Spoiler warning. The protagonist's past in the anime "Odd Taxi" was quite pitiful. The story is set in a world where anthropomorphic animals live. The protagonist is a middle-aged walrus working as a private taxi driver. He is bad with people and has a grumpy personality. According to him, because he had an unlovable personality since childhood, he was abandoned by his parents at a young age and is completely alone in the world. And despite living alone, he seems to have someone staying at his house, and talks with someone inside. Because of this, people around him suspect he might be committing a crime, such as kidnapping a minor. Furthermore, for some reason, despite being a walrus, he dislikes the ocean and avoids getting near it, even having nightmares related to the sea, which led to insomnia. A gorilla doctor, one of the protagonist's few friends, ends up examining his insomnia. However, the cause of the protagonist's insomnia is not entirely clear, and the gorilla takes a CT scan of the protagonist's brain, feeling that he "should go to a bigger hospital." Gorilla: "What do I look like to you?" Protagonist: "Well, a 'gorilla', obviously?" Gorilla: "I suppose so, haha." The protagonist had a strange talent. He could easily pick out a specific person mixed in a crowd. Even if the person is wearing a mask to hide their identity, he can still identify them. It almost makes you feel like it's a kind of superpower. The protagonist himself jokes, "I can see the auras of other people's souls," but he wondered, "Why can't anyone else do what I do?"
Due to various circumstances, the gorilla took a break from the hospital and had some free time, so instead of acting as a doctor, he decides to investigate the protagonist's past to treat his insomnia. The gorilla visits the protagonist's birthplace, checks past newspapers at the local library, and finds an obituary for the protagonist's parents. According to the article, it was a family suicide by driving a car into the ocean. Only the protagonist, the only son, miraculously survived. The gorilla obtains the protagonist's childhood diary and hospital medical records. According to them, the protagonist's childhood was miserable. His father had a mistress on the side and rarely came home. His mother suffered from hyperphagia due to stress and was as plump as a walrus. At school, the protagonist was called a "walrus" and was heavily bullied. While the protagonist managed to hold back his tears at home, he cried almost every day at school. Growing up in such an environment, the protagonist hated humans, but liked animals. He couldn't look humans in the eyes, but he could look animals in the eyes. And he wished, "I want to become an animal too." One day, the three family members went out in a car, which was a rare occurrence. His mother was driving, and his father was slumped in the back seat. The protagonist was excited, wondering, "Where are they taking me?" At that moment, his mother had completely lost her mind and drove the car straight into the ocean for a family suicide. Both parents died, but only the protagonist miraculously survived. However, in addition to sustaining brain damage during the accident, the psychological shock caused him to see humans only as animals. And when he looked in the mirror, his own reflection had become a walrus. The young protagonist secretly rejoiced at this, thinking, "My wish came true."
In other words, this is not a "world where animals live," but actually a normal real-world setting. The protagonist's memory and recognition abilities were tricks made possible because "human appearances looked like animals to him." In the final episode: Due to various events, the protagonist ends up being chased by the yakuza and the police. After a car chase, he gets into his taxi, dives off a bridge, and plunges into Tokyo Bay. As the taxi sinks to the ocean floor, the protagonist closes his eyes, remembers being dragged into his mother's suicide, and accepts death. This scene is genuinely heartbreaking. Perhaps due to the trauma of almost being killed by his mother, he doesn't cling that tightly to life. And since he has saved the people he could save to the best of his ability and punished the villains who deserved it, he has no regrets left. However, an alpaca muay-thai fighter who admires the protagonist rushes to the scene, rescues him from the taxi sunken on the ocean floor, and pulls him out. When the rescued protagonist opens his eyes, a "human doctor" with a rugged, gorilla-like appearance is standing right in front of him. To the gorilla-like doctor's question, "What do I look like to you?", the protagonist answers, "You look like a human." Being rescued by the alpaca while re-experiencing the trauma allowed his past to be wiped away, enabling him to forgive humans at the same time, and his perceptual disorder was cured.
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