Hiroshi Odokawa is a middle-aged taxi driver living in Tokyo. He’s also a walrus.
There are many animated works that swap out humans for animal avatars, but few are as charmingly pedestrian as “Odd Taxi,” a 13-episode anime series that aired in 2021. Odokawa and his pals may look like walruses, cats and monkeys, but there’s no swinging from the trees going on here. These animals lead normal Tokyo lives, shuffling between work, the sauna and the local watering hole while searching for love, money or fame.
Odokawa (played by Natsuki Hanae, who’s best known for boyish roles and whose voice is down a solid octave here) is a bit of a loner, perfectly content to ferry people around the city while otherwise keeping to himself, aside from the occasional drink with his friend, a white gibbon named Kakihana (Kappei Yamaguchi), and the local physician, a gorilla named Goriki (Ryohei Kimura). That’s until he’s pulled into a series of interconnected incidents all stemming from the disappearance of a young woman from Odokawa’s part of town. There are even rumors that the walrus himself may be involved.