Shorts Review: Otaku Taco Truck “MUSHROOM ATTACK PART 1”

Our trio of Taco fanatics, Swiss, Kwala and Mari make a killing selling their Tac-O-Pus, but Kwala becomes sick of making the exact same thing over and over again. Kwala proposes that they find some new ingredients to make some new tacos and Swiss and Mari, although apprehensive, agree. The trio head to downtown where Kwala gets some mushrooms, and while he makes some kickass tacos with them, Swiss, Kwala and Mari realize that the mushrooms were DRUGS!! And the episode ends with the stiffly animated cooking ninjas and the evil granny closing in on the three, with plans to steal their magic stove.

Now when watching the pilot I was lenient in my rating due to the show just pushing out all its exposition, and in turn I thought that this would allow the show to finally show its own identity in comedic writing and style. Did it do this? Was my leniency rewarded? Not really.

Again the animation isn’t too pretty to look at, with very stiff movement and lip-syncing like sock puppets. But now having seen two episodes, I found the perfect word to describe the animation style. Cheap. Not lazy, let me emphasize that. It’s animation that is on the very edge of good and bad animation. The character designs are pretty interesting and diverse, truly creating a style and tone to this world BUT the flat coloring, the stiffness of the animation, and just bland background deisgn make the show not enjoyable to look at.

The characters aren’t much better. I really don’t have a firm grip of our main characters’ personalities. I get really basic archetypical personas of the three but none of the three have the personalities to create any sort of comedic conflict within the group. Making the show not all that funny. The only funny parts are the REALLY badly animated parts and this show shouldn’t be funny for that reason.

Unfortunately Otaku Taco Truck has landed itself in the worst sort of bad show, the Ok show. It’s not an animated show that’s ungodly annoying, or a show that is unbelievably ugly, it’s a show that once you see it, it leaves your head just as quick.