The other noitaminA show of the Spring season, Tsuritama sounded like one of those shows where you just have to wonder whether the anime industry has started to really run out of ideas. The daily lives of four high school boys (which is already a depressingly original premise), who fish. That’s obviously not just it, but that basic premise doesn’t really inspire much enthusiasm.
But hey, it’s not like noitaminA could do much worse than Guilty Crown, right?
We start with our main character, Yuki, who lives with his grandmother and has to frequently move across Japan for *reasons*. We first see him on his last day of school before he transfers out, and through a combination of having not been there all that long and a little problem we’ll get to in a bit he was unable to really make any friends or memories there. He’s asked to come to the front and say a few words goodbye, but he doesn’t have much to say. But standing up in front of everyone, all of them staring and (in his mind) judging, he starts having one of his anxiety attacks.
His anxiety attacks are one of the key aspects of his character and, to a lesser extent, the story. He’s not particularly confident or outgoing, and constantly second guesses himself, so he has them pretty often. He sweats, has trouble speaking and, most notably, his face uncontrollably contorts into a rictus of anger. Of course, inside he’s just scared and anxious and whatever, but it certainly hasn’t helped him form good first impressions with people. But that’s just the external representation, what the others see – from his perspective ocean water rises up and completely cover him, drowning him. A clever bit of imagery that, capturing his feelings but also being keeping with the theme of the show!
After all that he and his grandmother move to Enoshima, and he has his first day of school. His introduction to the class goes fairly smoothly (even if he’s overthinking everything), and it’s all looking up. Until the other transfer student, Haru, comes in, wearing odd clothes and carrying a fishing pole. He introduces himself as an alien, spies Yuki, pretends to fish him, and caps it all off by shooting Yuki between the eyes with a watergun. Yuki blacks out, and wakes to find himself doing the Enoshima dance in front of the class with Haru. The episodes continues with Haru using the watergun to get Yuki to go fishing with him and to get a classmate, Natsuki (the “Prince of Fishing” as some refer to him), to teach them how to fish. Yuki’s grandmother decides to let Haru live with her and Yuki because FUCK, why not, and a strange Indian man named Akira watches the three classmates as they fish. Also Akira’s pet duck/best character in the entire show, Tapioca, gets introduced.
From there the show introduces us to a wide and colourful cast of secondary characters, the boys all go fishing, a mysterious and eccentric organization ‘Duck’ gets involved with things, Haru wants to fish an alien out of the ocean, they all get summer jobs, there’s some family drama, whitebait is eaten and lots of people dance the Enoshima. For the first half at least Tsuritama is mostly a slice-of-life where Yuki learns the joys of fishing and becomes fast friends with Yuki and Natsuki (and Akira later), but there are stirrings of something bigger to come. At this point, it’s wonderfully upbeat, optimistic and even joyous. Nothing all that big happens, but even if there’s a falling out it all gets resolved with a happy conclusion. Basically, it’s a lot of fun to watch here, and rather uplifting. In the last third, the tone does get quite a bit darker, which was not really expected, but it doesn’t feel like a complete shift to a different show (though the number of parallels that can be drawn with the final few episodes of Madoka is amusingly high). It does allow it to get rather ‘awesome’ and ‘epic’ mind, more so than it could ever have been if it had been consistent the whole way through. Somehow it manages to make fishing pretty badass, which is quite impressive. On the whole, the story is pretty good, the character arcs are believable and there’s real growth there (especially with Yuki) and it’s all quite engaging.
The music in Tsuritama is, well, I don’t really remember much of it apart from the OP and ED. The ED is upbeat and a bit chill, it works, but the OP man, MAN. That shit is fucking CATCHY and fun as HELL. Complements the show itself perfectly!
Visually, Tsuritama is a veritable delight. The colours are just so bright, so clean, so vibrant, and so strong, it’s almost like a breath of fresh air from… everything that isn’t so wonderfully colourful! Combined with the generally fluid and detailed animation and it just becomes great to look at. There are occasionally moments when the animation gets a little stupid – one time when Yuki is trying to land a lure in a bucket in the evening springs to mind – but it avoids QUALITY for the most part. One definite benefit is that the visual style really helps to mask and blend in the CG that’s used.
While it doesn’t tend to use much in the way of imagery or other visual metaphors, when they are used they are done well. The one that stands out in my mind is when Yuki is fishing for the first time, and screwing everything up. He starts having one of his anxiety attacks, but after the water goes past his head, he gets a bite – and the pull from the fish pulls him straight out of the water too. It’s an absolutely perfect moment just from the first episode, cementing how important fishing will be to him, and it’s executed flawlessly.
While the change in tone towards the end is a bit odd and probably wasn’t needed, Tsuritama is still a really fun and upbeat watch. At the very least it’s made me genuinely curious about fishing. And learning the Enoshima dance. And whitebait (why is that stuff in everything?). I recommend it!
8/10
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