Anime Review 002 : Baccano!, light novel written by Ryogo Narita
*ahem*
Welcome. To Sane Restriction (Colloquial Entity)'s anime reviews.
Now, a good measure of Baccano! would be that I actually finished it, and that's a lot to ask of me from an anime.
(Granted, the show was only 16 episodes, but... ^^')
So there you go, Baccano! was good, at least.
Unlike Death Note, Baccano! had little to scorn and little to bless. That doesn't mean it was uneventful and flat, but that... there was little to scorn and little to bless.
Baccano! was jam-packed with action, comedy, history, and romance (very little romance, though). The story was about two Mafia-based crime Families warring against one another and committing crime after crime. And then of course it was also about two or three murderous groups of men and women going around and slaying both the innocent and soiled passengers of a train called the Flying Pussyfoot (God knows how that name came about). But then it was simultaneously about a young girl searching for and pursuing her absent brother. And then it was also about a team of alchemists discovering the secret of immortality and hunting one another like crazed wolves until only a few ultimately immortal beings existed. And then it was also about one of the Mafia-based Families that was intertwined with the search for the criminal brother, the Mafia-based wars, the immortality, and the Flying Pussyfoot. And then it was about a monster/assassin called the Rail Tracer or Vino (meaning 'wine' in Italian because his kills always ended up drenched in crimson blood as if doused in red wine) who went around interrogating people by ripping off their faces and then terrorizing railways. Or was it about the homonculus creation of an immortal evil inventor/scientist/genius that had super strength and uncanny ability that met with a member of the Camorra and was nearly killed? Or the daughter of some member of authority who was trying to flee the serial killer gangs? Or the two slightly insane comic relief characters that went around stealing useless and unusual things (the door to a museum, for example)? Or was it about the homocidal maniac that always wore white suits because the imprint of blood showed up better? Or was it about that mechanic that liked to throw around giant wrenches and beat up the concrete floor with it? Or was it about the mute, elegant woman that Vino fell in love with and proposed to? Or was it about the black-clad men that were threatening the family of some almighty political figurehead in order to have their former leader freed from prison who actually used to be one of those immortal alchemists? Or was it about the team of oddballs armed with explosives and guns that were aboard the Flying Pussyfoot and seemed to play no role whatsoever but connected to the Mafia-based Families somehow?
Or was it about all of that smashed together into one anime only 16 episodes long?
Yes, my friend. That was what Baccano! (meaning 'ruckus' or 'racket' in Italian) was about. That and it took place in the early 1930's of the United States.
Baccano! had one of the most diverse and the largest character arrays ever in anime (considering its brevity). The Cammoristas, the Mafiosi's, the gangsters, the criminals, the rich... people, the serial killers, the immortals, the homonculi, the thieves, the 'musicians', the waitresses, the hat-seller, the guy with the newspapers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Of those characters, one that stood out to me more than some specific others was Vino; the Rail Tracer; Claire Stanfield. Claire is, not only a guy (despite his namesake), but a psychotic killer that maneuvers undercover as a train conductor for the Flying Pussyfoot and then brutally and sadistically murders a majority of the passengers. He is an expert at torture, anticipation, and messily slaughtering other human beings like the butcher of humanity. Except he's not vegetarian. I don't think so, anyway.
Claire stood out not only because he was exactly what I just said, but because he had red hair and a serious ego. Not only did he believe that he was invincible to anything and/or anyone else in the entire universe, but he actually believed that he was a supernatural, all-powerful, almighty being and that the massive universe functioned with him as the absolute center. This ego left an impression that didn't deliquesce even as he showed his more human side when questioning how exactly to confess his love for another and eating, quite barbarically nonetheless, his penne pasta.
Though, like Death Note, Baccano! was also rather plot-driven. Most of the characters displayed miniscule development and most of them were rather flat to begin with.
Claire was interesting all the way, but did lack development and/or growth, though one could say that him falling in love brought out his more humane and possibly softer side (not that a guy that amuses himself by biting off other peoples' fingers, tearing their faces off, and caking himself in their blood has a very profound 'softer side').
An entire set of characters worth mentioning would be Jacuzzi Splot, Nice Holystone, and their group of unusual associates. Though their purpose in the story of Baccano! was little vague, their personalities and actual actions conveyed their intentions and capabilities quite well. For instance, Jacuzzi was a whining, complaining, tattoo-marred crybaby boy that was running from the law and backed up by his team of weirdos. But Jacuzzi had depth. He had explanation. And he had dimension. I won't go through that in too much detail since there are those of you that have not seen Baccano! but the point remains that Jacuzzi was one of the thicker characters.
Jacuzzi was usually supported by a woman named Nice who has an obsession with explosives and permanently scarred/burned her face in and accident involving one. She had accompanied Jacuzzi when both were at a young age an continued to rescue him from situation after other situation of risk. Nice had lesser purpose than Jacuzzi, but was deeper than, say, Dallas.
