Odd Taxi

About

Odd Taxi is an anime series written by Kazuya Konomoto and directed by Baku Kinoshita. It centers on Odokawa, an anthropomorphic, 41-year-old walrus who has a job as a cab driver. Though generally anti-social, Odokawa engages in conversations with his passengers, eventually tying him up in a mystery that puts the yakuza and police on his tail. The series was widely praised by critics and fans, becoming a word-of-mouth hit throughout 2021 after its release in April that year.

History

On February 19th, 2021, Crunchyroll debuted the announcement trailer for Odd Taxi on its YouTube channel (shown below), receiving nearly 73,000 views in 11 months. The series premiered on AT-X and TV Tokyo on April 6th, 2021.

Odd Taxi's first season ran 13 episodes and concluded on June 29th, 2021.

Reception

The series proved to be a sleeper hit among viewers and received mostly positive reviews from fans and critics. The series has a rating of 86/100 on Anilist,^[1] 8.6 on IMDb^[2] and 8.8/10 on MyAnimeList.^[3] StarCrossedAnime^[4] gave the show a rating of 96/100 and wrote, "I might even say, if there was an anime of the decade competition held today, it would probably be my pick."

It was particularly prominent among YouTube critics. For example, YouTuber Gigguk posted a video calling it 2021's best anime, encouraging people to watch it if they'd missed it (shown below, left). YouTuber Mother's Basement called the show a "masterpiece" in his video on the series (shown below, right).

Online Presence

In addition to the series' prominence among YouTube anime critics, Odd Taxi developed a strong presence on social media through word of mouth. The series subreddit^[5] was created on February 20th, 2021, and gained over 4,300 subscribers by the end of the year. The series also has a dedicated Fandom^[6] wiki and TV Tropes^[7] page.

Search Interest

External References