Review: Aroha Bridge “Scholarchips and a drink”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

It’s graduation day at Aroha Bridge and we’ve got a crazy episode ahead. For starters, Ira’s shop is selling bad milk to everyone so he decides to go back to a shopkeeper’s class in an attempt to get better and show everyone what he’s made of. He accepts a scholarship inspired by his ethnicity which at first he isn’t thrilled about but soon opts in which gains the ire of the white kids in school.

While in school, the twins watch over the shop and then have to do battle with another twin duo that look exactly like them. Then Ira and his dad win awards and then teleport their holograms for the acceptance speeches.

Our Take

The great thing about Aroha Bridge is that it keeps getting weirder, but the series is starting to reflect the local NZ cultural issues that may not be all too different than what we see here. This is the power of adult animation on an international stage, uniting under common issues that haunt us all and then learning how different cultures deal with them. I would’ve never known that there was a Maori-White racial divide much in the same way in America where it seems that our politicians seem to have similar auspices despite the fact that we are all 10,000 miles away from each other. Aroha Bridge does a stellar job of broaching this subject all the while maintaining the humor that the series exhibits. Better yet, the second episode improves on some of the flaws for the show’s season premiere, namely doing a better job of tying together the three acts into one cohesive plot. I’ll put this in Monty terms. If this week’s episode were a sandwich, you’d be find in tossing the bread, but the stuff in the middle is delicious and worth the meal.