Dallas was the jerkweed brother of Eve Genouard (or however their last name was spelled). He was not only a petty criminal, but an amazingly shallow and remarkably stupid man in general.
And yet another pair of characters that should at least be glazed over would be Isaac and Miria; the two comic-relief characters.
Isaac and Miria are thieves, of a sort; highly abnormal thieves at that. Their thefts have ranged from all sorts of impractical and inconvenient objectives and disguises, and their overall personas are also rather... strange. Though most people may describe them as the most likeable and greatest of the Baccano! cast, I would strongly disagree and label them one of the more irritating, particularly because of Miria. Generally, the two have not only obnoxious voices but an immense amount of frivolity and folly that just don't make sense against the context, no matter how humorous.
And of course, the most interesting characters from Baccano!'s arsenal included the following:
Ladd Russo, who was basically (personality-wise) equivalent to Claire except with light brown hair, a larger build, a team of supporters, and a boisterous voice (who was nearly killed by Claire, as well as virtually every other member of his Russo gang aboard the Flying Pussyfoot).
Ennis, a homonculus developed by Szilard the immortal to serve him and to obey his will.
Firo Prochainezo, a Cammorista and friend of Maiza, the one who originally found out the secret to immortality.
Chanes Laforet, the woman Claire fell in love with and a member of the Lemure gang that fought over the Flying Pussyfoot (by which Claire [Vino] killed them all, anyway, so he ended up dominating the train).
Graham Specter, that mechanic I mentioned earlier that liked to throw around his giant wrench, cause trouble, and loyally follow Ladd like a puppy (who also ended up being beaten up quite soundly by Claire).
Czeslaw Werth, the tortured young immortal boy with quite the ego that tried to manipulate the Russo gang and was frightened almost literally to death by Claire (and was also killed by the Russo's, killed again by Claire, tortured by Claire, tormented by Claire, killed again by Claire, and taunted by Claire [since Claire had figured out that Czeslaw was immortal and could not die]).
Aside from the characters, Baccano! had a very fast-paced, impulsive, rushing plot. The whole story had been splayed across the course of three years and jumped interchangeably from one year to another unpredictably, summing up to be just confusing enough that a first-time watcher may need paper and pencil so they can take notes.
The plot was also, aside from being racing and action-packed, but interesting to the point that not a single second (give or take) of the anime was boring or bland. Either you'd be scared out of your Esprit socks, laughing at 500,000,000 decibels, crying like the Nile River, gawking like a paralyzed toucan, or, most likely, just downright confused as Hell. But not bored. Never. Not in Baccano!.
And despite Baccano!'s rambling, stumbling, explosive methods of depicting the storyline, it had a certain grace and intelligence that couldn't be ignored.
The way that everything, every detail, was tied up, concluded, and intertwined with one another beautifully was a phenomenon in and of itself. It's rather difficult, I would expect, after all, to find some way for every aspect of Baccano! to relate to one another sensibly and logically (not that any occurrence in Baccano! was even remotely logical either way).
Baccano! did an exquisite job of involving history, romance, action, adventure, the supernatural, conflict, and ludicrosity into one, 16-episode anime.
Which isn't to say that Baccano! was flawless. Previously, I did mention its characters having little personal growth and some not having anything to build up upon in the first place, but I also have yet to effectively establish that the entire thing was mostly confusing. The beginning took place in modern day, per se, with two insignificant characters telling the story of Baccano! and making harmless remarks that made no sense at all. The story then melded into Baccano! in the 1930's of the United States, morphing smoothly into a mass of unexplained events that later became explained. Then, in the course of the middle, events in 1932 were explained, before they actually occurred in 1930, and following off of whatever happened in 1931 which actually came about as a result of what happened in 1930 which was further cleared up in 1932 with evidence and reasoning from 1931 that generally came into effect in 1930 and weren't properly examined until current day, because of faults in the law from 1932 that were faulty because of happenings in 1931 that led to later happenings in 1932 that were also triggerred by events in 1930, and then came to a reasonable end as the story, once more, returned to the 20/21st century with the two insignificant characters and their coming across an immortal mouse.
In other words, the story moved from present to past to future to present to past to future to present to future to past to present to past to future to further into the future and then back to present day (today).
In other words, it was hard to discern one time period from another, what happened in one year as opposed to another, what character was part of what time unlike another, what time was centered around what character instead of another, and what time period was investigating what other time period and what characters from that time period were invstigating other characters from that other time period that was centered around the characters from the time period over there.
It's capability of defining and depicting so many stories while all the while weaving it into one was sterling and unique.
In other words, Baccano! was just a Hell of an anime.
And that's how I viewed Baccano!. It was a mostly plot-driven anime with a huge amount of occasionally unnecessarily flat characters, a full and fast-paced storyline, a wildly difficult time line to track, and a f***in' confusing tale to tell, albeit an interesting and ingenius one.
As a finalized thought, I give it a 9 out of 10.
9.000000000248517582659200017482470175801847397578023472461658486341, actually.
