one seiyuu at a time. Actual human conversations in groups doesn't work that way.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:41 pm Reply with quote
I think the episode was a lot more nuance on gacha, just like Tanaka said at the beginning of the episode with the eraser sequence, it's easy to blame other/society/etc but in the end he can't really blame anyone/anything but himself. The personal responsibility puck as to stop somewhere and I can't think of a more clear cut example than pushing a button or not. He could have stopped at any time and the game make no promise that anything material will ever come out of playing the paying the game (no possibility of gaining more money than you put in). This is entirely his fault from beginning to end (including walking in the street when he got his Dodo, btw aren't gacha game by necessity server base and so he would not have lost anything even if his phone died?).
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ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor


Joined: 19 Jan 2012
Posts: 637
PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 2:01 pm Reply with quote
meiam wrote:
I think the episode was a lot more nuance on gacha, just like Tanaka said at the beginning of the episode with the eraser sequence, it's easy to blame other/society/etc but in the end he can't really blame anyone/anything but himself. The personal responsibility puck as to stop somewhere and I can't think of a more clear cut example than pushing a button or not. He could have stopped at any time and the game make no promise that anything material will ever come out of playing the paying the game (no possibility of gaining more money than you put in). This is entirely his fault from beginning to end (including walking in the street when he got his Dodo, btw aren't gacha game by necessity server base and so he would not have lost anything even if his phone died?).

This is a terrible take on how gambling addiction works.
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave



Joined: 14 Jan 2019
Posts: 480
Location: Poland
PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 2:52 pm Reply with quote
He had his own faults - like reviewer pointed out, it was clever to first show he is someone primed to desperately seek some kind of "win" due to his partially self-assign position on the "bottom" of class society - and not-great family life, which I don't see mentioned in review. There were sign that his brother was the favorite and there was some brutality on family - even before father's beatings he was afraid of the brother as well, and Reddit poster claiming to be Japanese claimed that approximating on their house size and quality they should be rich enough middle class family that father's fury was way out of the line (I don;t mean it's OK to beat children, but it could be at least understandable if it was very serious loss).
Anyway, he felt he was on the bottom in home and school, so he was primed to fall for easy promise and quick satisfaction that hazard provides.
There was a really good line about how games should provide escape from real life's troubles, not recreate the rat race.
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Hal14



Joined: 01 Apr 2018
Posts: 652
Location: Heart of africa
PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 3:02 pm Reply with quote
a_Bear_in_Bearcave wrote:
and Reddit poster claiming to be Japanese claimed that approximating on their house size and quality they should be rich enough middle class family that father's fury was way out of the line (I don;t mean it's OK to beat children, but it could be at least understandable if it was very serious loss).


As a general rule, take anything on reddit with a grain of salt. Regardless, what matters is what the show establishes, and within the episode, Tanaka, in hindsight, realized that his dad's credit card was "the kind of card a student might use". That doesn't sound upper-middle-class to me. I feel the point of that statement. and the fact that it made him sentimental, is that, looking back, he emphasized with his dad's financial situation.
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3627
PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 4:22 pm Reply with quote
Great episode. It wasn't surprising to see him finally get the dodo and then lose it immediately, but the only nitpick I have with that is that these games are all online. As soon as he made the pull (and spent the money), it should all be in his account, there's no need to back it up to the cloud first.
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Ryujin99



Joined: 21 Jul 2010
Posts: 185
PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 8:11 pm Reply with quote
HAL14 wrote:
a_Bear_in_Bearcave wrote:
and Reddit poster claiming to be Japanese claimed that approximating on their house size and quality they should be rich enough middle class family that father's fury was way out of the line (I don;t mean it's OK to beat children, but it could be at least understandable if it was very serious loss).


As a general rule, take anything on reddit with a grain of salt. Regardless, what matters is what the show establishes, and within the episode, Tanaka, in hindsight, realized that his dad's credit card was "the kind of card a student might use". That doesn't sound upper-middle-class to me. I feel the point of that statement. and the fact that it made him sentimental, is that, looking back, he emphasized with his dad's financial situation.


I think there are several factors worth considering when looking at the family's financial situation. First of all, they owned a house in what appears to be the Tokyo area. This isn't something a poor or lower-middle class family could typically afford. On top of this, the parents bought the elder brother a computer for him to play games on, something that more than likely cost at least 100,000 JPY plus the cost of the games themselves, typically 5,000+ JPY per game. While I generally agree that the remark about "the kind of card a student might use" is probably a good indication that the family wasn't "rich" per se, I think the other factors indicate that they were relatively well off as a family.

Ultimately, my point is that I sincerely doubt that being out 100,000 was an enormous loss for the family.
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GDinn



Joined: 20 Dec 2017
Posts: 13
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:55 am Reply with quote
Covnam wrote:
Great episode. It wasn't surprising to see him finally get the dodo and then lose it immediately, but the only nitpick I have with that is that these games are all online. As soon as he made the pull (and spent the money), it should all be in his account, there's no need to back it up to the cloud first.


