“If there’s really that many people in the world, then there had to be someone who wasn’t ordinary. There had to be someone who was living an interesting life. There just had to be. Why wasn’t I that person?” –Haruhi Suzumiya
Upon entering high school, Kyon’s dreams of living out a normal life are dashed when he meets the eccentric and seemingly-cold Haruhi Suzumiya, a girl known for her escapades during middle school and a bold introduction on the first day of class. Against his better judgement, he speaks with Haruhi and learns that she’s intent on finding aliens, time travellers and espers to have fun with. Haruhi takes Kyon’s suggestion to start her own club seriously and ends up building the SOS Brigade, hauling in fellow students Yuki Nagato, Mikuru Asahina and Itsuki Koizumi. Haruhi turns out to be far more energetic than Kyon anticipated, and he finds himself…
Sound the alarm, after a solid two years of bankrolling wet cement, Netflix has finally thrown their bullion behind something that people will actually want to watch again. But don’t take that to mean that The Great Pretender is a retread. Pretender is a live-wire technicolor battle-of-wits-slash-action-series that takes place in the streets of LA (and perhaps abroad? Who can say this early on). Not many anime open with a shot of their protagonist hanging by his feet from the Hollywood sign. There’s only one episode of Pretender available (fansubbed) in English right now, but it’s well worth a look.
Despite my high praise for it (note: that will continue) the appeal of The Great Pretender is dead simple. Do you like shows with loud, fluid visuals? Do you like shows about conmen and attractive people? How about shows with great soundtracks? Character writing and design so snappy you can pick up on a character’s whole “vibe” in ten seconds flat? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you should give this one a watch, no need to read further.
This is a Wit Studio production, they of Attack on Titan. But if you’re not a fan of that series you shouldn’t worry. The vibrant backgrounds and colorful character animation of Pretender actually remind me a bit more of The Rolling Girls. Truth be told though, coloring like this, which is so tactile that it looks like it might drip off the screen if it lingers on any one frame for too long, is exceedingly rare in general. This pure visual muscle extends even to the title card for the episode, which looks more like a cocktail jazz album cover than anything out of an anime.
And we’ve come this whole way without even really mentioning the plot. To greatly oversimplify, The Great Pretender feels like if Black Lagoon was made by a group of people who like vibrant colors and prefer their crimes on the marginally less violent side. (Admittedly what I mean there is mostly that as of episode one, no one’s straight-up died yet.)
If your reaction to that description is that this sounds fun, you’re absolutely right. It’s impossible to say this early on where this freewheeling conman / drug dealer narrative will go. Our protagonists: Japanese con artist Masato Edamura and French(?)-American “confidence man” Laurent Thierry. This show is a blast, I found myself grinning ear to ear from the moment the episode proper began with a silly scam to sell overpriced water filters, right through to the end, where Edamura is caught up in a drug sale gone awry. Along the way, wallets are snatched, knives are snuck into luggage at airports, gratuitous English is hot-swapped for Japanese mid-scene, and more.
Yes, this is a real screenshot.
Going further into specifics honestly feels superfluous. There’s a scene where Edamura and Thierry go suit shopping while preparing to rip off a Hollywood mogul / crime kingpin.
There’s Edamura’s weird fixation on gachapon toys.
There is the entire introductory character line of Abigail Jones, who is introduced as a beauty with a bad attitude, is used to demonstrate Thierry’s drugs, which she promptly fries her brain on (in a sequence that I’m sure someone had an absolute delight drawing), and then lays Edamura flat near the tail-end of the episode for trying to bail.
I could go on, but The Great Pretender is clearly a series whose greatest strengths are craft and passion. Every inch of it absolutely bleeds a good time. Will it get into more dour territory as it goes on? I don’t know, it’s possible. It might even be great at doing that, but trust me, for sheer spectacle alone, this one is worth it. If you have any interest in anime measured in “holy shit”s-per-minute as a metric, you need to watch Great Pretender‘s first episode. It’s nothing short of a marvel. (The only reason this isn’t a Twenty Perfect Minutes column is because I don’t do those for shows that are currently airing.) Will this hold up for a full season’s worth of episodes? Who knows, but for now, The Great Pretender is one to keep your eyes on, with gusto.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Twenty Perfect Minutes is an irregular column series where I take a look at single specific anime that shaped my experience with the medium, were important to me in some other way, or that I just really, really like.
So, full disclosure, this episode is the reason Twenty Perfect Minutes exists. YuruYuri is a good show, but it’s pretty orthodox. Its main point of deviation from other school life comedies (or slice of life shows if you prefer that term. Or even, *shudder*, Cute Girls Doing Cute Things) is the higher level of explicit Gay in the show’s text. (It is called YuruYuri, after all.) Shows like that don’t really tend to have singular standout episodes. I love Lucky Star, for example, but it’s a pretty consistent experience. You know what you’re going to get with each episode, something that’s largely true of the genre on the whole.
