Fall Anime 2014 First Impressions: Orenchi No Furo Jijou

Four minutes of merman-in-bathtub action.

I have to admit that I was a little disappointed when the Crunchyroll player loaded and I saw that this was a short as opposed to a full-length episode. Also, the only thing the episode had time to do was set up the basic premise. However, that’s pretty much all you need to see to know whether or not this short will catch your interest.

The two main characters are Tatsumi and Wakasa, who are now living together after Tatsumi rescues a beached Wakasa from the riverbank. However, “living together” doesn’t completely describe their strange arrangement. Since Wakasa needs to stay in the water to live and hates the dirty river where he came from, he refuses to leave Tatsumi’s bathtub. From that setup, it’s implied that the rest of the show will be a comedy.

And that’s pretty much it. The animation is a bit more polished than most short anime, coming out on a level similar to a full-length TV anime episode quality-wise. The character designs also give it a bit of originality, with their impossible-in-real-life anime hair serving as an interesting point of connection between the average (Tatsumi) and the supernatural (Wakasa) so that they don’t look strange in the same frame.

While I’m not sure how the comedy will play out (since that’s where I’m assuming this show is going), the interesting premise and the short runtime make this an easy show to commit to.

Especially if lines like this float your boat