Halfadeckshort on June 2, 2010 · in Arakawa Under the Bridge

Summary:

The episode begins with Recruit’s employees, whom we saw on top of the bridge last episode, taking tea in the vacation home. Rather than tell his underlings exactly what he is doing under the bridge, Recruit comes up with a wild lie involving a new company that he is setting up under the river to generate power. To corroborate his story, he “hires” Sister, Maria, and Whitey to pose as employees. Things go as well as can be expected (read: not good) until Nino, Hoshi, and the Chief arrive and want to get in on the game, and things get much worse. Flailing, Recruit tries to pass Nino off as his secretary, but she refuses to be acknowledged as anything other than his lover. This causes Takai, Recruit’s actual secretary, to lose his composure (and more of his hair) as he suddenly finds himself demoted in Recruit’s heart.

Takai moves in with Recruit in an effort to see what’s really going on and eventually tries, with the aid of Hoshi, to create a rift between Recruit and Nino by demanding that they greet each other properly with a kiss. A blushing Recruit immediately protests, giving Takai more leverage to pry them apart, but Nino defuses the situation by simply kissing Recruit. Takai realizes that the young man he has been watching over all this time has grown up and found a companion to ease the loneliness that he had lived with his whole life. Seeing that there is nothing left for him to do, he leaves Recruit in Nino’s hands and returns to the office where Kou’s other employee, Shimazaki, is presenting the photos of her secret investigation to Kou’s father.

Reaction:

This was a fairly amusing episode, with its surprise kiss and corporate bedroom boardroom antics, and we finally got to meet the last two characters who flash by toward the end of the regular ED animation: Takai and Shimazaki. Though we didn’t get to spend much time with Shimazaki, the spy who appeared to be extremely taken with Whitey, we did get quite a few scenes featuring Recruit’s right hand man Takai. His obvious love for Kou led to a number of hilarious moments, with the secret cavity search (no, no double meaning there), his hisho (“private secretary”) apron (no, no double meaning there), and the errant rice grain removal bit being standouts for me. My favorite bit though had to be the exchange between Maria and Takai: I loved how he assumed that Maria was complimenting him as she walked up, but she was actually complimenting herself, using his forehead as a mirror. Recruit should have known that there was no way that he could tame Maria, as Sister doesn’t even stand a chance against her, but it was fun watching her make him squirm (he definitely should’ve gone with an outsourced HR firm).

The reflective tone of the last episode didn’t entirely carry over to this one (the forehead thing does not count), but we do get some important information on Recruit’s formative years. While not anywhere near as absurd as the baby Papa incident of the first episode, or quite as touching as the flashback centered around Nino washing Kou’s hair, the scene with Kou’s father on Parent’s Day is the purest expression of the family tenet that we’ve seen yet, as Papa doesn’t even want Kou’s dreams to be influenced by anyone else, not even his own father. Though Kou tries to resist, we are shown later in Takai’s flashback that Kou puts his father’s isolationist teachings into practice, going so far as to tell Takai that he is lucky to be rid of his wife and his marriage when he loses both to his career. Even so, the words at the end of the introduction “I probably could still find that essay, if I looked” are extremely telling: just as he clung to that childhood essay, he is still hanging on to the dream that he could actually have a connection with his father, the same dream he had back then.

Recognizing Recruit’s need, and trying to ease his own loneliness, Takai has tried to act as a stand-in for Recruit’s father: lavishing on Recruit the attention and love that any doting parent would have for his child. Ric is only able to accept this because Takai is his employee, and he owes Takai nothing but his salary. Their relationship is extremely limited, however, and Recruit’s lack of true human interaction is made clear in a humorous way through Takai’s analysis of his love power level. Though his evaluation is a bit off (I’m pretty sure even middle school kids know that you can’t get pregnant from kissing) the analysis playfully highlights the fact that Recruit has never had any kind  of real relationship. We laugh at Ric’s reliance on shoujo manga for dating tips, but the truth is that he doesn’t know where else to turn. You wouldn’t ask an employee for dating advice, and he certainly can’t ask his real father either. Even so, the relationship between Recruit and his father may not be exactly as it appears on the surface.

At the closing of the episode, looking at the slides of evidence that Shimazaki has prepared, Papa voices his displeasure over the life that Kou is leading, again touching on the fact that he had raised Kou not to rely on, or even believe in, anyone. He vows not to allow Kou to dirty the family name any further, and it looks like Recruit is going to be in a good deal of trouble when Papa gets a hold of him.  There is another side to his scene, however, and that is reinforced by the line that the narrator delivers immediately before the closing credits: “Papa is a father too.” While his disgust appears to be focused entirely on Takai’s reliance on Kou, it is difficult to entirely dismiss the idea that, in his own way, Papa is trying to be the best father he can be to Kou. Looked at from this perspective, his harsh words during the car ride come across a bit differently, as it is a simple truth that young Kou can’t possibly understand what it is to have a son and be responsible for bringing him up the Ichinomiya way. This doesn’t excuse the loneliness and suffering that he has inflicted on Kou by any means, but the possibility exists that despite all of his brusque words, he does actually care for Kou. While I’m not holding out hope that there will be a warm embrace between the two of them when they come face to face (like the boy and his father in the introduction) I can’t help but think that there will be some sort of reconciliation between them in the end: a metaphorical bridge to match the one that Kou is currently living under.

As for Recruit and Nino, while there’s no need for reconciliation, there was a bit of movement on the dating front this time with Nino delivering Recruit’s first kiss. Even though it may have seemed forced, due to Takai’s and Hoshi’s prodding, it was again made clear at the beginning of the episode, when Nino refused to pretend to be Recruit’s secretary, that she doesn’t do anything she doesn’t want to do. When Recruit was too embarrassed to even entertain the possibility of a kiss, Nino moved their relationship forward with simple human contact, easing Recruit’s loneliness and slipping past his defenses in a way that Takai never could (even though those reciprocal cavity checks are a bit suspect…). It is this realization, that Recruit has almost completely let down his guard around Nino, that convinces Takai to leave, knowing that man he tried to treat as a son had found a companion to fill the void in his heart.

Though Recruit and Nino still have a long way to go toward having a truly romantic relationship, whether or not their relationship continues to progress will come down to how far Recruit is willing to go to defy his father.  I suspect that we’ll get a chance to see just how far that is very soon. Until then.