Odd Taxi – 11

「あの日に戻れたら」 (Ano Hi ni Modore Tara)
“If We Could Go Back to That Day”

This episode gave me some Perfect Blue vibes, anyone else got the same feeling? 

It seems Rui is dealing with some internal struggles, and this episode gave her a lot more depth as a character. It fully fleshed out why she has that double personality, not overly uncommon for people who perform on stage to have their stage persona and their daily life one, though. 

It looked at first like it was just the trope they threw on top of her character. But it’s more than that. She is an overachiever, and because of that, she tends to look down on others. When Mystery Kiss was first set up, it consisted of three girls, but after a producer came in and decided Yuki was bound to be the center, instead of Rui, conflict arose between the two girls. 

Both Shiho and Yuki wanted Rui to be the center, so it came as a shock to the whole group. Rui exchanged messages with Yuki, seemingly treating, and decided to meet up at the agency late at night. When Rui shows up, she finds Yuki already dead. 

Yuki Mitsuya IS that Narita girl, furthermore Yamamoto decided to replace her with a look-alike, and have her use the deceased name. 

Yamamoto hired Sekiguchi and Yano to dispose of the body, in return, they now own half the group’s income. Wrapping her up in a tarp and violating her body so she becomes unrecognizable. 

A body wrapped up in a tarp, bricks hanging from its side, descending to the bottom of a seemingly endless void, the stage is set, the knife is cast, and the cat is out of the bag.

This explains why Yamamoto made her wear masks, and why they were so cautious as to not show her face in public. 

Then as Rui falls deeper into madness and despair she comes across Baba, and almost incrusts a relationship with him, he becomes her anchor to reality. 

On the other hand, when the news broke out, Odokawa starts putting the pieces together, he realizes the girl who loves Karage is not the same girl he first originally drove. He’s so close to knowing the full truth, he can almost taste it. He gets a surprise visit from Big Brother Diamond, Odokawa doesn’t trust him, and we learn Little Diamond is holding back from speaking to his big bro. That’s mostly Odokawas fault, but Big Bro Diamond confirms they were never on opposite sides, so it seems like he might have a resurgence. 

Imai, even with Odokawa’s warning, is still captured by Yano and Co. And is just seconds away from committing the bank heist. A.K.A checking out his lottery money (or is it an actual heist?). But Odokawa and Dobu have their case switching plan in place. And ready to execute.

Baba has to have a tough conversation with Shibagaki, it was honestly a little heart-wrenching, Baba didn’t say anything Shibagaki already didn’t know, but it hurts hearing it from the person who has been your partner for so long. Shibagaki is seemingly stuck in his old ways and doesn’t want to change his set formula. So maybe this separation seems like Satoshi will have his place in the spotlight, and maybe it’s what Shibagaki needs, someone tough that challenges him and just doesn’t agree with him in everything. (aka is not a yes man) Satoshi gave me the vibe he’s level-headed but thorough in what he does. Maybe he’s the perfect combination for Shibagaki as he might be able to bring him down from his high horse and look at things more analytically.

Gouriki is searching for answers about Odokawa, at this point he’s coming up to stalker levels (maybe I’m being too harsh), why is he going to such lengths, just for a friend. I smell a plot device. He finds out something quite interesting, it seems both Odokawa’s parent’s committed double suicide, or at least that’s what the police concluded from the accident. Odokawa was able to escape though.

Then in his search he comes up to a hospital, and it seems Odokawa all but suppressed that memory, he kept a thought diary with his daily routine and stuff, but Gouriki is denied access to it because it’s not something a General Practioner should be looking at, to which he exclaims, he doesn’t want to look at it as a doctor but as Odokawa’s friend. What will he find in that diary? And will it be the key to get Odokawa back to reality? And exploiting this whole synesthesia theory? 

All of the answers were given when Yamamoto held the press conference, of course, we still don’t know who the murderer is. But the plot has been so carefully handled and all of my predictions have been blown out of the water, so at this point, I’m afraid to make a prediction. As Enzo said so much more eloquently than me, ‘nothing is a coincidence in Odd Taxi’. So we’ll just have to wait and see.

Certainly a little bit of an info dump this episode, and the way this show handles dialogue it might have been a little bit hard to keep up, so let me know if I missed anything. As we rage towards the conclusion, this certainly was a much-needed episode!

Last week my impatience got the better of me, but thankfully this week we finally got answers, and everything seems to be back on track!         

Preview