Arakawa Under the Bridge follows the main character Rec who starts out as a model of corporate self-reliance; he's dressed like a salaryman and follows a personal credo (inherited from his rich businessman father) that he'll never be indebted to anyone. Originally full of himself, he meets those under the bridge, a group of misfits and weirdos living in a commune that shields them from the obligations of the 9 to 5. Over the course of the series and one joke at a time, he comes to recognize the bankruptcy of his corporate life trajectory through his interactions with the other characters (especially Star and Nino) who don't have typical definitions of success and happiness. He typically plays the straight man to the supporting cast's set of atypical traits and thought processes, and the contrast between normal thinking and strangeness is funny.
I think calling the humor here silly, stupid, or random doesn't do it justice. It's a character-based comedy that revels in the idiosyncrasies permitted under the bridge, so the randomness of their traits is purposeful. The silliness of the humor establishes an unusual logic to the show and characters overall. In an increasingly capitalistic and results-driven society, under the bridge here stands as a space of absolute freedom from the ridiculous, though normalized, bullshit of everyday life. Rec comes in representing a life of feckless accumulation and self-interest but through his relationships with those under the bridge, he discovers a new way of evaluating people, relationships, and his own sense of himself. The people he originally thought were space cadet freaks turn out to be motivated by truer feelings and ideas than those in the presumably rational, capitalistic world. This show complicates what's normal, showing our reality of money-motivated selfishness to be hollow in the face of authentic relationships we could build without such an imperative. The supporting cast aren't all designed directly for this reorientation of thinking, but as a group carve out a place unencumbered by social expectations, thus contributing broadly to my point.
On a more abstract level, this show has a great energy to it. I think there's a place for all the characters in the broader story and that the OPs/EDs in this and the sequel are some of the strongest there are. I don't think the art impedes any of what the show tries to do and there are great live action end scenes sometimes (of Kappa guy hanging out on the Japanese river banks). I think these live action scenes feed into my analysis about what this show is doing.
To conclude, I think this anime is an interesting pairing alongside Welcome to the NHK which deals with social alienation from a different angle. Here, traditional success is a type of personal failure stirring change, while in NHK, personal economic and psychological failures create relationships which in turn lead to change. As I get older, shows like this gain increasingly more real estate in my mind because they get at something real that a person experiences when they get older, especially living in a big city. In particular, I think current anime's fixation on fantasy escapism, incest, pedophilia, and rote genre/narrative recycling is an attempt to avoid the insecurities, social dislocation, and economic problems covered in NHK and Arakawa.
