Kategorie: Arts and Culture

Oddo takushii ( = odd taxi), the simultaneously weirdest and best Japanese anime series I’ve seen in a long time. Somewhere between jazz and rap, alternately strange, brutal and miraculous, forever lost in the nocturnal cityscapes of Shibuya, Harajuku, highbrow hotels and junk food places, the docklands and other more or less well known Tokyo haunts, the taxi (as arch-Japanese a place as trains or hot baths) and its driver, a seemingly phlegmatic walrus (all characters are anthropomorphic animals) are at the centre of this rollercoaster ride through organised crime, middle class banality, prostitution, apps & memes, millennial messages and the occasional drawn and fired handgun.

But like so many Japanese movies, deep down this is all about values, justice and dignity. And indeed it’s amazing how in such a conformity-obsessed society, the visual arts universe is so populated by individualists, misfits, odd characters and unlikely heroes. Maybe there is actually a correlation there…. Well done, TV Tokyo (and DJ Punpee for the brilliant opening tune)!

If it is indeed true that our European brains were ‚wired‘ in the medieval village community, then that goes a long way to explaining the mesmerising effect of this Netflix serial. At least on me – I’m totally hooked.

Essentially, it’s Twin Peaks in provincial Luxembourg. Minus evil spirits, but everything else is there: the detective hero from the city (in tiny Luxembourg, just half an hour’s drive away) who has to work his way around the wall of silence of the locals, but harbours a dark secret himself. The local alpha males willing to break any rule or principle for power. The naive/innocent local assistant cop, a kind of young Parzival. The sex & drugs & town hall corruption, the girls in puberty who go everywhere (as opposed to heaven) – and even the Log Lady makes an appearance in the shape of the village idiot who babbles truth to power. It also has impressive camerawork on lush nature and dark forests.

And the best is that the whole thing is spoken in Lëtzebuergisch – essentially a strong dialect of German (the linguistic term is Moselfränkisch) which lapses into French when approaching military, police, judicial and administrative topics. Although Lëtzebuergisch is phonetically and in its sound shifts from standard German often pretty close to my native Rheinisch dialect, I need the English subtitles. The German TV adaptation, I understand, dubs all texts into standard German and therefore takes out half the charm. According to Wiki, in Luxembourg itself the serial has broken all imaginable records in terms of ratings: 29 % of the adult population of the Grand Duchy (with a total of 620.000) have watched it on TV, and many more on the internet.

Each of the 12 sequels is only max. 30 minutes long. A second season is in strong demand. So this is my recommendation for switching off from COVID if you live in Belgium or your Netflix offers ‚Capitani‘. Äddi (=bye)