Anime: Great Pretender: Razbliuto

This will cover both entries, as I don’t have much to say about each one.

2020 was a very weird year in every way, and regarding anime specifically, it was one of the least hyped years in history. Even the most popular and higher rated titles of that year are pretty much left behind by now, with the exception of Jujutsu Kaisen, the big fighting shounen of the moment, and even that one seems to be pretty criticized nowadays. It’s a shame because I didn’t think it was that bad of a year, and had some decent titles in my opinion, even if they barely managed to reach that level.

One of them, if you recall, was Great Pretender, which I don’t know how well it did in Japan, as it didn’t appear in the top 20 lists I saw at the time, and is clearly a west oriented show. But I remember it initially getting review bombed on anime databases by Shingeki no Kyojin fans, because studio WIT wasn’t adapting their manga anymore, as if that was even the decision of the studio in the first place.

It’s funny how that ended up being the reason why many more people began to watch it and rated it accordingly and it ended up being a relatively well rated title across every database.

But enough introduction. The anime itself is a rule of cool type of series of coin artists robbing bigger, worse criminals, and it was pretty good for a while. The energy was there, the tone was appropriate, and the presentation was mostly amazing.

Visually the series had polished artwork with no quality drops, beautiful backgrounds based around real locations around our world, that looked like paintings thanks to the darker colours, combined with darker and warmer lighting and shading effects, good special effects as well, and detailed and energetic motions that the series needed both in tone and action sequences. Plus, some interesting angles in the directing. The negative aspect were the character designs, as every character that wasn’t relatively old had the same facial structure, a froggy ground head ended on a triangular chin pointing down, yeah the series wasn’t the best in that regard.

The audio was kind of amazing as well. The sound effects weren’t as spectacular as I hoped for but they did their job just fine. The music was plain amazing, combining multiple genres and languages with different appropriate moods for different moments, and who could forget using the Freddy Mercury of the song with the same name of the anime as the ending song? Plus the voice acting was very well done and it even included different voice actors from different countries and of course talking in different languages to reflect the changes of countries in the setting of the series. The switches weren’t very smooth of course, but it was a nice detail to have in the show.

The series was separated into four arcs, all of which focused on the main characters. The first one was the best in my opinion, good introduction phase, good in throwing the protagonist into the whole chaotic situation, with a high energy through and through, full of action and high stakes, fleshing a side character with a good personal drama behind him, and subverting expectations a bit at the end. Of course the actual writing wasn’t that good or believable, but for a style over substance type of show, the first arc was great.

From there, the two following arcs would have a much lower energy but with intense and action packed endings, and throughout their duration, they would present a melancholic tone and be focused on the drama of the main characters. Thus they also serve the purpose to flesh out everyone from the main cast, expanding on their personalities, dynamics with the others, and backdrop stories.

It’s interesting to note that the storylines were quite different from each other. The first one was about fooling a drug mafia from LA from within, the second about ruining the rigged air race of a millionaire in Singapore, and the third about fooling a fraudulent art dealer in London, if I remember correctly. This way the series prevented becoming repetitive.

The final arc was about robbing a mafia group in Japan that deals with child trafficking, so the stakes and tone were far higher and more serious than ever. It was also emotionally important for the characters, as two of them, Edamame and Laurent, the most important and best ones I’d say, are personally involved with the group from way back, and even their families are involved. It was also emotionally engaging for the deaths that happen throughout this arc.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the makers decided to ruin the arc completely, and by extension the series as a whole. The tone became a lot lighter, the deaths turned out to be fake, thus ruining the drama, former villains come back as allies for no reason, especially after the protagonists ruined their lives, and the resolution was so over the top and ridiculous even for this anime, that you would expect to see it on something like the worst Mission Impossible entries.

The series is worth watching as a whole in my opinion, as a rule of cool type of action crime drama mini arc type of series, but the finale is really disappointing and as a whole the series is inferior to other famous anime that were compared with it in the past, such as Black Lagoon and Cowboy Bebop. I give it a 6/10.

Four years passed and here’s a sequel and you can notice what I said in the beginning, almost nobody cared about it, maybe also due to the format being unclear at first, expected to be a movie but then revealed to be a four part ova, meaning, another arc.

Even if you did care about it, the only quality that remains from the original is the audiovisuals, no complaint there. Some people didn’t like the design of the main character because of the differences between her lips, but eh, character designs were always the worst part of the visuals of this series anyway.

As for the actual content:

-There was a lot less of it, just an arc that goes by fast, instead of a series.

-The energy was a lot lower, compared to the best parts of the original.

-Similar things happen with the pacing.

-The arc as a whole is not that interesting, the main character is investigated by a mafia group and the antagonist themselves end up being against each other just because of misunderstandings, the whole conflict could be resolved if they just stopped to talk it out for a bit.

-The characters are uninteresting, the protagonist has some personality but also amnesia and no clear objective, she is just dragged around by the weak plot, and just by being alive, she constantly reminds you of how badly the previous final arc and series ended and how one of the best dramas of the original was ruined.

-Another character gets some focus but it’s not done in a way that is interesting. His backstory is nothing compared to the previous ones, he doesn’t share enough scenes with his friend for their dynamic to be enjoyable, he conveniently gets amnesia and gets cured of it, both things in stupid ways, and despite being hyped up, he kind of sucks at everything he does when you think about it.

-The ovas try to build some kind of romance around them but it is very superficial, not believable, not built upon, not engaging in the least.

-It is revealed at the end that every character was doing everything that the older main cast wanted. How? You barely see them on screen to believe such thing.

-As the, I guess expected, reunion, happens, the series ends, possibly with a sequel bait finale so they can milk it some more, though I don’t think that might happen, or at least not soon, how many people even cared about this?

In all, the action and the audiovisual presentation were fun, but it was overall a very unneeded and poorly done sequel that only added salt to the wound of the awful finale of the original series. Another crappy addition that would have been better if it never existed, like, let’s say, Odd Taxi in the Woods, or the Zegapain ADP prequel movie that I also reviewed recently. I give it a 4/10, making the IP mediocre as a whole, but I still consider the original series to be a worthy one time watch, minus the finale, and as long as you ignore its sequel completely.