Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman

Studio: TMS Entertainment (Lupin III, Detective Conan, Baccano, Panda! Go, Panda!)

Dir. Hirofumi Ogura (Gintama, Inuyasha, Black Butler II, Samurai 7)

-BGR is his first head director gig

Wri. Tatsuto Higuchi + 3 others (AKB0048 Next Stage, Inazuma Eleven, Phi-Brain)

-Wrote six of twelve episodes, the most of the four writers

Music: Hiroshi Takaki (AKB0048, AKB0048 next stage, Dragon Ball: Episode of Bardock [sequel to Bardock – Father of Goku])

SYNOPSIS

Taking place in Kyoto during the late 1800s, Bakumatsu Gijinden Roman tells the story of Manjiro, an nigh impoverished ne’er-do-well gambler who lives with his younger sister in her decorative chopsticks shop. But when night falls, he becomes the masked superhero Roman, an analogue of Robin Hood, taking and returning things that were unrightfully stolen from the lowly citizens of Edo-period Japan.

REVIEW

It’s so nice to see Monkey Punch’s work on the screen again. There’s so much personality conveyed in these character’s faces and body designs that it’s impossible to deny the artist’s influence on the audience’s connection to them. It’s a shame the animation couldn’t live up to the fantastic design. This show is ugly. Like, embarrassingly ugly. TMS Entertainment cut every conceivable corner to get this thing produced, saving a little scratch for some slightly nicer sequences toward the end of the season.

The characters aren’t anything we haven’t seen before. Besides the goofball hero Manjiro, there’s his cute little sister, a busty prostitute, a pervy old inventor, and a stoic badass. There’s also a foreign mad scientist of sorts who I believe is supposed to be German. He speaks Japanese very strangely and incorrectly writes the Japanese characters on the sign outside his clinic. He’s a pretty fun character, but I’m not sure if I should be offended by his depiction or not. He also slaps a woman in the last episode for basically no reason, and the show plays it for laughs. The main villain turns out to be a defected American Civil War general who has gone completely bonkers, wears an eye patch, and constantly sings “My Old Kentucky Home” in a crippling Japanese accent (all due respect to the voice actor; the poor guy is really doing his best). With the aforementioned exceptions, all the voice actors bring something nice to the table, especially Kazuya Nakai with Manjiro, a performer probably best known for his work on One Piece as Roronoa Zoro.

The story is light and fun, but not surprisingly it’s all a little formulaic. The series spends about half its runtime giving you very little backstory and showing you how Manjiro and his crew of “get-backers” operate in largely episodic installments. The last half is a combination info-dumpy conversations, flashbacks, and some pretty cool and coherent action scenes that build up the larger conflict.

The music is great. The bygone big band style reminds one of the great Yuji Ouno and his incredible work on Lupin the 3rd. Some flourishes of traditional Japanese instruments make it its own, but it’s the swing music of Monkey Punch’s flagship franchise that truly sells it.

If the music were the only anachronistic thing about the show, I’d be a lot happier with it, but the show’s pervasive goofiness gets the best of it at times. The show starts dipping into genres it has no business being in and clearly has no idea how to handle them with any sort of finesse. I can say with confidence that this is the first historical fiction I’ve ever seen with super sentai rangers, fusing mech suits, zombies, a giant laser cannon, and a one-eyed, gun-armed cyborg mounted on a mini-tank at the waist. Some of this stuff can be fun while watching it unfold, but there is no rhyme or reason for its existence.

The show took a little while to get off the ground. It wasn’t until the last five or six episodes that I started enjoying it. It doesn’t have very much to say beyond the rote good vs. evil, dealing with regret, and a little bit of family-doesn’t-always-mean-blood, but what it does it does pretty well.

3 Lupins out of 5.

[starrater]