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Are you a furry?

If the answer is no, then watch this anime.

If the answer is yes, then you can still watch it of course, I'm not kink-shaming you or anything...

But what I'm trying to say is that Odd Taxi is not your typical furry-bait anime.

It is a story about normal everyday people struggling with their own problems. You have insecure social-media maniacs, idols willing to do anything to have a successful career, gacha-game addicts, and many more.

There is bound to be someone in this anime you can relate to. And if you yourself can't relate to them, you definitely know real-life people who ... are like that.

That for me is the biggest selling point of Odd Taxi. Its characters feel like real people. Their conversations feel like ones real people would have. And the dialog is natural and witty without looking like it's trying too hard.

As for the story, you follow the life of the protagonist Odokawa, a pessimistic taxi driver whose sarcasm alone can kill people. He is also the biggest contributor to the aforementioned wittiness of the dialogs. Overall a great protagonist to have.

As the story progresses you see his daily interactions with his customers while he drives them to their destinations. Being someone who interacts with a lot of people on a daily basis, he accidentally gets involved in the affairs of a criminal organization. Being blackmailed into helping them commit their crimes, he tries to find his way out of this dilemma.

You also see the side stories of some reoccurring characters. At first, they seem unrelated to the main story but as time goes on you will see that the exact opposite is the case.

Every person, every conversation, and even every item you see is somehow connected to each other. The attention to detail is phenomenal. This is also why the dialogs, at first, can look like your typical slice-of-life conversations, but as you later realize, each of them holds crucial information to paint the bigger picture in the end.

And that is also one of the great aspects of Odd Taxi. You're watching a mystery, you're trying to solve the underlying puzzle and you are rewarded for paying extra close attention to each and every detail because each scene gives you hints as to how everything will play out. And then towards the end suddenly all the dots connect and you stare in awe as the story reaches its mind-boggling conclusion.

If I had to criticize only one thing then it's the fact that they decided to end it with a twist hinting at a potential sequel. While I have nothing against the "open ending" approach many animes take, I think that in the case of Odd Taxi, the conclusion that is reached is so satisfying and complete that continuing the story seems kinda unnecessary.

The art and sound weren't outstanding but still very good at enhancing the show's atmosphere. The slightly cartoonish art style manages to capture the surrealism of the anthropomorphized animals perfectly. And the opening song with its jazzy hip-hop vibe always gets you in the mood for the episode.

In conclusion, Odd Taxi is an anime where people look like animals, but ironically feel more human than characters in other anime. You have a witty and interesting protagonist, an exciting mystery to solve, and a jaw-dropping conclusion to round it up.

If you haven't watched it yet and you're still not sold, I purposefully didn't go into the fact that the characters look like animals. But trust me, like all things in this anime, there is a very important reason for that.

If you want to know why that is then go watch it yourself. You definitely won't regret it.