Occasionally, however, a series like this will get just a bit more narratively ambitious. “Ambitious” is an adjective rarely associated with the school life genre and it’s true that this is not, you know, Gunbuster, but when a series like this decides to cash in on the goodwill its characters have built up with its audience, the results can be quite surprising. I absolutely love this episode, there’s not a lot else like it in the genre.
H.G. Wells, eat your heart out.
Let’s be clear here; YuruYuri is not a particularly weird series. “The Akari Who Leapt Through Time”, however, is a pretty weird episode in the context of it. Not just because of the obvious, that it involves time travel (and is named after one of the most famous time travel stories in the entire medium). It has a peculiar, melancholy overtone, and casts protagonist Akari in a somewhat different light than the rest of the show. All of this is still filtered through the lens of a light comedy anime of course, but the difference in mood and tone is noticeable. This being the sole script turn for director Masahiko Ohta might explain things somewhat, but it’s unique nonetheless.
Akari herself is a neat, fun, straightforward character. Her central joke is very simple–she’s the ostensible protagonist, but because of that, she has no real standout characteristics. Thus, she has so little presence that she is easily overlooked, and in some episodes she can even literally turn invisible with an Akariiiin~! sound effect. In the series proper, Kyouko, and sometimes Yui, tend to fulfill the protagonist role more than she does. YuruYuri had previously made some gestures to the fact that she was legitimately distraught by this, but the accidental time travel that sets this episode’s plot into motion really puts that in focus.
Akari spends the episode’s first half trying to undo mistakes that her past self made. This is certainly amusing, (and serves to dish out fun callbacks to the very beginning of the series), but through the comedy it’s easy to see that she’s kinda desperate. Things like her scribbling a message on her first-year desk so Past-Akari doesn’t flub her class introduction, or trying to deflect Chinatsu from joining the Amusement club, are as amusing as they are revealing.
All of this falls through, and Akari is of course distraught. Where the episode takes a turn for the genuinely unexpected though is some particularly salient advice, and who dispenses it.
YuruYuri never quite felt like it knew what to do with Akane, Akari’s older sister. The character’s weak core joke (that she’s a siscon) makes her probably the least essential member of the entire cast. Indeed, that joke is present here, too, in one of the episode’s few missteps. Though it’s mercifully only brought up briefly.
This shot feels like a visual metaphor.
Weak gag aside, this is an uncommon instance of Akane acting in a genuinely sisterly manner toward her younger sibling. Namely, in addition to letting her sleep over while school genius Nana works on the time machine to try to repair it, she points out to Akari it’s possible that changing the past might alter her memories. Our heroine is distraught over this, and in the episode’s most purely sweet moment, she nods off in her sister’s bed, and has a melancholy dream.
This sequence is so very simple: Akari singing a little blue ditty over some footage from prior episodes, and, eventually, crying at the possibility of losing her time with them.
So simple, but so sweet and affecting. The next day, when Akari has her final chance to perhaps change the course of things, she’s struck by the thought again that doing so might change her memories, and can’t bring herself to go through with it. She starts crying on the spot.
Later, when she uses the fixed time machine to return to her own era, we get the emotional payoff. The difference between how Akari thinks everyone will react when she returns, and how they actually do react, is stark.
The former:
The latter:
School life comedies (and really, character comedies in general) are a genre that live and die by how well the audience connects to the characters. This is a principle that’s been understood in cartooning since the dawn of the medium, but it’s one thing to simply make a character likable. It’s quite another entirely to make the audience relate to them. Who among us hasn’t occasionally undervalued their self-worth? It’s quite a common problem.
The point I’m getting at here is: more than just a focus episode or the vehicle for some fun jokes, “The Akari Who Leapt Through Time” is the rare episode of a school life anime that feels like a genuine character study.
Is it still all, ultimately, pretty lighthearted? Yes, of course. As such a character study it’s a fairly simple one. And if I can levy a single main complaint at the episode it’s that the final revelation that the whole thing was a story told by Kyouko is unnecessary and cheapens the experience just a little. But honestly, the episode is otherwise so well put together that it doesn’t feel like it matters that much. Plus it does say a lot about how much Kyouko and friends care for Akari, all jokes aside.
YuruYuri is a good show overall, and I’m quite fond of it. (It may even show up in this column again.) But, I think speaking frankly, this was its peak. In a genre that can occasionally feel like it coasts on archetypes, “The Akari Who Leapt Through Time” manages the feat of making its lead, a simple redheaded girl who’s easily overlooked, feel genuinely human.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
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