Full Review: Baccano

And once more the full review without the 5 episode review because after 5 episodes, knowing that there were only 11 more, I decided to just keep going.

Quick & Dirty

Language: Japanese

Initial Interest: Medium

Favorite Character: Firo

Opinion: I’m not sure

Apologies for the bad images, Google failed.

Or you can go here and see if the video will play.

Synopsis

Each of the stories in the series involves several unrelated plots intersecting and crossing each other as events spiral farther and farther out of control. Immortal alchemists, mafia operated speakeasies, and many other elements of pulp fiction mashed together for a world straight out of the movies.

(Source: AnimeNewsNetwork)

 

Pre-Viewing Thoughts

First let me just say that the above has got to be one of the worst synopses I’ve ever read. Really it will only be excusable if the plot defies explanation. I’m not exactly sure how I feel going into this one. It doesn’t sound interesting but I’ve had enough people whose anime judgement I trust recommend it to make me curious. I also like the art style. Let’s begin.

 

Favorite Character

I picked Firo because he was a fun character over all. Also it helped that the only person he killed throughout the entire series completely deserved it, something that most of the characters can’t boast. He’s one of those characters that seems to get along well with everyone so he had to be pretty likeable I guess. I think he cemented his place as my favorite character when he got into a fight with Dallas and did all the fancy dodge and jump tricks with the hat.

 

Overall Opinion

I’m gonna say that this series was kind of gory at various points. I can’t really file that under either the did well or didn’t do well category because while I wasn’t crazy about the amount of gore, I also feel like it was a necessary result of the premise. The premise, by the way, is that a bunch of New York gangsters in the 1930’s somehow became immortal and how they did it and some extra stuff on a train. The timeline was presented in a kind of mixed up order which was both genius and obnoxious at the same time. More than once I had to walk myself through the appropriate order of things before I could understand what was going on and yet I think that it might not have been as powerful if they hadn’t thrown it in the mixer first.

What they did well: The story was really interesting. I found myself curious about various aspects of the story and how this character came to that and what happened after this event. There were a lot of characters but they made all of them unique and interesting and did a good job of getting their names across (putting name cards in the opening theme may have helped).

What they didn’t do well: They had a lot of characters for a 16 episode series which means that a lot of them didn’t get a lot of development and/or screen time. Also, while the characters were interesting within the context of the story I didn’t find most of them likeable. Pretty much all of them were murderers and criminals and generally not really very nice people. The two who were the dumbest criminals to never get caught were mostly decent people but they were so stupid that I couldn’t decide if I liked them.

 

Overall I just have no idea what to say about this series. I think I liked it but I just can’t say for certain. If you don’t like gore don’t watch it, otherwise I’d say give it a shot. You’ll know pretty quick whether you want to watch the whole thing or not, but whether you’ll know if you liked it at the end is another question.

 

 

Next Official Review: Dance In The Vampire Bund