I haven't seen the episode yet, so I can't comment on how bad an example that might be, I can say with absolute clarity there are some gacha games out there with absolutely terrible backup systems. Fate/Grand Order, for example, uses a randomly generated code and password system. If you swap phones, you'd better have set up and written out the code and password beforehand.

If you didn't, or wrote the code out wrong, it's a pretty grueling process to even have a chance at getting something back. Lotta e-mails with information on your purchase history, the name you picked for your character, which servants you have, how they might be leveled up, who your favorite was, your nine digit friend code...
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3627
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 2:06 am Reply with quote
GDinn wrote:

I haven't seen the episode yet, so I can't comment on how bad an example that might be, I can say with absolute clarity there are some gacha games out there with absolutely terrible backup systems. Fate/Grand Order, for example, uses a randomly generated code and password system. If you swap phones, you'd better have set up and written out the code and password beforehand.


In this case the issue wasn't logging in to the account. They basically played it off like it was an old save.

For what it's worth, a lot of games these days can link their accounts to other services (SNS) or work with built in backups. I know FGO for example works with icloud even if you don't have a code. So even if the game has a poor account system, there's other ways around it.
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave



Joined: 14 Jan 2019
Posts: 480
Location: Poland
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 6:03 am Reply with quote
Covnam wrote:
GDinn wrote:

I haven't seen the episode yet, so I can't comment on how bad an example that might be, I can say with absolute clarity there are some gacha games out there with absolutely terrible backup systems. Fate/Grand Order, for example, uses a randomly generated code and password system. If you swap phones, you'd better have set up and written out the code and password beforehand.


In this case the issue wasn't logging in to the account. They basically played it off like it was an old save.

For what it's worth, a lot of games these days can link their accounts to other services (SNS) or work with built in backups. I know FGO for example works with icloud even if you don't have a code. So even if the game has a poor account system, there's other ways around it.

I can again only quote someone's account, but some people have apparently seen some games (although very rare), where you had to press "accept" or something like that to finish adding the prize to the account. That would be enough to work.

Anyways it fits the theme where those games are often made "against" the user. I remember when I played some gacha game on free (in-game earn-able coins plus some free at start "real" coins, or maybe I hacked it - I forgot) it was incredibly easy to accidentally spend the "real" money as opposed to the one you could earn in game, and the UI was clearly made confusing on purpose. Of course losing gacha would be a step to far most users, so most games would usually avoid being *that* harmful or risk losing their walking wallets.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2021 9:22 am Reply with quote
a_Bear_in_Bearcave wrote:

I can again only quote someone's account, but some people have apparently seen some games (although very rare), where you had to press "accept" or something like that to finish adding the prize to the account. That would be enough to work.

Anyways it fits the theme where those games are often made "against" the user. I remember when I played some gacha game on free (in-game earn-able coins plus some free at start "real" coins, or maybe I hacked it - I forgot) it was incredibly easy to accidentally spend the "real" money as opposed to the one you could earn in game, and the UI was clearly made confusing on purpose. Of course losing gacha would be a step to far most users, so most games would usually avoid being *that* harmful or risk losing their walking wallets.


It's not about being "against" the user, it's about a discrepancy between the server account and the user device. If there's a difference between the two then the user can use that to it's advantages. You could pretty easily make a cheat program where the user can just chose what they win, to prevent that all the information is stored server side.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Fri Apr 30, 2021 3:39 am Reply with quote
I wouldn't turn my nose up at some of the erasers those kids were collecting. That bird-headed centaur was fabulous! Do want.

I know that "gacha" derives from the onomatopoeia of the gashapon machines, but it sure does sound like an on-the-nose loanword of "gotcha." Very Happy

I think I liked the review better than the episode. >.>
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Red_0.1



Joined: 12 May 2021
Posts: 17
PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2021 1:40 pm Reply with quote
Yoooooo, just realized that there is audio drama for this series and it feature the new character. Here is the link:
https://youtu.be/0PLHAWUGYPw

Man, this is cool bc it connects the MV and the anime too
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John Thacker



Joined: 28 Oct 2013
Posts: 1006
PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2021 1:46 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
However, in reality, broken windows is just smoke and mirrors: a misguided way of thinking that has led to myriad police abuses (e.g. stop-and-frisk) and no provable reduction in crime. Odd Taxi obviously has no fondness for the police


Eh, stop-and-frisk was born more of a gun control way of thinking than broken windows, though the evidence for a reduction of crime of either is pretty low. The evidence for a reduction in crime of having more police officers is fairly strong, though better with foot patrols than in vehicles.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2021 3:09 pm Reply with quote
And I wouldn't say broken window as been confirmed, but it definitely hasn't been shown to be wrong (like all things there are plenty of study confirming and denying it, but its not like only crack pot study confirm it, some pretty serious one do see significant difference).
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