Odd Taxi: In the Woods

If you are new to the Odd Taxi franchise, this is not the entry you should start with. Although it is a recap of the original series, due to it being a movie, much of the dialogue and mystery storytelling which made the original so great had to be skipped in this installment. So, if you are new, go watch the original. It is one of my 10/10s, and I would recommend it to anyone without hesitation. You've probably seen the user score hovering around a 6/10. This mostly happened due to disappointment with what this movie ended up being. Peoplewere expecting a sequel (me included), and unfortunately that's not what this is. What the description says is accurate, it's a recap with a reveal of what happened after the cliffhanger final scene of the anime. Yes, I do think it's a scummy move to have cut this out and resold it, and this anime kind of deserves the pounding it's getting in the reviews for having done that. That aside, however, I genuinely enjoyed watching this movie. It's an interesting recap as far as recap films go; the first 3/4ths or so of the anime is recapped using an interviewer as a plot device. The interviewer is talking about the events prior to the big finale with the characters, explicitly stating some new perspectives that you might have missed on your first viewing of the TV anime. Then, the finale is played more or less intact, with some new scenes added in as a nod to the final episode's reveal and some further acknowledgement of the TV anime's cliffhanger. Then the new scene of the cliffhanger happens. No spoilers in this review, but if the reveal of what happens is your only drive to watch this movie, I'd say just look it up online instead. It's not worth sitting through the whole film just to see it. It's honestly nothing special at all, which is kind of a shame, honestly. If mean, they really had to cut that scene out and create this whole stink over *that*? If you're interested in seeing a slightly new spin on this world and it's characters, however, it's absolutely worth watching this. For me, the new stills of the characters they showed in the end credits was worth my time by itself: I loved revisiting this series, and even if this is a water-downed Odd Taxi, it's still Odd Taxi, and Odd Taxi is great! So if you're ever considering a rewatch of the original, but are short on time for whatever reason, don't let the hate against this scare you off, deserved though it may be. It may not have been what you wanted, but it serves its purpose as a recap quite adequately.

Who was this made for exactly? If you have not watched the anime yet, this could be kind of confusing since you won't have the full context behind the story and characters and you may feel like the story wasn't too fulfilling, but if you watched the anime already this does not add anything to what you already know. This is just one giant waste of time. A 2 hour film consists of 90% recap with some commentary from the anime's characters giving personal recounts of their experiences. The last 20 minutes shows what happens in the end of the anime, but even then nothingmuch happens that you can't guess yourself. Nothing but a cash grab.

Allow me to summarize the various video media of OddTaxi. OddTaxi (anime): the story centered around the taxi driver Odokawa with a cliffhanger ending leaving out 1 final scene. OddTaxi Movie: a shitty cashgrab recap recutting the anime intercut with sitdown still-frame interviews with all of the characters and some new scenes to resolve much of the broader narratives of the characters and partially finish the 1 final scene of the cliffhanger ending before cutting away to leave the scene unfinished to further leave it as a cliffhanger ending like a bad joke at the viewer's expense. These are adaptations of the manga: Odd Taxi. RoOT - Routeof OddTaxi (live-action TV show): the story of OddTaxi centered around the PI investigators who were conducting the interviews of the movie, here actually doing PI murder-mystery investigations to follow clues and go around collecting evidence and risking their lives to solve the case, includes a ton of subplots and connective tissue that was entirely skipped over in the movie while only missing a few little relevant bits the movie had. Here the cliffhanger ending is fully resolved (the full story is revealed to be rather dumb). This is an adaptation of the manga: RoOT of OddTaxi. In summary, this is a dull murder-mystery story that has been hacked up into a bunch of incomplete versions of the same story for the sake of scummy cashgrabs. My interest in this series is dead and it's no mystery why. 1/10 (where 5/10 is average) I'd recommend the live-action for the story but its technical execution is quite boring (a remarkable low in comparison to a literal cashgrab recut like the movie).