Negative Positive Angler or NegaPosi Angler is one of the surprises of the Fall 2024 season. NUT produced this anime original. They previously produced The Saga of Tanya the Evil, and FLCL: Alternative.
Synopsis
Tsunehiro Sasaki is a university student with a large debt to loan sharks or Sarakin in Japan. He is then told by his doctor that he only has two years left to live. He wants to live the rest of his days carefree, but one day he gets chased by debt collectors. Sasaki falls into the sea and is then rescued by a group of fishing friends.
Sasaki starts developing friendships with them, even though he’s never fished before. He also starts to work at a convenience store where Hana and Takaaki work.
Episode 1 Negative Positive Angler Review
What I Liked
Art Style
Hiromi Taniguchi is the character designer and Kei Ichikura is the art director for this anime original.
Taniguchi has worked on Saga of Tanya the Evil, and the recent remake of Ranma1/2. While Ichikura has worked on DON’T TOY WITH ME MISS NAGATORO, Orange, and Laid-Back Camp the Movie.
To me it looks like each of the characters have their own art style. It’s like a different artist was assigned to one character, it looks very interesting. Maybe it’s to show the different personalities of the characters? I haven’t found anything online about why the characters have different art styles.
Niché Story
I have a thing for niché stories. Some of my favourites are:
- Welcome to the Ballroom: an anime about ballroom dancing.
- Kono Oto Tomare!: an anime that revolves around students that play the koto, the national instrument of Japan.
- A Place Further Than the Universe: a group of high school girls aim to visit Antarctica.
This is an anime about fishing. It starts off pretty dark with the main character, Sasaki, developing depression due to the loan sharks and his diagnosis. The rest of the episode focuses on fishing.
The next episode focuses on him learning and discovering the fun in fishing. The group of fishing friends try to convince him to see the fun. Taking him to a theme park, and a casual fishing competition.
There are a lot of other fishing anime, but with the inner conflict Sasaki has with all his ongoing problems, it adds that flavour that other fishing anime don’t have.
Would I Recommend Negative Positive Angler?
If you’re into these niché anime like I am, this is pretty good so far. Nine episodes have aired so far, and the series is set to have 13 episodes in total. If I was at NUT studio I would have placed a warning at the start of the first episode, it gets pretty dark for an anime about fishing.
If you’ve been diagnosed with depression or don’t enjoy niche anime, skip this one. You’ll probably get bored pretty quickly. Even then there is a bigger part to the story, like a lesson that there’s a lot to live for. The grass is greener on the other side, or that there are always people who will understand you and are willing to help out.
Where can you watch this anime? You can watch Negative Positive Angler on Crunchyroll!
Sasaki’s new fishing group helps him in the first episode, even though they didn’t know anything about him. Sasaki feels surprised by their hospitality.
Check out my one episode review of DANDADAN and if you should watch it. Also check out my one chapter review of SAKAMOTO DAYS, it’s getting an anime adaptation in 2025!