Director Baku Kinoshita wanted to create a story-driven animation and brought the project to producer Daisuke Hiraga around 2016; P.I.C.S. was primarily known for live-action work like 'Time Scoop Hunter' and music videos, making this nearly its first attempt at TV animation.

The original concept featured three college students (Kabasawa, Nagashima, and Tanaka) as the protagonists living peaceful daily lives, with taxi driver Odokawa only as a side character; the story was later reworked into a grittier suspense narrative centered on Odokawa.

Writer Kazuya Konomoto was brought onto the project after Kinoshita and Hiraga were recommended his manga 'Setouchi Utsumi' by a company junior and liked its dialogue-driven storytelling; this was Konomoto's first original TV anime script.

Setting up the production committee was difficult due to struggles finding domestic and international partners; the project was eventually saved when sister company OLM agreed to join, finalizing the production structure.

The series used pre-scoring (recording dialogue before animation) instead of the usual post-recording, both to achieve naturalistic conversation like a live-action drama and to prevent voice actors from being influenced by the characters' animal appearances.

Recording began around 2020 with multiple cast members together for the first few episodes, but was halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic; when recording resumed, actors recorded their lines individually and remotely.

Natsuki Hanae, who voiced 41-year-old protagonist Odokawa, initially tried to use a much lower voice to sound older, but the director told him he didn't need to strain himself so much, so he settled into a naturally lower pitch.

The cast notably included comedians such as Miki, Diane, Takashi from Trendy Angel, Tomoko Murakami from Morisanchu, Girlie Record, and rapper METEOR, which generated buzz; Shosei from Miki, voicing Kenshiro Daimon, was doing his first voice acting role and struggled so much with the standard Japanese accent and cooler persona that he confided to the director he didn't know what to do.

A Twitter account under the handle @kbsw_t was created before the show's release, posting in-universe tweets from hippo character Taichi Kabasawa; a selfie post from October 2020 featuring Odokawa attracted real attention when the corresponding episode aired in April 2021.

The TV series won the Rookie of the Year Award in the Animation Division at the 25th Japan Media Arts Festival, and The New Yorker included it as an honorable mention on its 'Best TV of 2021' list, while IGN named it the Best Anime of the Year.

Blu-ray release was initially not planned, but a crowdfunding-style campaign called 'Project ODDTAXI' was launched after the TV broadcast ended; the initial goal of 300 pre-orders was reached on the first day, and the final tally reached 6,038 sets, with all bonus features unlocked after surpassing 3,000 orders.

The film 'Odd Taxi: In the Woods' reassembles TV series footage with new testimony scenes from characters connected to Odokawa, set on December 24, the day before the 'Odd Taxi Operation'; its post-credits scene uses live-action footage, which was cut from the streaming version.